Lights Out Lenses: Engineering, Quality & the Leadership Behind Automation (Part 2), Ep #41

[0:00] Hey folks, it’s Dave. I’m still not in this one either, so that’s two for two. I asked Nick about it and he said that the studio was at capacity and Eric said that my not being there was a vibe thing, so I’m just choosing to believe them and not look any further into it.

But here’s a quick recap if you skipped episode one, which to be fair, I also did. But Randall walked through how automation reshapes the whole business, not just the machine. PK showed how utilization and stable processes turn unused spindle time into output.

Feed the beast. Got it. Today’s the other half.

Nick and Eric are sitting down with Forrest on engineering and programming. They’re also talking with Scott on quality and systems. Forrest’s whole point is standardization.

If the process isn’t predictable and repeatable, automation falls apart fast. Scott closes the loop on inspection and tolerances because speed means nothing if you can’t trust the parts coming out. Enjoy this episode.

I’ll be sitting at Tim Hortons with a nice hot coffee because apparently I’ve got some free time. Thanks everyone. Well, Nick, I think that that was such a cool and important exercise, right? We talked to operations, we’ve talked to production, and now it’s like, let’s bring in Forrest.

He is advanced machine and fabrications director of engineering and programming because you and I both know what a vital role that plays in making all of this possible. Yeah. You know, these guys are so important and so necessary and they’re so challenging to deal with because they’re like asking the hardest questions that you’re like, oh gosh, I knew someone was gonna go there.

I knew someone was gonna ask us like chapter 50 of the calculus book that I never got to. So that’s Forrest and I love the guy and excited to introduce him. So Forrest, welcome.

[2:03] Yeah. Welcome Forrest. And I just want to open with a story that kind of backs up what Nick was saying.

If you recall, when we were talking to you about machine tool monitoring, you went pretty deep in the weeds on us sales guys. We had to like remote in the guys that actually built the software to get you the answers you need. So I’m with Nick.

Welcome, Forrest. Can’t wait to talk to you. I’ll give some detail to that story.

So we’re we’re at lunch together because we had lunch before we had our meeting. And then we drove to that. That’s how we did it.

Right. We had lunch and then we drove over to the and so like between lunch and arriving, it was only about 10 minutes away. I get on the phone and I was like, Cameron, who’s like our he’s our super technical guy.

I I’m not going to know. So welcome, Forrest. Yeah, great to have you on.

And, you know, same with Randall and PK. Why don’t you start by just giving us telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this crazy business? Well, when I first started, I was welding and then I jumped over onto some machines and realized that I could hit a button and have it do and make the part that I wanted rather than having a blacksmith and be hot and burnt and all of that. CNC machining head first and have never looked back.

So that’s kind of how my story started on getting into the machining industry. So that’s great. That’s great.

So director of engineering and programming. That’s the official title. Yes.

And underneath me, I have the quoting and estimating team. I have the quality planning, CMM programming and all of the CNC programming. So we kind of lump all that together.

And one of the good things we did here years ago, probably about seven, eight years ago is we put quality planning and the CNC programming in the same office. So as we’re doing that quality plan on how we’re going to check the parts and figure out how to inspect them, we’re programming them at the same time. So those guys could bounce and feed off of each other.

And if we need to make a CMM fixture for a specific part or do something like that, then they’re communicating and collaborating it. So when the PK and Randall get those parts, they’re ready to go. Once they hit the floor, they’re ready to rock and there’s no looking back.

So I love that. You know, we do cue rocks here where, you know, no matter what business unit you’re in just like that, you’ve got all the stakeholders in the same room. So when it moves to the next point, we have a term for it, but basically you’re not sending something half finished downstream, you know what I mean? Or, you know, you got someone who’s a cubicle away from a different function of the business.

And we use high speed voice technology to solve problems quickly, which is just talking to the person next to you instead of waiting for someone to get an email that’s stuck in their queue. And when we say cue rock, we say quick response office sell. So you’ve got all these stakeholders that have maybe a different function, but they’re all sitting together so that we can respond quickly to our customers.

[5:19] So Forrest, you gave a pretty long list of some pretty important people in departments that kind of fall under your umbrella. Do you have a 32 hour day and the rest of us just have 24? I’m curious what a day in the life of Forrest looks like because that is, that’s a lot of responsibility, sir. What I have is I have a really good team underneath me that works well with not a ton of micromanaging or direction.

I can pretty well give them a task and then I know and I trust that my team is going to go get that done. And so it’s just high level managing at that point in time, just here, I need you working on this, you working on this and let them go to work and I’ll come back and look at the end result and approve or disapprove or kind of nudge them while they’re halfway through and say, well, I’d probably go this way and get them to go that way. So it works out pretty well.

And being at the estimating team is in there with the CMM programmers. Also it’s, we know how long it’s going to take to make parts. We know where to put our parts on what machines, but sometimes it’s good to have one of my estimators turn them CNC guy and be like, how would you hold this part on the final operation? And be able to give that input and be like, do we have gauges to check this thing? And like I said, it’s everybody in the same office right there working together as a team and helping each other out.

So it’s really a team sport over there in our department with my guys. I love that. And before kind of we get into your journey, before, during and after the implementation of automation at Advanced Machine and Fabricating, there’s something I really want to ask you.

So PK talked about how important part selection was, right? But every shop I’ve ever been in over my career in manufacturing, you constantly hear about the engineering team, right? Programming and designing for manufacturability. And I think that when we’re looking at taking that one step further into manufacturing automatically, like how, is that a challenge or are you doing things differently now with these, you know, PK’s selected the parts he thinks are great for producing automatically. How is that influencing how you’re engineering, how you’re programming? Well, there’s, I’m sure you guys talk about this a lot, but the main things that go into automation are tooling, fixturing, material, and the program.

And those are the four main components you’ve got to have. So if you’re cutting a bunch of Inconel or Monel and hard materials, really tight tolerance, like PK’s talked about, turning that loose, you have to have your tool breakage detection and all the tool life and tool studies done before you can just turn that loose all the time. So if I’ve got a bunch of aluminum parts with, you know, plus or minus 10 or plus or minus five, I know I can rip those loose a lot better.

And then part of the selection is also looking at cycle time and quantities. So if I’m only going to get a five piece order in there, you know, 10 minutes cycle times, I’m going to put those on a little, another machine and not try to automate that because it’s going to take longer for Pete to get to and from shuffling pallets than it is to actually run the cycle time on those parts. So we try to look for target parts that we know that can run and we have good tool studies on them and standardization is all I can really, that’s what I would want to pound home to anybody listening out there is standardization as much as possible.

Standardize your tool packages, standardize your fixturing. If I can use the same size material on 12 different parts on a part family, then that’s going to be great to go in there. Even though it’s a high mix, low volume, you’re standardized, you’re going on your dovetails or your zero point system, and you can really get a lot of throughput doing that kind of stuff.

And that’s standardization. I can’t say it enough, you know? Yeah, we try. I mean, we try in every episode to say it.

But what’s cool about this one is we’re saying that same thing through all these different lenses. You know, Randall was talking about standards, PK was talking about standards, you’re talking about standards, but yours are often like standards in code or standards with the tool itself or standards with the fixtures itself. And it’s so important to figure out, OK, like, where can we find these common denominators and then just standardize across it? How was it before, though, like before Pistol Pete, where you kind of like, all right, I got a program that works for this part and we’ll just toss it up there and we’ll have this guy run this job at this time because he’s done it before.

[9:58] And maybe was it true or is it fair to say that you didn’t think as much about standardization prior to the automation? Yeah, we didn’t try to standardize as much. We looked at more individual parts, not family groups. How can I do more things the same? Really didn’t have a good grasp on tool studies and understanding how that affects and using like machines with redundant tools.

And, you know, we kind of really stepped up our game when we had to go into the FASTM system or the, you know, this automated cell and let Pete kind of direct traffic. You know, it was PK was more hands on. This job goes on this machine on this day and was really having to stay managed that hard.

Now you can say these 10 jobs are going to go in automation and we’re going to let it pick which one it wants to run because I have standardized tools in there and it doesn’t matter which part it wants. It’s going to grab one. If a tool is broken and it hits the tool broken detection and it detects it, it’ll shuttle that paddle out looking for what tools it does have that it can run and it’ll grab the next part and start running something completely different because we’ve got it set up that way.

So that’s so cool. If you’re looking to increase your spindle uptime without adding any head count, check out the Hennig workflow automation system. I’ve seen it.

I love it. It’s a compact automated pallet delivery solution that lets you work ahead of your machine. So your shop never stops.

You can load up to 40 pallets with material, fixtures, programs, and just let the workflow cook. The Hennig workflow is designed for high mix machining works with a wide range of machines, and even with 125 pound payload on top of a 300 millimeter pallet, yet still takes up less space than most competitors pallet automation system. That means more production, fewer manual changeovers, really just a practical path to high profit lights out machining.

Learn more about Hennig workflow by visiting hennigworldwide.com slash workflow. Let’s go real technical because you’re the real technical one here on the group and tell us exactly how Pistol Pete thinks. I mean, he is not a I am robot, I do this type guy.

I mean, Pistol Pete’s a smart guy. And you were just describing a little bit of what you shared when we had that tour, but he’s making decisions that are really impressive for automation. Can you explain kind of like how that whole system, the fast loop system works and kind of just break it down for us as you talked about those categories, programs, tools, fixtures, material? Yeah, so when I load a part into our system, the first thing I have to do is tell it what fixture that part goes on.

So I create fixture and then I create the part level. So I do all the creating of that and then PK feeds it with the work orders and tells it when to run. And so what Pete’s looking for is he’s looking for a pallet with that fixture on it first.

Do I have something Is there material on this belt? Yes. And then it’s flashing the tool magazines on both those machines to see if it has enough tool life to make that part. And then it’s going to send it in there.

So what that does for us is say we have 250 minutes of cut time on a five flute in mill that’s cutting, say, titanium or six flute cutting titanium. It’s going to look in the machine and how much tool life it has left. So if I’ve got a program that needs 100 minutes of cut time left, it’ll run two of those parts on a 250 minute tool.

And now it’s like, okay, I only have 50 minutes left on this tool. Is there a part in the system right now that has less than 50 minutes? Yep, there’s one that has 40. We’re going to run it next on, say, our first operation.

And it’s, it’s juggling, do I have the fixture in there? And then do I have enough tool life in that machine? So it might shuttle part X, op one, op one, op two, and then it goes to part Y, op three, or whatever is loaded in there so that it can get the best utilization out of your tools and tool life and the best you on your schedule. Because you’re also looking at when PK put those orders in there, what’s due and what day and what time and it’s going to try to prioritize due date and get all that done. So it’s really optimizes everything from tools to due dates and all of that all combined.

So that is so cool. I couldn’t do that with my pistol feet is smarter than Eric Nekkich. And I want the world to know, chisel that in stone.

So it’s just crazy how it goes through like, and that’s a testament to the software too. You know, people think like, there’s so many misconceptions about what automation is capable of. And of course, you did just like, you know, plug it in and 10 minutes later, it’s doing all of that.

You need guys like Forrest to like train it. So obviously Forrest, you know, talking about implementing automation, obviously you guys just flipped a switch and all of that awesomeness started, right? No way. So you run into your bottlenecks, right? You got to go and pitch pointed out.

So that’s why I was saying standardization, because if I want to put parts in there, I’ve got to have fixtures, load those parts. And you got 10 jobs that need to run and you got to have fixtures for all those jobs. And then you got to start with redundant fixturing and making sure that I can have three fixtures in there.

That way guys can load parts up, go home, and then it’ll run through the night or have 10 fixtures of 10 different parts loaded, which starts to put Randall in a bottleneck because he’s got to order all this material and have it all stacked out there. And then PK’s got to have room to put all the material out there and stage it all. So it’s, it just keeps on flowing back up to the next thing and the next thing.

[16:06] Yeah, man, just quite the equation. And when we were there, it was like, hey, Forrest, you know, one all falls under your domain and you’re like, pretty much anything that has anything to do with code. And so there’s a lot of programming and coding and math and figuring out exactly how it should work.

But I mean, you’re programming, but you’re also designing these fixtures too, right? You or your team. So you’re wearing a few programming machines, designing fixtures, you know, planning some of the tooling strategies too with all this redundancy and redundant fixtures, redundant tooling. What would you say your biggest challenge is? Like the thing that keeps you up at night and stresses you out as you guys are running a pretty impressive, pretty automated shop.

[16:56] PK telling me he wants more. We need more, we need more fixtures. We need more to come on.

We need more programs and just feeding the beat. Who gives you more headaches? Pistol Pete or PK? Pete tries to make life easier. PK tells us to feed him more.

He’s hungry. So I will tell you this, that’s a phenomenal segue, I think, into, you know, what is this journey unlocked for you, Forrest, professionally, personally, you know? Personally, it’s, I’ve made some brothers, you know, with PK and Randall and Scott, you know, we’re like a family up here. We’re in the trenches every day, battling to try to do better for the company, do better for everybody’s families out on the floor and in the offices alike and just trying to make things better for everybody.

So I’ve got the extended family, just hit my work anniversary of 11 years being at this company. And a lot of good things through the years together. And that’s probably my personal thing.

[18:15] Um, professionally, just learning and be able to learn all the time, you know, you get automation and you learn about more about the tooling and the tool paths and we’ve got a new ERP system. So I had to learn all of that. If you’re not moving with the technology in this industry, you’re not moving, you’re going backwards.

You’re just not going to go anywhere. So I’m always trying to learn new things, like mainly softwares, but there’s hardware and all kinds of techniques and you know what, you know, so get out there and meet other people, talk to other people in the industry and you will continue to grow and get better all the time. Man, that’s phenomenal Forrest.

I can’t thank you enough for your time. So cool to hear your perspective, you know, and I think it’s something that we probably haven’t captured enough on this podcast, right? Like the engineering, the programming aspect of the automation journey. So really valuable input.

Before you go, can you give us your quick rating on like your level of chaos and stress and turmoil before all the automation was implemented and then compare it to now? Related to automation, not PK’s demand for more, more, more. Well, the stress level, like you said earlier, it’s different. The stress changes from one stress to another stress, but automation, when you first get into it, it increases your stress level because you’re trying to figure out how to feed this thing and keep it going, ROIs, all of those things that you’re trying to implement.

But after you get it cruising and selling for a while, now your stress comes on getting more work to feed it. But that’s a good problem to have is keeping getting more work. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, that’s the recipe for growth. And then you mentioned all of the learning that it unlocks professionally. You know, I always say we connect learning to earning in this industry.

You get more skills, you have a better career. And yeah, thank you for joining us. It’s a perfect segue to the guy who signed all the checks, Mr. Shortus himself.

So thanks, Forrest. All right, shop owners, listen up here. I think all of us know we are in one of the most capital intensive businesses there is, and margins are tight and we’re always fighting issues.

And then when we make money, what do we do with it? Stock markets up and down all over the place. Well, I get asked a lot about where can I invest my money? I’m a firm believer as business owners, you’ve got to invest in yourself first. You need to reinvest capital into yourself.

So the number one thing that I’ve done in this industry investing was ProShop ERP. We’ve been using ProShop since 2018, and my payback literally was within weeks. With their per user based pricing, I knew when I made the decision, I only needed to save my workers roughly one hour per month.

We saw within the first week, we were saving multiple hours per day. That type of ROI just doesn’t come along very often. Outside of that, the real value has been able to quickly implement best practices across my entire shop from the time we get an order to the time we ship it, scaling my business with confidence, being able to go out and know that I can deliver on my promise to deliver quality parts to my customer, and then gaining insights into every job, employee, machine, and every process in our business to really drive efficiency and look for opportunities for improvement.

That’s where the real value in your business drives. So visit ProShopERP.com, book a demo and start realizing ROI today. That’s ProShopERP.com. Look who we have here.

The man of the hour. Yeah. Scott, how are you? Great.

Great, guys. Really appreciate this opportunity. Now, this has been phenomenal, and so here’s what I want to open with, okay? Usually our listeners, they want to know, you know, KUKA robot, FASTOM’s pallet system, right? What type of monitoring you’re using.

But my gut tells me that after this episode, they’re going to want to know what manufacturing combine you use to find amazing people like this. Because, I mean, these guys are coming in and using words like feeding the beast, right? Ripping, rocking and rolling. We want more, more, more, more, more.

And then on top of that, they’re talking about brotherhood and family. And it’s like those two just aren’t usually used in the same sentence. So great to have you on.

Super impressed with your team. And please introduce yourself for our listeners. And then again, yeah, if you want to release the name of that combine you use, I’m sure the industry wants to know.

[23:07] These are my draft picks. I’m a little scared. No, I’m extremely proud of my team, my organization, our family.

It’s great to have brothers to go after these challenges in this industry and can’t do it without them. And I told them that yesterday, you know, I can’t do this without you, you know? And I’ve been trying to do it for a long, long time. And by the grace of God, we’re here.

So keep on going. Man, that’s so good. And that culture that you’ve created and established, just like, I don’t know, it just puts you in a different mood.

I mean, before you’re around your team, and then after you’re on your team, you just leave with a different level of, I don’t know, like purpose and inspiration. And like, wow, look what this industry is capable of. It’s really cool.

And you often see people who run shops like yours, and it’s just a really, really high performing company. And then you meet the owner, the leader, and you’re like, gosh, that guy’s a workaholic. It’s crazy.

He probably never sleeps and probably never has time for family or anything outside of work. And with you, it’s like the exact opposite. I just wanted to take this time to thank you for all the times you’ve checked up on, like, how my family’s doing.

And I mean, when we’re texting, it’s not about machines all the time or work or making shifts. It’s about like, hey, congrats on that announcement. Your daughter’s coming and stuff like that.

And I just think that’s one of the things about this industry that we ought to talk about a little bit more is just the community and the big family that we all have in the Metalworking Nation. It’s pretty cool. Thank you for supporting that.

[24:58] You bet. Well, I mean, what you guys are doing with the Making Shift Family, a podcast, I mean, you guys are, you, Mike, Paul, Eric, Dave, you know, that little subculture of really cool people, you know, that do a lot of things for a lot of people in this world that they don’t know about. The creature comforts of an airplane, you know, of the house, your soul on the bottom of your shoe, you know, there was a machinist somewhere in that line.

But, you know, when you’re talking about culture establishing that, you know, I didn’t establish it. You know, my dad started the business in 1979 with, you know, $5,000 worth of inventory and a Ford Courier pickup truck that was made by Mazda. But, you know, I just nurtured it and tried to make it better.

And, you know, it was a gift to me. And, you know, just try to make it better. And you can’t do anything without good people.

And Forrest Randall, PK, I mean, man, they’ve got my six. They’ve got my six. And it’s really let me become a better leader.

Because one thing automation will do, it’ll expose weak leadership. And I definitely was weak and had to go learn. So, but definitely culture.

And I tell a story years ago, I went through a lean implementation course in five weeks and learning a lot of value stream mapping, point of use, SMED, all that stuff. And great tools. Love the Toyota production system story.

But back to the chicken or the egg, did TPS come first or where did tools come from? Well, it came from the culture, in my opinion. And the culture, you know, we also say that execution will eat strategy for the launch every damn day. So you can strategize and you can whiteboard and PowerPoint and, you know, my team rolls up their sleeves and cannonball in.

And that’s how you get successful in this business. And, you know, there’s some really cool tools out there today. And, you know, this automation journey for me really, I guess, you know, I made a post on LinkedIn on my anniversary, 32 years with advance this January.

And I had a paper that I kept from a 4,000 level management of innovation and technology class. And I wrote about advanced manufacturing technologies and robotics in 1994. Oh, cool.

You know, and it took me a long damn time to get kind of what I was thinking back then. And I mean, when you’re reading that, Scott, was it like Nostradamus? Like, oh, I predicted exactly how it was going to look. Or was it like, what the hell was I thinking? It’s nothing like what I thought.

Well, hey, my buddy, Risto, Nini at FASTMS, who really educated me and took this OKI around Europe benchmarking. And I always will thank him for sharing his knowledge with me. But he replied to that post and said, good thing you weren’t wrong.

You said something earlier, Scott, like me and Eric just kind of nodded our heads and like looked at each other through the camera, because every once in a while, there’s just like this great nugget of wisdom. And you’re like, yeah, that’s you’re going to get clipped. You know, that’s going to get clipped.

And when you said, man, automation, what it will do is it’ll expose weak leadership. And you showed your humility and you’re like, I was so weak. Like, I don’t know what you were like, I just know what you are like, and you run a great company.

But I want you to press on that a little bit. Like, how did implementing automation make you feel weak as a leader? And like, where did it make you think, gosh, I got to get back to some of these tools and some of this lean culture? And I hope, I hope the answer is, well, I just watched Pistol Pete pick up like a 600 pound fully fixtured pallet. And I’m like, I can’t do that.

Not really weak. No. Well, you know, obviously, there’s a huge economic weight on your shoulder that you got to make sure and plan properly.

And really, it was the unknown. You know, yeah, you can see it done, but you’ve heard all the auxiliary to support. And I looked around and chaos, frustration.

[30:59] And now we’re going to throw this thing in here and try to be better. Back to culture. So, I mean, a lot of brokenness that needed to get healed before going forward.

Obviously, you know, there’s a lot of personnel changes. Some people don’t get the vision that I’m trying to do. And what we’re trying to do as a team in advance with culture, and it puts pressure on the leader for sure.

Because I know that, you know, back to your subculture and all the people that you’ve met through this, you know, we all have hearts that we got to balance our heart, our mind, and making decisions in this business. Because we care about people. And, you know, our customers are our friends, our vendors are our partners.

And we got to perform at a high level, especially in this area. So, I’m always a weak leader. So, get better.

[32:10] It shows the opposite though. I mean, the way you say that, all I get from that is the opposite. The humility, I mean.

That is why it must be you, Maximus. No, but I mean, you talk about the people side and not everybody sees the vision. Some people just are really obstinate.

They dig their heels in that. No, I’m not going to change. I’m not going to accept this short-term increase in chaos to have a better future, a more globally competitive future.

I mean, you talked about your guy from Fastest taking you over to Europe. I know when Eric and I go and visit some of our partners and customers over there, we come back and we’re like, oh my gosh, the way some of these shops are doing things. And then you look at what we’re doing and you’re like, oh my gosh, we’re all weak.

We are so weak compared to that. Stuttgart to Dallas DFW, my first trip, benchmarking trip, was the most depressing flight home. I’m like, I’ve been to IMTS for decades.

I’ve been in this business for 25 years. I’m getting my butt whipped. What am I doing wrong? And that was really a 180 for me and really a defining point in my career for sure.

[33:33] You know, I always think about like people talk about overseas labor is cheap or this and that, like not in Germany, not in Switzerland, not in some of these places that we go. And I think that’s kind of like the easy crutch excuse because we can’t do anything about what they pay someone in on the other side of the world. And so we’re like, yeah, you know, they’re so competitive because they have cheap labor.

It’s like that’s not the only reason. And in fact, sometimes their labor is more expensive and the whole employment aspect of running a business could be more difficult in Europe in many ways. And that’s a whole nother episode.

But you know, when we look, like you said, that depressing trip home, when we look at how they’re running, it’s like they’re taking labor out of the equation in a lot of cases. And they’re amplifying, I don’t even like the word labor, like the human capital of their business is being amplified so much that it’s not about like the hourly wage for a laborer. It’s not about that.

It’s about like the whole equation. We had a guest on recently, works for a medical manufacturer in Indiana. And after their automation implementation, she pointed out that like their wages went up like three to 5% because their people became more valuable.

You know, you stripped away this meaningless, repetitive nonsense that leaves all these doors open for misloads and, you know, all these factors, right, that influence throughput. And now they’re working, you know, on the business. That one waste that doesn’t always get published underutilized people, you know.

I think it’s the biggest culprit out of all the forms of waste is that, yeah, you’re not using your people. I mean, this is the power. When you can kind of get all the noise away from your team and let them think clearly, good things happen.

And it’s difficult to do on a daily basis for sure. I don’t want to make Scott’s section all about like Europe to the U.S. And I mean, there’s struggling shops all over Europe too. So there’s some incredible shops all over the States.

But there is this parallel that popped into my head while we were talking. When you’re driving on the Autobahn and everyone thinks there’s no speed limit, you think, oh, no speed limit. They probably have all these crazy accidents.

And I see like no accidents when I’m over there and I see people moving and just their overall, I don’t know, they’re just like more efficient and more thoughtful with how they’re driving. But you also see the roads like curving all the time and you see people flying down them. And I think you can draw a parallel to like when you’re just driving straight and spacing out and you’re kind of like not focused, you’re not engaged mentally.

That’s when the mistakes happen. So, you know, in the shop when you’re doing boring, repetitive, laborious, like the work Eric always jokes about the work that makes you mentally unhealthy and creates a psycho because he just does the same thing all day, every day like that. That’s just like, you know, driving straight and then you get distracted and you end up on your phone.

[36:51] Next thing you know, you got yourself into an accident because your brain wasn’t engaged. It’s not because it was more difficult and that’s why you crashed. It’s because it was too easy and too boring.

Well, we had an example this week or it may have been this weekend. You know, we’ve got a real hot project. It’s kind of, it’s really R&D-ish.

And Randall walked by one of our young top-notch go-getters and he is like this hand on E-stop looking through the window. And Randall noticed, uh, you okay? Uh, no, not really. Not stable, predictable? No.

[37:36] Body language. Oh, crap button that you’re one inch away from. Yeah.

So, um, that’s that, that’s a go fix. That’s a go get better. Um, let’s make some mental notes, circle back to this one.

[37:59] Yeah, but new part, new process, um, and, and that, that feedback loop, how fast can we get to green and go? I love that. In manufacturing, growth isn’t accidental. It’s engineered.

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Request yours at factormfg.com slash chips. That’s F-A-C-T-U-R mfg.com slash chips. We talk a lot about like stability and, and, um, you know, making sure you have a trusted process, but, you know, when I think about risk and the risk you have to take as the business leader, this will be, it wasn’t free.

Those two big horizontals aren’t free. Everything you invest in costs money. And so you’re taking a, a really, um, significant financial risk to do what you’ve done.

Um, and you’ve got a great team. I’m so glad we got to interview all of them, but walk us through your, your kind of like playbook financially and how you justified it and how you were feeling when it was like, all right, let’s pull the trigger on this thing. Speaking of your hand one inch from the oh crap button, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Um, it’s that hand on that personal guarantee document that you wish you could take off. I, I, I, I was trained by a very entrepreneurial person, my dad.

And, um, I remember when I’m very young in my career, um, uh, my dad traveled to Florence, Kentucky, um, to a little nice machine tool manufacturer over there. And two days later, I get a phone call. We bought a machine and, um, that, uh, that, that, that, that, that, that can be good.

[40:48] That can be dangerous. Um, we bought you a new problem, Scott. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And, and, and, and, uh, we laugh about it, but that’s exactly where we were, you know, customer pressure, get another spindle. Um, and then you just created another bunch of headaches because you’re not running that one spindle optimally to, uh, to do it.

[41:13] So, you know, when, when we went through the process of really jumping out and, you know, I, I think automation is a CNC machine, um, you know, and it’s just progressing, you know, absolutely. And, um, and we had little faux cells and really when, when, uh, PK, uh, this was probably 15 years ago, uh, we were taking a picture of the control and measuring utilization. That’s how we started.

PK would walk around each control every morning, uh, ask the operator, pull up the production page. We had most Mazak’s back then, and we liked the blue, the blue bar. And then he would take those, print those out, get a steel rule and a pencil and start mapping it out.

And we knew what our utilization was. And we’re talking teens, teens, when we really use 8760 in our math calculation, which is what you should as an owner, I need an asset producing revenue. Why is it sitting overnight, not doing anything.

[42:27] And, and, and, and another beginning automation that we did, we, we had a second shift. Now our automation was people, but we had a second shift. We got to get more hours, got to get more hours out of the equipment.

When Risto first came to Advanced, um, he asked, uh, do you know what your utilization is? And we said, yeah, it’s probably about 18%. He was like, you’re about the first shop that’s ever came out with the right answer. And, um, that’s usually inflated.

Like they think it’s a lot higher than it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

On scheduled hours. We look good on scheduled hours. Yeah.

[43:13] You know, however you score it, just start scoring it. It’s bad. It’s your, it’s, it sucks right out of the bat.

Swallow it and get moving forward. Yeah. But, um, you know, if, if, if PK wouldn’t take the time to do that, we, we’ve, um, uh, I mean, that, that, that’s really what started it guys.

That’s really what started our automation journey. I mean, I was writing about it back in 1994, still not knowing how to get all the puzzle pieces put together. You know, we were joking with Forrest, you know, when he was, he was talking about all the things Pistol Peak can do.

And we were, you know, joking with him about, and obviously you just flipped the switch one day and all that started. Right. Um, you know, from an perspective, like how, how has this journey been? Have there been times where you were having bouts of impatience, you know, or like, just kind of curious how that looks from, from your perspective and, and, you know, Eric, that’s a pretty powerful word.

You said patience in manufacturing. Is that a, okay. Can we use oxymoron in that? Um, but, uh, yeah, patience, goodness gracious.

Um, and, and I’m not a patient person. And, um, my, my wife loves, loves to fish because it was something that she did with her father. Um, and I’ll drive her to go fishing and it’s crappie season around here in Oklahoma.

[44:52] That’s the best eating fish. And, um, but my fishing is I’d like half stick of dynamite or electric generator and then he met him up, you know, but. To industrialize that.

[45:13] Automation has taught me patience and, um, um, and my team, uh, Forest, uh, he always says, I love your enthusiasm, Scott. So they kind of yanked me back or they’re not gonna, they’ll, they’ll push me off course if, if, if they think that I’m off course, that’s for damn sure. But, um, you know, they, uh, I’m a very out there futuristic guy, which is a downside at times.

Um, and, and, and learning myself, I need to align myself with tactical people and, uh, I’ve got a good tactical team and, um, and, uh, we’re able to, uh, I’m able to have patience and trust because I’ve, I have those relationships with those gentlemen and in the rest of the organization, because it, because it didn’t, it didn’t do this to them. And they, and they know that it’s only a downside when you, uh, when you’re all wired the same way, you know, when you’re all like six months ahead and nobody’s six minutes ahead, you know what I mean? And that’s, that’s where I, I see so much of that in myself. I mean, Eric’s probably like laughing too, because we’ve been having conversations lately about like, okay, well, what’s Nick good at? What’s Eric good at as we lead our team.

And, um, just trying to make sure you have the right people to like, kind of balance that out when you’re a future focused guy and you might feel to others, like you’ve got your head in the clouds and like, why are you thinking about that? We got a problem right here, right in front of us. We got to solve this right now. But I think, I mean like that self-awareness that that same self-awareness you just described with that.

And then, um, even when you were talking about like how you answered that first, what’s your utilization question? And you were on it. It doesn’t do leaders any good to, you know, step on the scale and then take 30 pounds off. Cause that’s what they wish they were.

Let’s be honest with where you’re at, right? You know, uh, I’ll probably not do a good job explaining this, but the Stockdale paradox, I, I, I was, uh, uh, given that many years ago and, uh, Stockdale was, uh, uh, I believe the, uh, uh, at one point in time, the, the highest ranking POW, the Hanoi Hilton. And, um, you know, uh, being a POW, you know, uh, hard to be, be hopeful. Um, but to face the reality of this situation, the brutal facts of where you’re at right now, do not sugarcoat it, but still have faith, hope and love and keep going forward.

And, uh, you know, I think in, in, in some of his writings, he would say, you know, the, the POW is that, oh, we’re going to get out on this Easter. There was always a calendar, you know, those were typically the guys that didn’t make it. So, um, you know, one day at a time, you know, steady Eddie, uh, keep, keep, keep, keep going, keep going, keep one trucking.

[48:28] Matt Farah I love hearing that from you because we heard that we opened this episode hearing like that same thing come through when Randall was talking. And so it’s just, I mean, we talk about culture, right. And it’s so cool that you’ve got ownerships using that language and the director of ops using that language.

And I have no doubt that if I walked like into your tool room, right. Or walked up to the, the gentleman, maybe swapping over coolant in the sump, right. That we would get that exact same, uh, that exact same, uh, context, which is amazing Scott, truly amazing.

[49:05] Scott Cunningham Thank you. Thank you. I mean, the, the, the, the, the power of unity, I mean, wow.

[49:10] And, uh, obviously we’re, we’re, we’re blessed with, uh, good people and, um, you know, it’s, uh, it nurture, feed it. Um, and, and, you know, there’s days where, I mean, we’re having discussions this week and, uh, man, we’re busy. We got a lot of new stuff.

We got a new implementation on software coming, uh, CAP, CAPEX plan going down. Um, and you’re like, huh, you know, but we’re able to kind of circle the troops and okay, let’s take a breath. And, um, what, what, what, what needs to happen right now? And this is where my head is.

And we were in a meeting yesterday and I’m, I was actually in the ground or again, I was, I was too far out and not thinking of all the steps that needed to get completed. And I’m like, my, my head’s right here guys. And, uh, and, and well, mine’s over here.

So getting that back into that, all right, let’s get back to the same space here real quick. So that’s, that’s pretty cool. One thing that I’ve been, one thing I’ve been thinking about, you know, just leading up to this episode, you know, we’ve been talking about doing this for months and I’m so elated that we’re finally all in the same room to share your story.

Uh, one thing I’ve been thinking about, cause I know you, you know, well enough that I kind of know the answer, but I just want our listeners to hear, right. When, when your team talks about, you know, things that automation has unlocked for them personally, and we hear, you know, company-wide like four 10s. So that’s three day weekends, right.

And three 12s. And that’s like, you hear about all this time that’s been unlocked for your, for your team, your people to like have this extra family time and friend time and faith time and whatever, whatever is important to them. I mean, what does that do for you, Scott? I’ve done my job.

[51:07] Uh, create that environment that, I mean, uh, I had the conversation yesterday. I always wonder why the book of Job and job are spelt the same. Because it’s a means to an end.

I mean, uh, you know, you, you’re working to live, we’re living to work. Yeah. We have fun, but it’s not where we want to be.

[51:40] Yeah. I mean, uh, whether that’s fishing, hunting, uh, family time, traveling, cooking, whatever that other stuff that fills your bucket. That’s an amazing.

And honestly, I don’t know if I want to end on a different note because that is, I think the most beautiful owner’s perspective I’ve ever heard in my life. Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s fun seeing people succeed and you’ve, you’ve had just a little, little bit of help with that. I want to thank you and the whole team at Advanced Machine and Fabricating for joining us on the Lights Out podcast.

You know, Scott, where can people learn more about your company? advcosinc.com. Uh, you’ll be able to see Pistol Pete right on the front page. So encourage everybody who listened here today, uh, to get over there and make sure you check out Pistol Pete and learn a little bit about what some of the great things they’re doing at Advanced Machine and Fabricating. Scott, Randall, PK Forrest.

Thank you so much for your time this morning. Uh, for those of you listening, uh, make sure to give us a like, a subscribe, a share. If you, if you found today’s episode helpful, if it moved you as much as it moved me, I’m not going to lie.

I got a little misty eyed there when, when Scott said. Allergies, allergies. Means I’ve done my job.

[53:12] Yes. No, exactly. And I love what you said, Scott, when you talked about like that story of that POW and the faith, the hope and the love.

And you know, my, my takeaway before we signed out is it’s so clear that your team has a lot of faith in you. They’ve got a lot of hope for the future and that they love what they’re doing. And so, I mean, you’ve created an amazing culture and it’s just an honor to be able to tell your story and, uh, honestly, just be friends with you, kind of do this thing together.

[53:41] So anything I can do to help you guys and, um, specifically, uh, we’re, we’re, we’re working on a CapEx plan and, uh, we, we, we, we might need to talk a little, a little workholding, Eric, in the very near future. I got a guy for that. Awesome.

Well, God bless you, Scott, your whole team, company. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Thanks for joining everybody. You bet. Have a great weekend, guys.

Thanks for the opportunity. Turn the lights out on this week.