Facing the Future: Automation Truths from 40 Years on the Shop Floor with Mike Gamache, Ep #29

[0:00] Mike Gamache: I think automation is not just an incremental change, but can be a transformative. Nick Goellner: Exponential change. Mike Gamache: Exponential change for corporations that are willing to spend the time and the energy to find the right projects and apply the right technology.

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[1:00] Narrator: Talent is scarce, experience even more so, driving up costs and sleepless nights. You may even think to yourself, can I do this? But this new era brings new technology and a different perspective on your operations.

What you will hear will turn on a light bulb in your mind so you can turn out the lights in your shop. Get ready to sleep soundly while your shop never stops. Get ready for making chips lights out with your hosts, Nick Golner, Caleb Mertz, and David Buick.

[1:53] Nick Goellner: Eric, my boy.

[1:55] Eric Nekich: How are you, Nick? Good, man. How are you?

I’m doing great today. I’m super excited about today’s guest for a few reasons.

[2:04] Nick Goellner: I know it’s a big deal for you. This is a big moment. Eric Nekich: It really is. Nick Goellner: It’s a face the beast here. Eric Nekich: Yeah. In 2018, I believe, when today’s guest and I first met, he looked me dead in the eye and said, you’re never going to make it in this business, kid. It’s kind of nice to be sitting across from him, seeing me as a co-host on a great podcast, just crushing it.

[2:26] Nick Goellner: Yeah. Our seven and a half average monthly listeners. Right.

Your redemption story.

[2:31] Eric Nekich: Excluding our parents. We have two that I’m aware of. Mike Gamache: Yeah, probably. My wife, actually, might be listening now, too, so. Eight? Nick Goellner: Well, when you get home, she’s going to be very disappointed in how you treated Eric. Eric Nekich: Yeah, exactly. Nick Goellner: I’m here to apologize. Eric Nekich: This episode is about peace, listeners.

[2:51] Nick Goellner: Reconciliation. Reconciliation. Okay, well, that’s probably not the actual story of how you met our guest, but before you tell that, why don’t we introduce him?

Who do we have here today with us?

[3:00] Eric Nekich: Today, we have a great friend and colleague in Mike Gamache from Metalcraft of Mayville. Mike, welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. It’s good to be here, really. I mean, this is going to be a lot of fun.

I think it’s going to be the exclamation point on a long and storied career for you.

[3:20] Mike Gamache: Yeah, I mean, I’m just excited to be here. I’m making chips. I mean, you guys seem to be having a lot of fun already, and this is going to be great. Eric Nekich: He’s like, I still don’t know if this is a real thing. Nick Goellner: Right. Eric Nekich: It’s cute that he thinks he’s on making chips. Nick Goellner: Well, that’s okay. Oh, my. This is the lights out version. Eric Nekich: This is basically the industry’s version of the Golden Bachelor. No, I’m kidding.

[3:47] Nick Goellner: Oh, my gosh. So, tell us the real story of how you guys met. Because, honestly, Eric, I’ve known you for a while, and you’ve talked about this.

Don’t forget the white horse. Right. Yeah, the gleaming suit of armor.

But you’ve talked about Mike so many times. I have.

[4:03] Eric Nekich: You have those moments in your life where you can feel divine intervention, like when you meet those people that kind of you know you were destined to meet. I mean, a very similar experience when you and I first met, Nick. And, yeah, it was, I believe, 2018.

Lange, where I was employed at the time, great little workholding company up there in Wisconsin and build on the rock partner, was launching a new automation system called Robotrex. We were a small outfit at Lange. I mean, I think we were three employees at the time.

So, they knew we were going to need help, service, support, installation, all that stuff. And so, they challenged me to find some local integrators. So, we had some really good machine tool dealer and OEM relationships at the time.

So, I made a few phone calls. And I’ll never forget the first phone call I made was a gentleman named Al at, I believe, PMT, Premier Machine Tools, also in Heartland, Wisconsin. And, oh, no, AJ.

Sorry, I was going to say AJ. AJ Schwebe. AJ Schwebe.

And I just said, hey. Schwebe. Schwebe.

[5:02] Nick Goellner: Oh, my God. You have a more German-sounding name. It’s amazing he doesn’t work here. Speaker 7: Is he eating schpitz every night? Nick Goellner: Or he lays down in a tiny bed that has, like, one feather bed covering.

[5:16] Eric Nekich: Instantly fighting not to transition into my Klaus voice for the rest of the story. But anyway, so, he said, there’s, you know, I just said, who would you call? Who would you partner with?

And he said, there’s one guy and one guy only. And that is Mike Gamache from Gamache Systems in New Berlin, Wisconsin. Again.

[5:33] Nick Goellner: New Berlin. Eric Nekich: Wisconsin is really just an extension of Germany. What will we call this city? Nick Goellner: The other mountains.

[5:43] Eric Nekich: So, I called Mike. He came over to our showroom. We had a great conversation.

And literally, I believe, like, pretty much a week later, we were on a flight to Germany together. Flight was delayed. We got delayed in Dublin together.

So, kind of one of those things where you just met this person and now you’re going to spend the next 24 hours of your life, like, immediately next to them. And we had great laughs. We hit it off.

I mean, that trip is a story in and of itself. Mike with his 39 Delta drink tickets at his house. He’s like, I don’t even know what to do with these.

But anyway.

[6:22] Mike Gamache: Well, they gave us first class and then they reneged on that. And they said, hey, we’re taking the first class tickets back, but we’ll give you free drink tickets. And they just handed us a stack. Nick Goellner: They’re like, let’s just hope you don’t remember. Eric Nekich: It’s like the ski ball machine. They just kept pouring out of the guy’s hand. But so anyway, we became fast friends. Nick Goellner: If you don’t want to black out, you can turn them in for like a little price. Yeah, totally.

[6:47] Eric Nekich: I think I had them sitting at home. 39 one ounce whiskey bottles or this stuffed animal. Squirt gun.

But anyway, we became fast friends. We became fast colleagues. We traveled together again.

Our families have met. And he’s here today because Mike does some amazing things for our industry. He has got decades of experience in automating everything from lathes and mills to welding, material handling.

And so just a great guy to have on the podcast and an awesome resource for our listeners.

[7:23] Mike Gamache: Yeah. Awesome. Welcome, man.

Thanks for having me. I’m really excited. Yeah.

[7:28] Nick Goellner: I want to hear kind of like your story. We always do like a little origin story of how you got involved in the industry when we bring on a new guest. So kind of, you know, take us up to speed to present day.

Well, when I was born. I would say you don’t have to start with like your parents.

[7:43] Mike Gamache: Winter. Well, yeah, born and raised in Milwaukee. So I went to Milwaukee Trade and Tech High School, which one of the programs there was pre-engineering.

So I jumped into manufacturing kind of schooling right in high school at 15 years old.

[8:00] Nick Goellner: It was called Milwaukee Trade and Tech.

[8:01] Mike Gamache: Tech. Yeah. Yeah.

It used to be boys tech. Everybody goes, oh, were there girls there? Yeah.

No.

[8:07] Nick Goellner: Yeah. You got to switch that nowadays. Mike Gamache: It used to be boys tech like way back. And then there was actually girls there when I went there. Nick Goellner: Where are the high schools like that? Trade and Tech High School? Mike Gamache: Right. It’s a huge hole. Nick Goellner: Now you hope to have like Minecraft class.

[8:21] Mike Gamache: Yeah. I mean, they had automotive, carpentry, chemistry. I mean, so a wide variety of things.

And I really didn’t pick one area other than saying, hey, I’m going to go into manufacturing and engineering at some point, or I’m going to go to college and I need kind of some prerequisites for that. So at 15, as a junior, I got a job at a steel company as part of an ICE program, not to be- Not like deporting people from the country. Not deporting people.

Getting the illegals out of Milwaukee. But actually like a inner curriculum or, you know, working through with a company that was in manufacturing and doing an engineering job when there was paper and pencils back in the day. So I’m dating myself now, but- Totally are.

Yeah. But it was kind of cool because I did that my junior, senior year and then ended up staying on with them. And cool thing was we did end up, it was kind of my first continuous improvement where we did our, the first computers.

Think of that.

[9:22] Nick Goellner: At the shop? Mike Gamache: At the shop. We were like, I mean, I was literally pencil drawing full-size templates for an electronic eye to flame cut shapes with oxy-acetylene torches. And to get the first computer that could do a job in five minutes, that would take me a day. Eric Nekich: So I have to ask you, and I don’t want to interrupt your story because it’s super interesting. But back then when you guys were in the room pitching computers to your superiors, were there guys in the room that were like, that stuff’s a flash in the pan. Nick Goellner: It’s never going to work. We’re not going to the moon, son. Eric Nekich: You’re never going to get away from good old pencils and paper, Mike.

[10:02] Mike Gamache: Well, that actually reminds me of going to college and then being in a class where they wanted me to write instruction on what email was. And back at UW-Milwaukee, as I’m going to school now for marketing, because I switched. I didn’t want to be this engineer that was going to sit behind the desk all day.

I wanted to be in sales and marketing and I was going to do all this fun stuff, right? So I’m in this writing class and it was, they had stations around the campus that were the email stations. And you’d have to go to it and write somebody an email.

And then you’d have to wait for their response and then go back to the station and then go see what your response was and then write an email again. And I’m like, email? I’m like, this is never going to work.

[10:50] Nick Goellner: I can tell you, email does not work. I get about 2,000 emails a month. Yeah, we had someone actually count.

We had our IT. I was like, I think I get too many emails. So yeah, I don’t think email works today either.

[11:02] Mike Gamache: It’s evolved, right? I mean, now you have texting and podcasts and all this fun stuff. But yeah.

No, so I really stayed at this company, Hall Steel, until I was 27 and brought in, you know, numerous new accounts and we did some project. I did some project management where half of our customers were machine builders, automation companies, and the other half were machine shops. And so the machine designers and automation companies were really looking for, it was the last thing, right?

They design, design, design, and then they got to build this thing and they’re all out of time. So how fast can I get this weldment or steel and I needed machine painted and all that stuff. And while we just provided the steel and the cutting and the welding, I started going out and we did stress relieving, sandblasting, prime, painting, machining, complete.

And we were doing it in record time. So we did a really good job of increasing our profitability and helping out our customers. And that was like a big leap for me career wise and, and learned a lot, you know, learned who to trust, who not to trust in a machine shop environment, which is crazy, but.

[12:13] Nick Goellner: That was our first conversation when we met. You were telling me that story of like trying to add the value, add aspects of, of a steel company who didn’t do a lot of the things that you were proposing. And so you had to kind of like usher in some of that change, right?

[12:26] Mike Gamache: Well, and even at that, my boss at the time, he told me don’t do it. Like he didn’t want me going out and adding machining to our repertoire. Right.

And I did it anyways. And then he was like, Hey, Gamache, like where’s all this profitability coming from? I’m like, well, remember, remember when you told me not to do the thing that I’m doing now, that’s where the money’s coming from.

And he goes, okay, keep doing it. And at one point I made the switch. I switched to a big machine shop, this trade tech and not the high school, but now an actual trade tech company that did large boring mills, big engine lays.

And we ended up, you know, it was a small family owned business. And we grew that company five and a half times through a recession, you know, where 9-11 hit, you know, there was a big recession in Milwaukee and probably around the entire United States for manufacturing and machine shops and that. And as companies were going out of business, we were kind of picking up the crumbs, right?

We were getting the work that was still available and we ended up growing exponentially. So from there I went to an engineering company. One of the companies that I was providing steel and weldments and the machining for ended up hiring me to be a marketing manager, you know, the sales manager.

And that was a lot of fun. I learned a ton at that company.

[13:59] Nick Goellner: What was that company where you were the marketing and sales manager?

[14:02] Mike Gamache: Yeah, Cornerstone Design. And that company’s not around anymore. We actually, the owner was a great guy and he ended up with some health issues and he needed to close the shop and get a full-time job where he had really good insurance and things like that.

And the stress, it was really about the stress level.

[14:19] Speaker 7: Yeah.

[14:19] Mike Gamache: You know, because, I mean, being in any type of manufacturing environment, I mean, the ups and the downs through a job shop environment, you know, where’s the next job coming from? Pretty stressful, I would say. And I jumped full, you know, from being at a small company and helping them close it down.

At some point I became the vice president of the company. I mean, I’m just throwing that out there.

[14:44] Speaker 7: Kind of a big deal. Mike Gamache: That was a big deal, you know.

[14:48] Eric Nekich: I wish we had video because the way he said that was so funny. I’m just glad you gave us like the point of reference because it was like a moment in time. Because when you said recession, I wasn’t sure if maybe you were talking about the Carter administration.

I was like, what decade are we in right now? Which one? This guy’s been around a long time.

[15:07] Nick Goellner: You always joke about like when you meet a sales guy and the first thing he says is like, well, I’ve been in this industry for 47 years or whatever. The first thing. Eric Nekich: Oh, yeah. When you open with that. Yeah. Mike Gamache: So right. Well, how much longer are you going to be around? Well, I’m a young, I’m a young, you know, experienced person in the industry, I guess. Nick Goellner: Okay. Mike Gamache: I still have plenty of life left. Nick Goellner: Where are we at in the story now? Cornerstone.

[15:30] Mike Gamache: So Cornerstone, I did become the vice president. I, you know, one of the big things I’m pretty proud of is I was able to find some really good talent. And I brought some people in that made a big difference in the company.

And then that group, when we were closing down the company, we literally on a Saturday afternoon, Paul comes in, he was the owner at the time and he’s crying and he’s got to close down his company and let, you know, 20 people go, you know? And it was a big announcement, but you know, it was, it was myself and the engineering manager that I hired and a couple of the really great engineers that we brought on. And then, you know, Eric Ditloff.

Oh yeah. From the machine shop.

[16:11] Nick Goellner: Yeah, he’s great. Mike Gamache: He’s still with us today, you know, and has, we’ve been working together since 2022, 23. Nick Goellner: So some of those, those 20 casualties of that business folding up where they all moved to the same place or some of them moved to the same place?

[16:27] Mike Gamache: So some of them, yeah. I think there was six of us that actually on that Monday morning started up a version instead of Cornerstone design, we became a custom design lean manufacturing systems. I mean, a big stretch.

It was CDLMS. CDLMS, which eventually became GammaShade Systems when I bought out my partner about four years into a 12 year stay in the industry. And we grew from eight employees or six employees really to start. And we brought in another up to 24 employees total.

And we grew from 8,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet. And then at that time I was kind of knowledgeable enough to say, you know what? I’m only as good as my next job.

And I didn’t see that next job coming. So being a business owner, you’re marketing, you’re doing all this stuff. And then eventually I sold the business looking for an investor.

I sold the company to a MetalCraft of Mayville said, yeah, we really want to get into automation. We love your company. We love what you did here.

But we’re not investors. We’re buyers. So they said, well, would you let us buy your company and then come work for you?

[17:43] Nick Goellner: Oh, cool. So they were like, it was a vertical integration play for them. We’re going to need so much automation in our company.

We might as well buy an automation company.

[17:50] Mike Gamache: And they are investing in five, maybe $10 million a year in automation to build their company. And a little bit of all MetalCraft.

[18:00] Nick Goellner: Yeah. Yeah, please. Yeah.

I mean, that’s got to be some sort of a monster enterprise to be investing that much in automation every single year.

[18:07] Mike Gamache: Big company. Our cash cow product line is Skag. Zero turn lawnmowers, number one in the industry.

In order to keep profitability up and cost down, they’ve been doing that.

[18:19] Nick Goellner: So Skag, I’ve kind of like vaguely heard of the brand. How are they? My first thought is like Toro or some of these names you see like John Deere or something like that.

So Skag, what kind of category is?

[18:32] Mike Gamache: The differentiating thing, they’re an industrial lawnmower, right? Really built, a little more expensive. I would say a premium product that if you’re going to be in a landscaping business or you’re a military, big complexes are running Skag lawnmowers for sure. Nick Goellner: What about like golf courses and stuff like that? Mike Gamache: We don’t really have the… Nick Goellner: That’s a niche.

[19:00] Mike Gamache: Yeah, that’s a whole nother huge… You know, we don’t have the… To go out on the greens and make them…

Yeah, they’re like perfect.

[19:09] Nick Goellner: I should have played more golf this year. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. That’s what you pulled.

Yeah, I’m actually just going to leave this podcast and go get another round. I tell the story and you’re like, I should really golf more. I’ve just been working too much.

Okay, so give us an idea like how many units of Skag lawnmowers are being produced every…

[19:28] Mike Gamache: The number I heard was 125,000. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I mean, you’re talking ride on, sit on, and walk behind mowers.

We have numerous facilities throughout Wisconsin. And yeah, I mean, and we’re as a small automation division where the automation group, MetalCraft automation group division of MetalCraft, we get to help them with… Like I said, we were doing robotic welding.

I mean, the company’s got 80 plus robotic welding cells.

[19:57] Nick Goellner: Wow. Mike Gamache: Presses for bending up steel. We have robotic forming systems that we’ve developed internally. So we get this really cool opportunity to spend the mothership’s money. Nick Goellner: Well, and then ultimately, like imagine doing all that work without what you’ve implemented. How much more would it cost them? I’m sure you have to build a business case and some sort of ROI study.

[20:21] Mike Gamache: Every time, right? I mean, we’re not just spending money to spend money. I mean, MetalCraft’s an organization that’s got to be fiscally responsible, right?

So we’re doing the ROI studies. We got to find the right projects. And then once we find the right project based on the need or a strategic conviction, then we have to put the dollars behind it, put the numbers, study it, collect the data, report back to upper management and say, why do we want to do this?

[20:48] Nick Goellner: Yeah, I think that this is something that the audience can really take away. So like your team, how many members of the automation group? Mike Gamache: There’s 30 to 35.

[20:57] Nick Goellner: And you said find the project. So do you have people who are just observing production and figuring out where to automate? Or are those ideas for automation brought to you and say, hey, we think we should automate here?

What do you guys think? How does that process work?

[21:11] Mike Gamache: Yeah, I think there’s a little bit of both. I mean, because we have different divisions and you have division managers that are looking for ways to improve. And they might call us up and say, hey, you know, we’re thinking of doing this, you know, and then we would put together a case study for them.

But, you know, we did absorb a company. It was a plastics division that we now do rotational molding. And it was one that I’m pretty proud of myself.

I got to go in there and look at the lay of the land as the current state and then do a future state kind of here’s what we could and should be doing. And really found $450,000 plus a year in savings just in rearranging the furniture. Just straight to the bottom.

I mean, literally just being more lean, really.

[21:59] Speaker 7: Yeah, wow. Mike Gamache: Right. But it also gave us an opportunity to spend some money on a milling robot. You know, put a milling spindle on the end of our six-axis robot and cut out holes and the rotational molded units that go into the process. Nick Goellner: That’s so cool. It reminds me of one of our best customers is a company called PushCorp. You might be familiar. Mike Gamache: Yeah, yeah.

[22:19] Nick Goellner: Yeah. So, like, we help them with the spindles that go on the end of those robot arms. But it’s a super fun company to work with because the stuff they’re doing is like, you know, essentially.

And they were on Lights Out with me and Caleb. But they’re, like, mimicking what the human brain and nervous system does as far as force feedback on, like, maybe chamfering or whatever. You know, it’s pretty cool.

Or polishing or, you know, some of these things that would normally be, like, a manual task, not a CNC task. And they’ve got it done in robotics.

[22:47] Mike Gamache: Some of the toughest stuff to do is polishing and material removal and, you know, with a robot or anything with the casting environment, right? I mean, how do you automate the guy that’s, you know, picking up a casting and just grinding it, you know, literally holding it up against a sanding belt or grinding wheel?

[23:09] Eric Nekich: Yeah. It’s honestly phenomenal. You know, obviously, we’re going to have some questions for you today.

We ask the hard-hitting questions of this podcast. But what processes should our listeners be automating? Like, is there a low-hanging fruit that they should be going after?

[23:25] Mike Gamache: Yeah. I mean, any company is making money, you know, with particular products or services, right? I guess the biggest thing is where’s your focus?

You know, what’s the cash cow in your business that you can continue? You’re already trying to improve it. That continuous improvement, those efforts go into how are you approaching and looking at it?

Are you really going out on the floor and seeing the day-to-day activities and really gathering the information you need to go after it? You know, so you’re looking for the cash cow. You’re looking for a mature process.

You know, we used to get all the time, hey, we’re thinking of doing this and we need some automation that’s going to help us figure this whole thing out. Well, no. You need to really have a manual process that’s really fine-tuned and then look to automate it.

Don’t invent something. Don’t invent a process. You automate an existing process.

[24:26] Nick Goellner: Yeah, because it needs to be stable and studied and more predictable because, yeah, the automation doesn’t know how to make, like, on-the-fly adjustments the way people do. So, if you don’t have your process dialed in, you might be automating a huge disaster. Mike Gamache: And then even at that, I mean, if you’re going to try to automate something that’s touchy-feely, needs vision, I mean, expect, you know, you’ve got to look at how many people, you know, labor savings and everything else. The other side of it is, you know, a dangerous job, dirty job, you know, something that’s dull and repetitive that’s, you know, humans are just not showing up to work, right? You know, how do I get a robot to do something that we can’t feel that job, right?

[25:10] Nick Goellner: How many times— I like how you connected it to that. You hear all the time, usually in reference to the skills gap, like, why don’t people want to go into manufacturing? Why is there—or an interest gap is probably a better way to put it.

Well, because they feel, they perceive that the jobs are dull, dangerous, dirty. What’s the last one? Oh, dangerous, dirty.

[25:30] Mike Gamache: There’s another one. I can’t remember. Nick Goellner: But, like, basically a job that sucks, you know? And so, like, the solution to that is the automation. Automate that stuff. Speaker 7: Yeah.

[25:42] Nick Goellner: I’ve said a few times on this show, like, people are like, well, what if the robots take the people’s jobs? And I’m like, no, we should be more concerned about the people taking the robots’ jobs because no people want to do those jobs. And it’s not like a long-term growth potential in do this, like, open and close a door of a mill and reload a part for 10 years straight.

Right. You know, so it’s more like, well, look at the jobs that nobody would find fulfillment in. That is maybe dull, dangerous, dirty.

[26:09] Mike Gamache: And demanding. Nick Goellner: And demanding is the number four. Mike Gamache: Well, because, you know, physical strain, you know? Yeah, totally. If your injuries are up, you know, that’s a great place to look at automation, right?

[26:26] Speaker 6: Paul, tell me about your trip to Italy. I went there with the NTMA, and we got to tour SMW Autoblock. Two different facilities.

Absolutely blew me away. World-class, enormous places. I can’t even count how many machines there were, but so much automation.

One of the most incredible takeaways for me was the breadth of what they made. I did not know they made so many workholding products and automation products. And I loved watching a big chuck machine a little chuck.

So they were machining chucks in huge lathes. I thought that was super fun.

[26:56] Mike Payne: Yeah, you introduced them to me after you came back, and they’ve been to my shop. And the ideas they have to, like, breathe new life into some of my machines and the tools and the jobs that we’re running was just shocking.

[27:09] Nick Goellner: And then one of the coolest things is we’re bringing this new automated pallet delivery system, the Hennig Workflow, to market. And guess what the interface is? It’s SMW zero-point locators.

It’s really sweet.

[27:20] Mike Payne: We’re getting ready to get some of those. Nick Goellner: So how do people find SMW Autoblock to look through that massive catalog of products? Speaker 6: It’s smwautoblockblok.com. Nick Goellner: Yeah, get rid of that C. smwautoblockblok.com.

[27:39] Eric Nekich: So speaking of the 40s and, like, what you just pointed out, the one, like, physical strain demanding that would fall under. Let’s say, you know, you walk into a shop and it’s all mills and you’re looking at tending across everything, like, so there’s symmetry on what needs to be automated. But how would you prioritize?

Like, is everything data-driven or are there instances where you’re like, hey, those parts are bulky and heavy. We should start there.

[28:07] Mike Gamache: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I mean, every case study is going to be unique, right? Every company is making different parts.

There’s a crossover for sure. But, I mean, you really have to look at each individual case study, right? If I’m doing an assembly process and it starts, you know, with machining, you got materials and then you got machining and then you got some heat treating and you really have to look at, you know, where are my bottlenecks, right?

So we’re going to look for bottlenecks. We’re looking for areas where material is stacking up, right? But you don’t start at the beginning.

You have to start at the end of the process because making something really fast at the beginning is just going to stack something more up somewhere down the line faster and create even more waste, right?

[28:55] Nick Goellner: Yeah, you’re just piling on to what was your biggest problem.

[28:57] Mike Gamache: What was your biggest problem? So I would always start at the shipping dock and work my way upstream into a process, any process, and say, okay, well, where is the first bottleneck? Can I rearrange the furniture?

Use some lean Kaizen events, study the data, you know, start looking at is it a wore out machine that’s down a lot and we need to replace it? You know, is it something that we can add automation to? Or maybe I need a second piece of equipment.

Sure.

[29:31] Eric Nekich: So when you do that, I think a question that’s super important, especially for our listeners, is what are some common things that get in the way? You know, you start at the shipping dock, you’ve identified the bottlenecks, you’ve kind of ensured that fixing this particular process won’t create new bottlenecks. What are some common things that you see getting in the way?

[29:52] Mike Gamache: Yeah, it’s a good question. Again, it’s case study specific, I guess. A good example would be, I mean, and this is just literally a material handling thing.

I did a job out for Ackle, a million square foot facility. And they were just piling up these orders. They would go out and they had pickers going out to a million square foot facility, grabbing boxes for pens and pencils and papers and mouse and keyboards and anything that you would find at a Staples or, you know, any type of, just a store, right?

You know, or an office supply, right? They were just piling these things up and then they would have to sort through them again. Instead of going out and getting a order together and then packaging it up and shipping it, they literally would bring all this stuff to a main area and then have to sort through it.

It was just silly stuff.

[30:52] Eric Nekich: Yeah. Nick Goellner: So you sort it at the beginning and then you make a new mess and then you sort it. Instead of like what we do is kit jobs, we kit everything. Instead of opening a box of puzzle pieces that you figure out, you’re opening like a box of, okay, here’s exactly what you need for step one, then two, then three, then four, then five, and it’s clear and you’re not hunting for stuff. Mike Gamache: I would say, you know, another big thing that just came to mind is when you hear somebody say, like if you really study a process, you’re looking at it and you go, why did they do what they just did? And then you ask that question and they say, well, that’s just the way we’ve always done it. No, man, you should jump all over that. Eric Nekich: Yeah. Get some people fired up here at AME for sure. Mike Gamache: Yeah. Well, that’s just the way we’ve always done it. Well, why? Eric Nekich: Yeah. Mike Gamache: You know, and a lot of times it doesn’t make any sense.

[31:44] Eric Nekich: And a lot of times they won’t. We have a term for that. They’d say it’s reading the label from inside the jar, right?

Yeah. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes is miraculous.

[31:54] Mike Gamache: You know, one that I will say is there’s a value to seeing hundreds of different shops and varieties of different products and processes, thousands of different products and processes. And really what ends up happening is you get these kind of cluster processes, like in a specific industry that these guys are stuck with the same tools. But if they would look across the aisle into another industry, they might find something that’s going to help them.

But because they don’t leave the same four walls for 30, 40 years, these guys are grinding it out, right? Grinding it out every day. And they’re looking for solutions.

But you know what? Some sales guy will show up and they go, I don’t got time for that sales guy. It reminds me of the cartoon, right?

If the king is in front of his tent at the battle, you know, and they’re throwing rocks and sticks and the guy is showing up with a machine gun, the sales guy is like, hey, I got this Gatling gun right here. And the king is going, I don’t have time for that sales guy. I’m in a battle.

I’m in the middle of a battle right here.

[33:03] Eric Nekich: Yeah, no, it’s so good. He says, as he weeps, we’ve always done it. So good.

You know, it’s great that you bring that up. So now, like, the next stage, right? How do I want to phrase this?

Yeah, okay, so we’ll edit that out, back this up. Okay, so three, two, one. So yeah, I mean, those are some things that I think get in the way, maybe not just on automation.

I mean, a lot of system and process improvements that we talk about on the Whites Out podcast, like, it seems like the same things always get in the way, right?

[33:36] Nick Goellner: Yeah, and I think you hit on it, and even the words you used, like, you need a lean foundation. You need a foundation in, like, lean continuous improvement if you want to be, like, convincing people to automate, because you need to back it up with, like, real flow and real science and real best practices that might have nothing to do with, like, a robot or anything like that.

[33:56] Eric Nekich: You know, it’s been a unique time in our industry as the adoption rate for, you know, especially tending automation goes up year over year, and we’ve seen some fads kind of come and go. I remember this huge fad with Cobots. I specifically remember a point in my career being in shops and seeing more Cobots still in the boxes they shipped in than actually on machine tools.

So when these systems go in, what are, you know, is there any symmetry? I mean, are there any common reasons for why they fail or they don’t deliver the ROI that people imagine they’re going to get?

[34:32] Mike Gamache: Yeah, 100%. You know, being on the, you know, the service side, let’s say, and the design and build side, and going out and hearing, you know, you talk to these customers and they say, you know, here’s why we want to buy a robot. And then you really have to ask the question of, you know, what is this going to do for you?

Cobots, I think, because of that fad, I think it was a big buzzword, and these upper management guys would go to these trade shows and they’d see all these Cobots, and then they’d buy one. And then they bring it in and they give it to their engineers and go, figure out where we’re going to use this thing. Right?

Yeah.

[35:12] Speaker 7: The old Gary method. Yeah.

[35:15] Mike Gamache: It’s the intern, you know, let’s put the intern on this one. You know, kid right out of school, hey, you know what? He’ll love this robot thing, you know?

So they don’t find the right application in which to then buy the right automation to solve the right problem. Right? They’re just trying to be cool with a robot, you know?

Yeah.

[35:38] Nick Goellner: And that’s what we mean. Like, so we told this four-part series about this guy who just wanted to be like this cool shop down the street and bought robots instead of, like, having a purpose for each piece of equipment. And that’s the Gary method, you know?

[35:51] Eric Nekich: Or even like a vision, right? Yeah, the Gary method. He was the character in that story.

Yeah. But even like having a vision, right? Having a more strategic plan is what I’m hearing, Mike, when it comes to rolling out automation on the shop floor.

[36:06] Mike Gamache: You definitely have to define a project, right? I mean, defining the project by gathering the data and really knowing what you’re after and what the goals are, right? I mean, hey, what am I going to get out of this, right?

And the number one thing should be, am I going to be able to make more product that my customers are going to buy from me? Are you growing your business? Are you trying to keep up?

Are you starting into a new product line that you’ve got to define those processes, and then once you find an area where you’re saying, man, we need some help over here, I either got to throw more people at it, which is getting harder and harder to find, right? Or I’m going to make the strategic conviction, right?

[36:48] Nick Goellner: I like that word a lot.

[36:49] Mike Gamache: That strategic conviction. We use it a lot. And it’s about, I use the analogy, like, Ford wasn’t built on a two-year payback.

Ford Motor Company wasn’t built on a two-year payback. They knew what their goal was, and they knew that if they were going to get there someday, they needed to invest in the long term. And I think you find a lot of companies that are so short-term minded that they really get impatient too, right?

So we talk about getting that cobot and then letting Gary or the intern, you know, go out there and make something happen with it. And then when the results aren’t there, they just say, all right, you know.

[37:31] Nick Goellner: Robotics don’t work. Mike Gamache: Robotics don’t work. Nick Goellner: Email does not work because the first time I tried it, it did not work.

[37:40] Mike Gamache: You know, and the other, the thing that really holds companies back is fear, right? You know, once you have that bad experience, you know, then it becomes this bear, right? This big, expensive automation slash robotics, right?

The bear.

[37:55] Nick Goellner: I like the start with a goal thing, you know, make sure you know what, you know, start with the end in mind, why you’re doing everything. Mike Gamache: Why are you doing it? Nick Goellner: Because then the fear becomes like, well, how do we achieve this goal without it? You know, and instead of like, oh, I’m afraid that like this experiment I tried failed. Eric Nekich: The cost of inaction is far more terrifying.

[38:14] Nick Goellner: Yeah, exactly. Like we still have to hit this goal. And so like if something didn’t work, we have to solve for that and figure out what is going to work instead of like, well, we tried something and it failed.

And I’m afraid of the results of that failure. Be afraid of like not being on track towards hitting that goal.

[38:31] Mike Gamache: I was, you know, and, and it was, it’s funny to me because like being having done robotics for 20 plus, I mean, 25 years, but it’s like, I thought everybody was going to start buying robots back 25 years ago. And you would be amazed at how many people just push back on that for years and years and years. And you can still go on to shops today that are doing it, you know, the same way they’ve been doing it for 50 plus years.

Well, yeah, Mike, cause they’ve always been doing it that way.

[39:02] Nick Goellner: Well, you find something that works. It maybe doesn’t work as efficiently as it should, but you’re like, well, I know it works. At least I can trust that this gets something out the door, you know?

And I think people like find that’s their little blankie.

[39:16] Mike Gamache: Well, it becomes a culture. Nick Goellner: Yeah.

[39:18] Mike Gamache: You know what? And really what ends up happening too is it needs to come from the top down. If you have a really bright young mind or just a, somebody who’s really enthusiastic about making continuous improvement out on the shop floor and they call you in to make some improvements, if you don’t have upper management on board, that’s it’s going nowhere.

Yeah. So you get a lot of projects that are just crushed on the shop floor level.

[39:47] Nick Goellner: But I think the flip side of that, we’ve already talked about too, you might have top management who’s like, we need robotics cause that’s the future of the industry. They buy a bunch and they don’t have the buy in from their team. So like, like Eric, you were saying, you know, there’s all these robots sitting in crates that you remember. Speaker 7: Yeah. Nick Goellner: Someone thought that was a good idea. Someone with purchasing power, probably top management. Speaker 7: Yeah.

[40:06] Nick Goellner: And then, but they didn’t have that like shared goal that they agreed. Right. Their whole team, like we’re going to achieve this and we think this is how, and so like it just sat in the crate.

It just dies on the vine.

[40:17] Eric Nekich: And I think something valuable, Mike, that you pointed out about the goal is the goal can match your corporate needs. So many times companies kind of get in like a silo when they think about automation. And then they, they think about skills gap, you know, they instantly think about a staffing scenario where it’s like, this could be solving a lead time challenge.

This could be solving a profitability, a quality. I mean, there’s so yeah, set the goal and hold yourself accountable to that goal.

[40:41] Mike Gamache: What I love in the machine tool industry, specifically machining and fabricating things like that. I mean, some of the products that are available today, for one, a CNC machine is automation, right? Sure.

Above and beyond a manual mill and drilling and all that. Right. So that’s a huge leap, but then you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this machine and then you run it eight hours and then you have one machinist, maybe running three of those machines.

So then the machine’s really running four hours a day of spindle on time. And what a robot or an automated system added to a CNC machine can do for you. We’ve got customers that are getting 22, 23 hours worth of unattended machine time for 30 minutes a day worth of labor.

You know what, that’s how drastically that is changing their environment and their ability to produce, fulfill orders, make their customers happy, you know, reduce costs.

[41:43] Nick Goellner: Relax on the weekends. Mike Gamache: Relax, you know. Nick Goellner: Like that, like stuff that people don’t think about. Mike Gamache: Running nights and weekends. Who loves creating a second and a third shift and running 24 seven on the weekends. Yeah. Nick Goellner: I mean, they love the shop working 24 seven, but not people. Mike Gamache: Yeah. Nick Goellner: You know, I mean, so like we were in Switzerland, Eric and I, we were at one of our partners company called Triag Swiss modular. Speaker 7: We were there for work.

[42:08] Nick Goellner: Yeah. There’s this Matsura with a pallet pool. And I asked the owner, his name’s Beat.

I said, yeah, like how often does that machine run? And he’s like, like six days a week. And I was like, well, how many hours?

He’s like, like the day, like the whole time. And so he’s like, we don’t, we turn all the machines off on Sundays, but basically it runs like almost 24 hours a day, six days a week. And I said, for how long?

And he said, for, I don’t know, the last 15 years. So how do you compete when you’re in Switzerland and you have the highest real estate costs for her industrial real estate, the highest labor rate. You have to take that out of the equation by having machines that never quit.

[42:44] Mike Gamache: And companies are doing that here in the United States. And those are the companies that are thriving. Oh yeah.

I mean, in that guy that’s sitting in his shop, that’s doing it the old way, you know, what’s going to happen to that guy? What’s going to happen to his employees?

[42:58] Nick Goellner: Either some company next door or some company overseas, whether it be Switzerland or Vietnam, where we just learned at the MT forecast has, we are 22.4 times more expensive for the average cost of labor than Vietnam. But you could get your butt kicked by someone with a more expensive labor rate if they’re running all the time and you’re running one third of it.

[43:19] Mike Gamache: I saw a report recently that just shocked me. And it was that China buys like 80% of all the robots. I mean, like they’re so far ahead of purchasing robots, the U S let’s put it this way, the U S now you would think, okay, Hey, you just, we’re going to send it overseas for that cheap labor.

And that China is just, they got billions of people and they’re doing everything with sticks and shovel, you know, and stones and go there and then you go there and you see that they’re like fully automated shops and they’ve got so many robots and they’re clean manufacturing facilities. And if we’re not going to be doing that here in the United States, how do we keep up? We don’t, if they’re doing it with cheap labor.

I mean, what does that tell you? Yeah, no, absolutely.

[44:05] Eric Nekich: So I would say, you know, one thing that I, a couple more questions for you, Mike, both of them I think are things that are super unique about you. And first is, you know, we get a lot of questions from our customer base, from our listener base and from like our sales team. And it is something I think you’re uniquely positioned with your experience to answer.

And that is, when should I be looking at a customized automation solution over like a prefabricated solution I can buy? And your choices now for prefabricated, or I would call them boxed automation solutions, right? Park it next to the mill and turn it on now.

I mean, more than ever, I think there’s a ton of stuff available. So are there any red flags with those systems that our listeners should really be conscientious of? So first, yeah.

So just, that was a long question. So customized. We expect a long answer that you have pre-memorized.

Customized versus prefabricated solution and any red flags maybe with a prefab solution they should really pay attention to.

[45:09] Mike Gamache: Yeah. You know, really, you know, going all the way back to defining the project and really understanding what your goals are, because you’ve got lean manufacturing that can do a lot for you. But then once you kind of leaned out everything and you still can then look and say, hmm, that’s a bottleneck.

Now you start attacking that one area and you say, okay, well, is it, again, is it an old piece of equipment that we have to update? Do we need two of them? We just don’t want to throw more people over there because it’s hard enough, right?

So in order to figure out what the process is that I’m looking to automate, is it going to be something I can buy? Yeah. Can I buy something that’s going to solve that problem?

If you do, then okay, how much is it? And you know, how fast can I pay it off, right? If it’s something that I can buy and then maybe modify a little bit by adding a robot to it, like a machining center with a robot tender, right?

That is, we know that that’s going to be huge for companies that are looking to improve productivity, but you know, even welding or finishing or whatever that process is, you know, can I buy something that’s semi-automated? Now semi-automated is going to be maybe less risk, less cost, but there’s still going to be labor involved. So your costs are going to be, you know, less cost to get into it, to buy what you need, but it’s going to still have more labor associated with it.

You know, and then again, you got to buy the right thing for the right process to really maximize your ROI. Now, if you’ve got something that you know, I mean, it is going to be around for the long haul, you know, again, I keep using a machining process, but you know, because machining is great from an ROI standpoint, you buy this machining center and you put automation on it and it can run 24 seven. I mean, who’s not going to do that?

A lot of people.

[47:06] Nick Goellner: I still like, I still don’t get it. Eric Nekich: I mean, really. Let’s shoot holes in that. Nick Goellner: No, I mean, it’s crazy though, because like I was telling you, if I was going to start a machine shop today, I’d buy a five axis mill with a pallet pool and just like literally never turn it off. Mike Gamache: Right. Nick Goellner: You would be in, you know, well, it’s, I know it’s the easier said than done, but yeah, well, it’s very possible. Mike Gamache: I guess I’m sidetracking here, but you know, if you have customers that see you investing in automation and in your future to make it so that you can make more of their parts quicker, faster, better quality, they’re more likely to give you more work and help you build your business to help them.

[47:49] Nick Goellner: So I like the point you made about start with like a standard product first and see if that can work because like we’re machine builders too at our company and when it’s a custom machine that you have to put, Eric knows, right? You have to put 4,000 engineering hours into something you’re going to make once. What does that do to the price of that equipment?

I mean, shoot, we know how hard it is to make a dollar on the machine builder side, so if you’re not getting paid for that custom one off project, then you’re going to, you’re going to be done. So you have to, you have to price it accordingly, whereas if you have a standard product that can solve a same or similar problem for a lot of customers, you can get that price down and be a little bit more competitive. It’s more accessible to the end customer.

So a lot of times people say like, Oh, I’m doing this. I need some sort of custom automation solution to solve for that. I need a custom automation solution to solve for that.

And it’s like, all right, I, are you sure? That’s a totally different ROI justification.

[48:47] Mike Gamache: Well, and I would say that the sticker shock is what really ends up killing a lot of those projects. But you know, again, it’s, do you have the ROI? You know, I would say that, you know, if you do have the ROI and finding something that’s fully automated, you know, if it’s an assembly process or whatever it is, your labor costs is going to go way down.

Those injuries are going to go way down. The repetitive motion, all that stuff goes way down. If you get the right automation to do the right job at the right price.

Yeah. I really think it, and it’s so hard. So many people like shortcut that whole process of like figuring out what the right thing to do is.

And then they just go out and they have this bad experience and then they robots don’t work. Yeah. You know, I’m afraid, I’m afraid of robot.

We tried that. Exactly. Literally.

I heard that last week, our company, it was a huge company too. We did, we won’t buy robots anymore because we had some bad experiences. Well, okay.

Well, would it, you know, how did that come about? Sure.

[49:53] Eric Nekich: Well, I, what a wealth of knowledge. And, and I knew that it would be, but you know, there’s something else that you do, Mike, that is unique. And that is your create holy moments campaign.

For those of you who think you might know Mike, you probably seen him at your local trade show, handing out these orange create holy moments bracelets. Mike is a proud and out loud Christian man. He doesn’t just hand out these, these wristbands.

He like, he lives this kind of create holy moments ideology. And I was hoping you could share a little bit with our audience, Mike.

[50:29] Mike Gamache: That’s exciting. Thanks for bringing it up because it is, we work to live sometimes, but really living the right life is what’s most important. And I think I’ve been a student of manufacturing, but on the side of, I’ve become more and more student of the Bible, you know, in Christ and reading different books.

And I really, I found this book by Matthew Kelly. It’s amazing. It’s called the biggest lie in the history of Christianity.

And it’s really about holiness. And when we think of holiness, we think of saints and it seems unattainable for just us mere human beings, right? How are we going to be holy?

Well, you know, it doesn’t take a complete lifestyle. It just takes one little holy moment at a time. And it’s just doing something nice for somebody, you know, paying it forward.

Right. I mean, but in this case, you know, Matthew Kelly calls it, how do we change the culture of today? We all kind of can look around and say, eh, things are a little screwed up here and there.

Right. I mean, there’s a lot of division. There’s a lot of infighting, but how do you change the world?

And you got to remember that Jesus Christ came at a time when the world was probably just as bad, if not worse than it is now.

[51:45] Nick Goellner: Yeah. Certainly.

[51:45] Mike Gamache: I mean, the Romans took over and they’re, you know, taking over land and going out and plundering and, you know, taking more land and, you know, the Jewish people, Jesus Christ was a Jew, right? And their whole culture was based on being enslaved and oppressed. And Jesus comes and he gives them this way out of this culture that was paganistic and very sinful.

We’re just, we’re fallen people. Right. But they had a bigger challenge back then than we have today because they were starting from scratch.

Jesus picked 12 guys and said, okay, go spread my word. And he created this church today that’s billions of people all over the world. But how did he do it?

Christianity was just love and doing nice things for people. You know, back in the day in Jesus’s time, I mean, you had widows and orphans were just discarded, right? If your, if your husband died and you had no other males in your family, I mean, you basically had to do whatever you had to do for money.

And Christianity was just this way of helping people that needed help by doing, you know, by loving them and doing nice things for them and bringing them into a community. And then that drew more and more people in, right? So as Christians, our goal today in this environment, how do we get back?

How do we grow the church to where it’s really meaningful and having a real positive impact on not only our lives, but on the lives of people around us? Hey, do something nice for somebody. Create a holy moment.

Create a holy moment. A life of those moments is a holy life, right? It’s an action.

[53:28] Eric Nekich: Yeah.

[53:28] Mike Gamache: You know, and that’s exactly it. You know, the saints weren’t perfect. They didn’t live perfect lives.

They just had really, they had the ability to create these amazing holy moments that changed people’s lives around them.

[53:43] Nick Goellner: Yeah. I think if, you know, obviously the three of us share the same faith and this isn’t necessarily a Christian podcast, but we’re not afraid to talk about it. And I think the, you know, you’re talking about, you know, creating these holy moments and you’re talking about like, how do we decide when to automate, when to like lean out a process and when to take this next step?

And it’s just, a lot of it is about discernment and discerning like, okay, when is the right time and how is the right time? And you need help for that discernment. A life of change, you know, a life of holy moments creates a holy life, right?

And then we talk about the change we try to put into a shop to make the throughput happen, to make a more efficient, more productive and get a better ROI. And that is just like a series of decisions as well. And the discernment required to make those decisions.

And I think, you know, the three of us are Christian dudes and we share our faith openly. And if you looked from the outside and said like, look at the church, look how they go after each other, look at how they attack each other, look at this mega pastor who fell off or this person who claims to be a Christian and did this. I think, you know, like we’re trying to create change as automators and, you know, technology implementers.

And, you know, people could look, say like, well, look at that time, the robot didn’t work at that time. Like that change that was, that they advocated for, it didn’t produce the right result. Sure.

You know? And so I think that’s sometimes what like the naysayers try to do to like, you know, people of faith or people who are trying to implement change in the world or in a shop. And I think it just comes back down to like discerning how to make the right decision and take the right step and being about that, you know, not just trying to sell someone automation.

Being intentional. Being about that. Like, so if, when you’re about automation, you’re not about, when you’re about automation, you’re not about selling robots.

You’re about like getting the result.

[55:33] Mike Gamache: It’s really about helping people, right? Great companies really take care of their employees. It’s a family environment and it sounds a little cliche, right?

Oh, we’re going to be this big, happy family. But I would say that really good leaders care and they care about the people and their environment and want their people to thrive, right?

[55:57] Nick Goellner: That’s how you get the adoption. Cause like when you’re about the Christian faith, it’s not about like reciting Bible verses and talking about what you did and what church you go to. It’s about like, like you mentioned orphans and widows.

And Jesus says in the Bible, like true religion is taking care of the orphans and the widows. It’s about the action behind it and right. And like the real, like being about that result that makes the world better.

So that’s to me how like you can connect the dots between what you’re trying to do for the community and the world around you and what you’re trying to do professionally, you know, you need to be about the result that makes everybody’s life better. Not just about, you know, pushing some sort of agenda that could be perceived as self-centered.

[56:39] Mike Gamache: and I love the way you brought that up, you know, the way you’re phrasing that or kind of building that, because when you think of automation and you think like it’s this big step you have to make. And when you think of holiness, it’s like this big step. How do I, do I have to become a saint?

And you know, how do I, you know, automation is this big thing and, and sainthood is this big thing, but you don’t have to be a saint. Take those baby steps and just one little moment at a time and really making it, making the right decision. I was in prison last night.

[57:13] Speaker 7: I was wondering why you were late.

[57:16] Mike Gamache: Whoa. Waukesha County Jail. I did prison ministry and those guys that are in there that are just looking for answers, right?

It’s what did they do? They made bad decisions that put them behind bars. So my whole message to these guys is start now and start making better decisions.

I mean, you’re not going to turn these guys into the, you know, you’re not going to change their whole life by talking to them for an hour, but you can plant a seed here and there that gets them thinking about it. And now they have lots of time to think about it. You know, they’re real.

Yes. And they’re in some more than others. I would tell you.

[57:58] Eric Nekich: Well, that’s, this is all a perfect segue. You know, we like to close out every episode with, you know, what are one to three things that our listening audience can start doing today to start moving in, you know, in some of the lights out direction to start moving towards better lead times, better profitability, whatever goal it is you’re searching for, Mike, what are those one of three things? Nick Goellner: Actually, I was reading some of the, some of your notes and from some of the documentation you had, and we talked about like all of these steps that you put in. Speaker 7: Right. Nick Goellner: So I think instead of just the three things we usually end with you, you kind of have like a, like a five-step process. And I think we touched on each of those steps, but like maybe just kind of like, in order of those five steps without going too deep into each one, like what are those kind of like, we talked about, okay, start with a goal.

[58:47] Mike Gamache: Absolutely. I mean, you got to know where you’re starting, right? So where are you today?

Yeah. You know, kind of mapping out your current state is really the first step, you know, and really understanding the processes and the whole value stream of your product line or services that you’re providing. Right.

So once you, I mean, you, I’m a big proponent of Toyota, the Toyota way, right?

[59:13] Nick Goellner: Required reading in our company.

[59:15] Mike Gamache: Required reading, right? I mean, in the way to go and really understand something is go and see, right? And so you have to spend time on the floor.

You can’t manage from an office or a spreadsheet somewhere, you know, or a spreadsheet, right? So you go out and then you document, you document the, all the steps of what people are doing and really understanding every step of the process. And then I take a lot of video, I watch it, you know, and then I’ll see something that just, you know, what did that person do right there?

Again, kind of then go back and ask the questions, right? Once you get everything kind of those questions answered and you really can understand the current state, then you look and you say, okay, what are my goals now to get to a future state? Right.

And then how am I going to get there? Is it as simple as doing some lean Kaizen events and some things like that, or then you start narrowing it down after you’ve done some lean and you’ve kind of gotten some of the waste out of the way, clean some things up, five, six, seven, eight S’s, right? Right.

There’s everything. They just keep adding more S’s to it, but shine some things up and then you go out and you look at ways to automate. I think automation is not just an incremental change, but can be a transformative, you know, exponential change for corporations that are willing to spend the time and the energy to find the right projects and apply the right technology.

So it’s going to be the right people, you know, the right equipment and the right strategy is going to get you the right results. Awesome. Yeah.

[1:00:56] Eric Nekich: So you heard it here, folks. Step one, what is your current state? Be honest with yourself, map it out.

Step two, set some goals, set some goals, have a plan, have a strategy, have a vision. Outstanding. Well, that’s going to be a wrap for this episode of the Lights Out podcast.

Huge, huge thanks to today’s guest, Mike Gamache for joining us on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone in your shop who’s ready to level up their automation game. You can find all our episodes plus extra content and resources at makingchips.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until next time, keep your spindles turning and your lights out. Thank you, Mike.

[1:01:38] Mike Payne: Hey, everybody. So if you’re listening to the, by the numbers, then I would assume you’re serious about growing your shop. If you’re serious about growing your shop, you need to be listening to Machine Shop Mastery hosted by my great friend, Paul Van Meter.

Paul dives into just real stories of manufacturing success. He talks with machine shop owners from all over the country that really share their stories. These are some of the most authentic stories you’ll hear of business leadership anywhere, much less just in our industry.

Sometimes these are emotional, inspirational, everything you could be looking for. Everybody knows that running a shop is not just about making parts. It’s about building a business that runs well.

And I think you can gain a lot of knowledge listening to Machine Shop Mastery. I encourage you to go find the show on your favorite podcast platform. You can find it makingchips.com and of course, follow along with him on LinkedIn. So go find Paul and Machine Shop Mastery and give it a listen.