Lights Out, Level Up: Inside Imago’s Next Phase of Automation and Time Freedom, Ep #38

[0:00] What’s up, Eric? Hey, Nick. How’s it going, man? It’s very good, man. I have a cigar. You are smoking a stogie. Yes. So there’s been many times where I’ve had a glass of bourbon and recorded as the audience knows, but there has been zero times where I’ve smoked a cigar while recording. Can you give me a list of the bourbon files as we will forever refer to them as? I’d like to listen to those and see if I can. I wonder if the audience could pick them out. Wow. Like, right. I should just listen to all of them and see if I could tell which ones you had bourbon during, but this is what you get to do when you enjoy time, freedom, time, freedom. It’s a beautiful thing. Now we are short, uh, David the fifth. AKA David Buick today. Let’s talk about why we have to call him David the fifth. Uh, that’s what Siri refers to him as. Yes. If you just have his name as David V in your phone, Siri will forever refer to him as David the fifth. Okay. So here’s what that’s hilarious. It’s great. So here’s what Siri did to me today. When I tried to call Dave, I’m like, Hey, Siri called Dave Buick. I have no Missouri car dealer saved in my contacts and it’s done at 10 times calling Dave Sinclair, Buick GMC in Missouri. I mean, you might want to follow through. Maybe the guy’s got like red hot deals going this month. He probably does.

[1:20] Now David’s not here because it’s actually a really cool episode. We are on a site at a really cool manufacturing. Facility. And we’ll give you the details here in a minute. I just wanted to specify it has nothing to do with the recent defeat of the Canadian hockey team by the USA men’s and women’s Olympic hockey team. Not related, not related. Although he may be in mourning right now. He may be in mourning. Well, we miss you, Dave. You’ll enjoy listening to this episode, except for that part. Talent is scarce experience even more. 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, Eric Nekkich and David Buick. Where are we today? Why don’t we let our friend tell us? Okay. Sure.

[2:50] What’s up guys. Oh, is this Ryan? It’s Ryan. It is. Mr. Time Freedom himself. Time Freedom. Yeah. So tell us where we are. Uh, we are at Amago Manufacturing, my, uh, lights out machine shop here in Northern Illinois. I like how he describes it. The lights out machine. It’s not a machine shop. It’s a lights out machine. I think that’s the reason that you and I hooked up is that I started talking about lights out and what we’re doing to run on a 10 day. Get some time freedom. It’s how, you know, we, we ended up meeting and recording the first episode. And then talking about how we were going to play golf together 20 times and not actually doing it, which is my fault. Yeah. That is 100% on you. I played, I think 70 official rounds last year and probably another 15 that were unofficial. So I did my part. Yeah. And I invited you. I called you. And we called Mike Payne. Called Mike. I did talk to Mike recently and he’s on board for, uh, August. I’ve been trying to get Mike back out to Rockford. So I think he may be coming before August and we’ll see if there’s time for 18 holes. The invitation’s open. My treat. You guys be my guests. So we’ll go and we’ll play. Let’s extend an invitation to Ryan to come to AME in Rockford and check out the golf simulator that we have.

[4:07] Dude, we do. Inside our facility now. So a lot has changed since, cause you visited us and we visited you. And a lot has changed at both facilities. We’re building the workflow units at AME now to help shops run lights out. We also have a golf simulator to help make sure we keep and find employees by being a fun place to work. And you, man, you just got done showing us like a new tour or a 2.0 tour of the Imago that is the present day. And it’s freaking awesome, man. Have you seen, you’ve seen my simulator, right? In the old shop. No, I haven’t. Check it out on the way. We’ll hit a couple of balls. Yeah. Closest, uh, furthest from the pin buys lunch. How’s that? I think I owe you for the cigar. So I guarantee you, unless we’re playing tabletop golf, in which case I think I have a fighting chance. The Warhammer version. Exactly. So yeah. I mean, when did we record? Do you remember like when it was? It’s been almost a year, honestly. Um, kind of went back and. We listened to it in preparation for you guys stopping by. It was almost exactly a year ago. So, and we’ve done a lot. We’ve done a lot in a year. So, and I’m glad you guys are here. So we can talk about what we’ve been up to. Yeah. I mean, um, gosh, we, we talked about some, like, what I loved about your episode is we talked about some philosophical stuff the first time, like why you, why lights out as bigger than just higher spindle utilization and financial mechanics and things like that. And we’ll, we’ll get into that again.

[5:35] Cause we had some great conversations while we were in the shop, but just like, if you could sum up the difference between this visit and our first visit in a few sentences, like what’s, what’s new here, you know, it’s a continuation of the first visit for sure. I think first episode, I was focused on kind of my backstory and what we’re all about and, you know, my philosophy with business and this, this visit is, you know, we’re just kind of picking up where we left off, you know, telling people what we’ve been up to, to kind of, uh, carry out that vision. I never thought I’d get to where I am today. There was a time, you know, standing in my shop, I had realized in my mind’s eye that I had achieved what I set out to achieve, and it was great for about a couple of minutes and then I just said to myself, well, now what? You know, and ever since then, I’ve just continued to push myself, the business, push my goals, set new goals, set goals that are, uh, unobtainable because I set an unobtainable goal and found myself standing in the middle of it eventually. So that’s something that is important to me is to continually push myself to improve this business. Doesn’t necessarily mean make it something crazy, unmanageable, but to always make it better and make it what in my mind want it to be.

[6:53] So, and that’s really, you know, a lot of the stuff that we set out to do last year was in regards to that. You know? So we, is it, is it the same headcount? Yep. Yeah. Same, same, same amount of people. Um, same crew, three guys in the shop, six CNC’s and my wife and I run the business. So, uh, she does the, um, bookkeeping as well as, uh, she’s the head of our ISO program. So. I’m glad you said that because that was honestly one of my first observations and something that we talk about a lot on the podcast, but you walk in and you see automated mills, automated lathes, you see automated inspection. And then you see three, four machinists here doing a ton of value add. They all have smiles on their faces. So it’s like the automation has not put any of these guys out on the street. There was no one at the end of the driveway holding a will work for food sign. Right. And that was just a, a great observation. Like it’s, it’s all like the shop is alive. Right. You know, you really get that when you walk in. Yeah, no, that’s cool. I mean, it’s by design and I want to go to work at a place that I want to go to work at. You know, I don’t want to dread it. I feel like the guys here, you know, it could be wrong, but I think they would agree that, you know, coming to work is, yeah, I’m sure it might be stressful because there’s challenges and we’re, we’re, we’re busy.

[8:13] It’s a great environment. And I think it, you, what you picked up on, I think is real, you know? And that’s why I love these guys. Cause I love coming to work. I look forward to seeing them, you know? I also painfully aware that I’m their boss. So they’re probably not looking forward to seeing me the same that I am, but no, that’s not the vibe. I could be a cool boss. We all get along really well. And they all get along with each other really well too. They spend a lot of time outside of work, doing stuff, avid mountain bikers and stuff like that. If you’re looking to increase your spindle up time 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.

[9:34] Since some of the automation you have is newer, right? I’m interested to know like of the gentlemen that we’ve, we’ve seen here, have you made any observations like, like the ones that may have been doing the repetitive work on your mill, right? Loading the parts in and out of the vise all day long to now where that’s automated. Have you noticed any shift in, you know, in their, their personality, any shift in just how they, how they operate, how they perform, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think specifically the two pieces of automation that we brought in over the last year, I’ll speak to the robot loader for a mill. I bring in new stuff all the time and I push them to use it and I never dump anything on their lap. I always get training, whether it’s through grant funded training or we foot the bill ourselves, whether they’re learning on their own time and they get incentivized to do so, or if they’re learning on company time or they’re getting paid to learn and so yes, they’re used to that because we’re never, ever just kind of sitting back and like resting on our laurels, so they, they’re used to having new stuff in, in new challenges, I think the number one takeaway from that, the robot loader that we put on there was how easy it was. It was, it’s, it’s literally effortless. It’s one G code and it, and you tell it what vices you want to use.

[10:57] And it just, it works. Because of that, I didn’t have to, the buy-in was instant because they just looked at it going, I don’t have to stand here in front of this stupid machine all day. I mean, I did it. I did it. I was, you know, it for a really long time and I would sit there and I’ve got just whatever it’s called now, ADHD, ADD, whatever it is, you know, I have it bad, so I, it was painful to stand there and I’ll never forget that. And for me, I try not to ask of people things that I’m unwilling or haven’t done myself, so I think that was the number one takeaway was just how simple that was and it’s not, Oh, this is going to take my job, it’s, I can go do the stuff I actually like to do, programming, problem solving, setting up machines. And, you know, just overall kicking ass and winning. I think that was, you know, really the number one takeaway from, you know, adding that stuff. You know how, when you’re talking to somebody and you’re like, gosh, I wish we were recording. Yeah. We had one of those moments when he was giving us the tour and I want you to take a, take the audience back to what you told me about when you were sitting in your office, looking out the glass door here at the guy running the mill and like what you were feeling and what you were thinking as you saw what he was doing. Yeah.

[12:23] I mean, I looked at him and, uh, you know, one of our younger guys here, you know, he’s got a, he’s a smart kid. He’s got a tremendous amount of talent. He was standing in front of our mill for two weeks, loading and unloading the same part over and over again. And the cycle time was what? Like roughly, if you had to guess. A couple of minutes, you know, not long enough where he could go do something else. I mean, that’s the other great thing about these guys is they know that if a machine’s running and they can check a part, you know, every hour, every couple hours, whatever, they’re free to go do other stuff, you know? And so it’s never boring in that regard. And I just was looking at it going, man, I got to do something. Cause this is just a waste of his time and his talent, you know? And that goes for everybody that works here. You know, everybody’s got a skillset that provides value. And if you’re paying somebody, you know, good money to do a job that a robot could do, you’re not really getting the best value out of them and they’re not happy. You know, nobody wants to stand there in front of a machine day in and day out, you know, so, and now, you know, that kind of goes along with what we set out to do, which was to increase revenue by 50% over a three year stretch without adding any people, spindles or floor space. So I want to, I want to get back to that in just a second.

[13:38] Cause I love, I love how you set goals and like you defined it as like a pretty clear, smart objective. Before we get into that, I just want to make the point that you just made and just kind of reemphasize it in a different way. Running Lights Out is about respecting people and you had a lot of respect for that.

We can shout out his name if you want. I mean, what’s the kid’s name? Chris. Yeah.

[13:58] You have a lot of respect for Chris. And, and so we see, um, we see Chris. Didn’t want to turn him into a serial killer. Yeah, where he’s just doing monotonous, repetitive work. No, I mean, but you see Chris right there, right? And you’re like, gosh, that’s not the best use of this kid’s God-given potential. Sure. And then the other thing is like, it reminds me of my presentation I made at the automated shop conference and it showed a boss, like some photo we had from AME where the boss was like talking over the job with the machinist operating the machine. And I put little caption bubbles over his head that said like, you are a throughput expert. You are not a doorman. And you see that if, if you have a three, five minute cycle time, that’s all you are is a doorman. Yeah. You’ve just become a doorman. I want to get to the goal setting in a second here, but I also want to talk a little bit about the philosophical aspect of running lights out, kind of like your values and how it transcends, um, just work too, because you said something about parenting that like really resonated with me. And maybe you could take us back to that story of that, uh, that shop owner and like what he told you when you were a young dad. Cause I’ve got a bunch of young kids right now and that’s probably why it resonates with me so much. Yeah. It’s, uh, his name is Hal. He owned a company called, uh, security lock nut.

[15:16] Uh, they were in Mundelein. I was in there visiting him. Uh, we were making some parts for him and he, uh, he’s just a great guy. You know, again, took time out to speak with someone, you know, that had questions, you know, as a new father, it’s kind of a lame question. You’re like, Hey, you got any advice, you know, for a young father, you know, that with, with new kids, you know, this is something that just resonated with me and stuck with me ever since. And it’s something I tried to do, but he said, Hey, your kids don’t need all of your attention. They just need attention. They just need your undivided attention. He said, if you can give them 15 minutes of undivided attention a day, he’s like, that is enough. And so I tried it, you know, when I started the shop, I was working a full-time job and then I was working full-time after hours on weekends. You know, and I didn’t, I didn’t always get to see the kids when you’re doing that kind of stuff. You’ve got the worries of your full-time jacket, the worries of your startup business, it’s very easy to, to sit there and allow those things to creep into your, your, your parenting, you know, and so I just made it a point to turn my phone off and my daughter was little, you know, and I would just go and I’d play Barbies with her or color with her or whatever.

[16:37] You know, my little ponies. It never failed, like right around the 15 minute mark, you know, she was kind of like wandering off and, you know, going to do something else. And, and it was enough, you know, but like there was never a time where, you know, she was like, you know, daddy, daddy, like trying to get my attention and walk through that door. And that was my focus, you know? Yeah, it worked. It really, really worked. You know, I mean, I don’t know how they feel about me now that they’re adults, but well, you got to be where your feet are, you know, like that’s something someone said to me and I’m like, yeah, like I’m, how often am I, where I’m at, we were talking about golf and how you just turn your phone off and you lock in on golf, but like, okay, why are we talking about this on a episode of Lights Out? Well, it’s kind of the same in the shop too, right? Like you are never really focused on one task or one big problem that you’re trying to solve if every five minutes you got to go back to the machine, open the door and reload, you know, you’re always divided. And I have ADD too, right? Like, so for me, I would never be able to like feel satisfied at the end of the day, because there was all, there would always be something bigger that I wanted to do and I only got to do it in like these five minute half distracted increments. Yeah. You’re not doing anything well. Yes, exactly. You’re doing a ton of things and none of it. Well, I love that.

[17:55] So yeah, I just wanted to kind of like, like touch on that a little bit and just make sure like everyone understands there’s more to Lights Out than just, you know, better performance in your shop. Of course it does help there too. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, we talk about it all the time is, you know, business problems are facts and automation solves a lot of business problems, a lot of business challenges, but those business problems also cause personal pain, right? Yeah. And so when we’re talking to people about automation and things like that, a lot of what we’re talking about is quality of life and getting that time freedom back and being able to just, you know, kind of clear the conscience and conscience and go out there and golf or spend time with the kids and not worry about what’s coming out, the finished end of a machine tool, right? Yeah. And I’ve got a, just a quick story to contrast that. So I was in another shop, a guy that we were doing some work for when I worked, and this was before I started my own shop. I walked in there and he was working by himself. He had a bunch of equipment. I started talking to him, you know, you know, he’s like, oh yeah, I used to have like, you know, 15 employees, we have way more equipment and stuff. And he’s like, I just, I just pared it down. You know, he had a canoe hanging from the ceiling in the shop, you know? And I, I liked the canoe once in a while. So I was like, Hey man, what’s up with the canoe? You know, do you ever use that? And he’s like, he’s like, oh man.

[19:11] He’s like, I bought it when my son was little. I wanted to take him canoeing and stuff. And he’s like, we, we never got to go. And I was just like, I mean, like it still gives me goosebumps, you know, like that, that just broke my heart. So I was like, there’s another person that you, for whatever reason happened to run into and have a brief conversation about it. And it had some just life-changing notes to it, you know, end up working a hundred hour weeks and stuff, you know, and you’re, you’re coming home and you’re not engaged in all that stuff, I don’t want to be the unused canoe guy, you know, and so powerful. Yeah. So used canoe guy. I mean, there’s so much there. And it was like, it was not, those two things kind of happened. About the same time I had kids, but you know, like those things just really stuck with me. So yes. And then that’s where the time freedom comes in, you know? Yeah. You gotta, you gotta make hay while the sun’s shining, but don’t forget, you know, to work hard enough where you give yourself the opportunity to do what’s most important to you, you know? And for me, and as a parent having kids, what’s the point of having them if you’re never going to spend time with them, you know, or letting someone else raise them, you know? So that’s fire. That’s so good.

[20:32] That’s great. 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. 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. 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 interfaces it’s SMW zero point locators. It’s really sweet. We’re getting ready to get some of those. So how do people find SMW Autoblock to look through that massive catalog of products? It’s smwautoblockblok.com. Yeah. Get rid of that. SMWautoblockblok.com. So, you know, I know we want to circle back towards goal setting, but I do have a couple of questions if it’s okay. The mill assist automation system here, loading vices, outstanding.

[22:01] You know, we talked out there about some of the advantages in integrated fixture exchange of just loading the vise. You’re going to save money and height and stack up over pallets. What other benefits have you seen? Just being able to like load that vise directly with the robot in and out of a zero point that I believe it’s integrated right to like a five axis trunnion. Yeah. So we bought an, it’s called the AI 5X smart assistant by a company called Intelligent Automation. They’re out of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. What I liked about it is they’re making everything, you know, they’re making the vices. They’re making the robot. It’s their software. It’s their integration. It’s their door. It’s their zero point on the five axis. They’re taking responsibility for the whole solution working. Yeah. It’s not like, well, it sounds like a vice problem to me. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, call the zero point guy, you know, all the time, right. It’s, you know, it’s all your work holding guy. So, you know, for us, you know, and that’s another thing that really resonated with the guys. It’s, it’s, it’s easy for them to see the utility of it because it’s the same exact vise that they were loading and unloading that was attached to the Now we’ve just untethered the device from that machine, giving them 15 to 45 other vices from which they can load on again, that the learning curve was zero.

[23:27] Cause it’s like, all right, well, we’ve got hard jaws for first stop soft jaws for second out. It’s what we’ve always done. And because of the ease of the vices, you know, we had, we had like a five piece job the other day, you know? And, you know, someone was like loading it on the five axis. I’m like, just load these five vices up and tell the robot to load it. And they’re like, really? I’m like, yeah, why not? Why wouldn’t you do it? If nothing else, just watch, just, just do me a favor and just stand there and watch the robot work. I don’t care. You know, I would be paying you to stand there and load. Parts, you know, like that mindset, like, Oh heck I could do this with two parts if I want it. I could do it with five parts. Yeah. You know, the flexibility is there. So I think that is really the key. You know, if you have a system where it’s picking the raw material and trying to put it into a self-closing vice, I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to, you know, pulling a piece of material out of that vice eventually. But if you, God forbid have to make a change, you know, Oh, I got to run bigger material or Hey, you know what? I, it was a rectangle when I put it in. Now it’s some androgynous shape that, uh, has no way to easily be gripped. How do I get it out of the machine? You know? So, um, I think all of those things just really, it made it simple. And I think the, the ability and the flexibility to just kind of use it and or not use it, you know, if it’s, if it, if it’s not the right fit, don’t use it. You know, there’s plenty of stuff that we have, you know, we’ve got a hundred thousand hours of the live tooling in there, some of them are just sitting in drawers for a year because we’re just turning stuff, you know? So it’s there to use it in, and if you don’t need it, don’t use it.

[25:15] Yeah. If you’ve got a job as a bunch of big parts that doesn’t fit on that, then. Okay. Don’t run those automated, but typically with the bigger parts, you get a longer cycle time anyway. Right. So yeah. Yeah. No, but there’s something truly freeing in that whole kind of, just to paraphrase that, right, is that flexibility you described, right? The robot doesn’t care what’s in the vice. Right. So it could in theory be any material type, any geometry, any, I mean, that’s, that’s a really… Any sort of androgynous organism. Yes. Well, I don’t even know if that was the right word, but… Well, it is now, right? I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, when you spend that kind of money on stuff like that, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to, to use it all the time, you know? Uh, I remember I bought a pop-up camper and I told my wife, hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna camp, if I’m buying this pop-up camper, we’re gonna camp every weekend. And she’s like, if, if you expect me to camp every weekend, don’t buy the pop-up camper. So, you know, but there’s this pressure. You’re like, I’m not going to be the unused camper guy. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Hey, listen, there’s nothing wrong with being the unused camper guy. And I’m going to have you call my wife after this and explain that to her, uh, please, on behalf of everyone at Making Chips. Yeah. I mean, you know, so I think people, myself especially, you know, it’s like, wow, that was a lot of money I spent. We better get our money’s worth out of it.

[26:33] Yeah. And I, I made the conscious decision to not put that pressure on people because, you know, undue pressure doesn’t, it doesn’t help the situation, you know, especially with something new. So give people the opportunity to learn and get them the correct training and then, you know, give them the, uh, authority to decide whether it’s something that should or should not be used, you know? And maybe we better get our times, our time out of it, you know, and not just get our money out of it. Maybe you’re, you’re investing in your own capabilities and you’re not fully utilizing it at the beginning, but now you’ve got a new skill, you get the right job and then boom, I’m so glad we already know how to use this. Right. Capacity, right? There’s ROI in capacity. There’s, there’s ROI in being able to go after some work now where the margins are more like conducive to an automated operation. And now you at least have that option. And there’s ROI on competency, being able to do things that other shops can’t do because they never learned it. Yeah, I actually started quoting some, I know this is something that I’ve heard Mike Payne talk about several times on some of his podcasts, how he, he, he views it as I paid for the robot. I’m not going to pass the savings along to the customer necessarily, which, you know, I get, if you can get away with that, why not? But I look at it as, you know, it could be a competitive advantage too. Yeah.

[27:54] When I quote machining on a lathe that has a bar feeder, that’s automation. I paid for that automation. I don’t quote it as though someone’s standing in front of that machine 24 seven. I say, this is a, it’s a low input part. I’m going to put 25% of attended labor on that. Right. Makes me more competitive. We get stuff and then, you know, you get it in and then we’re running it for, you know, two, four, six, 12 hours after we shut the lights off. I mean, there’s your competitive advantage. I mean, more than well-made, I got the job first of all, but I also made up that whatever margin that I would, you know, potentially have been leaving on the table, perceived margin by running it unattended, you know? And so I started doing that with some of our robot parts too. It’s like, all right, well, you know what? I bet you a person would only have to stand at this machine for half an hour and load all the vices up. So I’m going to put 50% labor on there and guess what? I got the job, you know? So like there’s two ways to look at it. Sure. Yeah. It can make you more competitive and that might be what it takes to, you know, the, to hit the market price for that. And then also like, you should get the benefit of being awesome and automating your shop. So like sometimes, so yeah, it can go either way. Another point that Mike makes too is like, what if you have to quote it, not knowing that your best, most automated machine is available, like what if that machine’s running a different job and you quoted it with the automation price and now you’ve got to run it on the machine that doesn’t have automation.

[29:28] Shame on him for not having all the most automated equipment available. Can’t you get grants to pay for it? Why don’t you use the numbers and buy more automation, buy the numbers. We love you Mike. Mike’s listening like a hack, man. I’m just kidding. No, I mean, it’s a lot easier to say, you know, when you have six CNC’s, it’s like, well, yeah, this is the machine it’s going to run on. It has the automation. I know that I don’t have seven companies that he’s trying to, you know, get all the jive together and at varying stages of automation on it. Yeah, I get it. You know, so maybe it’s a luxury I have, you know, by being the size that we are and that we are planning on remaining, you know, as we can manage that stuff. It’s a good segue back into the goal setting and the specificity of how you set your goals at the start of the year. So let’s go, let’s get back to that. Restate it for the audience here. Ryan’s thinking, okay, what do I want this year to be defined as? And what was your goal? Yeah. I mean, last year was our best year ever. Hit a milestone. Super proud that we got there, you know? And that’s the other thing I do is I share it with my guys, you know, like, Hey, it’s not I did this, it’s we did this, Imago did this, but again, going back on that, like, all right, well now what do we just strive to maintain? You know, we could, you know, we’re doing fine time freedom. Everybody here works 40 hours, has the opportunity to go and, you know, do the things that we all work for, but I like the challenge and so I challenged myself to see if we can grow revenue by 50% over three years without adding spindles for space or more people.

[31:16] The whole idea behind that is that in any given day in any shop in America, there’s unused capacity. The easy thing would be to say, well, Hey, we need to hire more people. We need, we need to buy a new machine. And I say to that, well, before we get to that point, let’s make sure that there’s no capacity left on the stuff that we already own, nobody’s doing that. Nobody’s getting a hundred percent capacity and everybody, you know, there’s the top shops, the benchmarks, all that stuff, and, and you want to be, you know, 80%, whatever that is, I still challenge people to, to, to be honest with themselves and say, okay, really how much is that, are those machines, are those spindles, are you actually putting out product that you can get out the door and make money on? Cause that’s, you know, what we’re all here to do. Are you 80% of one shift? Right. Are you 80% of a day? I mean, these machines will work all day, every day. Yeah, we run, we’re running a job right now. It’s going to run 24 seven until it’s done. Our biggest accomplishment was we had three ways that ran for three months, 24 seven, didn’t shut them off, didn’t stop them, made good parts. You got to have the right work for it. Obviously we had the volume, it was all aluminum, so very little tool wear, but yes, our, we get a big kick out of the fact that we’re making money.

[32:41] I love telling that to people, you know, what do you do? I own a machining company, you know? Oh really? So yeah, I got three machines running right now. I’m sitting here with you. What are you doing? You’re making money when you’re working. I’m making money when we’re all sitting at home doing what we want to be doing. So yeah, that’s so cool. Part of the thrill of it is, is seeing what we can accomplish with what we have. With that said, that doesn’t mean we’re not spending any money. We might actually spend more money than it would cost us to hire another person or to buy another machine tool. So that’s not what we’re talking about. Those are the guardrails that I put up. No, no more spindles, no more floor space, no more people. Will I get there? No idea. You know, do you get there, get close and we realize, oh shit, we need another machine, we need some more floor space. We need more people. Then I have to decide, all right, we’ll do it. Is that what I want? You know, but the picture will be a thousand percent more clear at that point than if we just do it now and we don’t challenge ourselves to do that. It was what? 50% growth? Yeah. 50%. With none, with all those caveats. Yes. Okay. Got it. So yeah. And so let’s say you did that and then you’re, you’re tapping out at capacity there, yeah, you could expand, you know, your, your building’s pretty full.

[34:03] Yeah. I was joking. I don’t see, I don’t see a lot of room for a workflow with a five axis mill yet. You know, so I hope you expand. Yeah. But, but I mean, jokes aside, like there’s other ways to make a better business, even if you hit that. Sure. Maybe juicier, more complex, higher margin work. Yeah. You know, more, I don’t know, like if you have all the certifications or not yet, but like we are ISO certified, like maybe it’s the medical one, the ISO 13485, or maybe it’s the AS9100 or the ITAR or whatever, that could be a way to, within the same confines, get even juicier work. Or maybe you just dig down and peel back another layer and you start like adaptive controls. You start maybe like monitoring, you know, what the machines are doing and getting, you know, deeper into the data where, you know, even, even when we’re running lights out, what do our speeds and feeds look like, right? What is our cutting tool life? You know, things like that. I mean, there’s, I think that’s awesome. And it’s a continuous improvement model. And it really, I think fits in well to the goals you guys said. And I’ll tell you what, like, I love that. It’s just like a super aggressive goal, right? Like that is a, it’s a way to do it. Right. I can’t, I don’t know who quoted, but someone said something like, if you’re crushing your goals every year, you got to set harder goals, right? Yeah, shoot for the moon. And even if you miss, you land among the stars. Well, and I mean, this is super uncomfortable.

[35:31] And you’re all of a sudden, no, I think it was my preschool teacher who had that written on the wall. Staring into your soul. And he said that like, all right, you guys want me to leave or awkward. So yeah, what I was going to say about that, those look, I don’t know if you guys can see them, the material crib out there, it’s full, it’s, it’s spilling over onto the ground. It’s we’re stashing material under, you know, uh, a protective shelter here. It’s not, it’s not the work is, is in our constraint. It’s our, it’s our throughput. Bingo. And so I’m confident that I can get 50% more work. I can’t do any more work right now unless we can get more out of the door. But I’m not asking these guys to work over time because that’s not what we do here. It’s not part of your values. Yeah. The time freedom is your value. I’m freedom is at the core of this. And yeah, we could work more and harder and longer, you know, but that, that also is a finite thing, you know, so that’s the one resource. Everyone has the exact same amount of time in a day. Yeah. So, you know, again, we want to get in, do our work and get out so we can go do the stuff that we all work for, you know. I like that you made it a throughput problem. And I like the book that I saw on your table before we replaced it with the cigars and the ashtray.

[37:01] The goal, the goal, man. We talk about it all the time. Standard reading at Goldner Inc. Because automation in itself, putting, putting that, uh, automation system on that mill does not increase your throughput unless you’re getting more quality parts out the door than you were before, we say all the time. All it’s going to do is just like emphasize the other bottlenecks like before or after that automation solution. And so let’s talk about the inspection piece that we got to look at. That was really cool. When did you get that? Uh, we got that last May, yeah, May, end of May. And what was the catalyst for that? What was the aha in Ryan’s mind where it’s like, okay, that we have to do this. So again, you know, because I set that, those, that challenge with those guardrails on it. I like to observe the guys out in the shop and they call it spying. They’re like, why are you watching me? But I look into someone’s soul. He’s got like some voyeuristic aspect. Yeah. What are you doing out there? What are you, what are you wearing Chris? Actually, part of that was because, you know, I I’m, I’m involved, I, I do 10, that machine in the evening for additional lights out production.

[38:17] So I decided to time myself for, so we have a family of parts that runs, uh, pretty continuously on one piece of equipment and we do a lot of unattended just to keep up with the, the, uh, the volume and I, so I did a time study of myself checking a part and to thoroughly check all the mentions on, it took about five minutes. Once I recorded that, then I looked at how many times we’re checking that part. So we’re checking it first thing in the morning to make sure overnight production is good. Checking it after first break, lunch, afternoon break, before we leave for the day, and then I’m checking it at night. So what is it? Six times. Just to make sure it’s not drifting out of tolerance throughout the process. Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, we have, we have a, you know, about a plus or minus, a thou on it, you know, maybe five tenths on a, on a bore, you know, and the machine’s accurate, but you know, tools wear it’s, uh, it’s, it’s steel. So, you know, you gotta, you know, you gotta make sure you’re making good parts, but you know, I mean, that’s, that’s basically 30 minutes a day that we’re checking that one job, you know? So you take 30. Ryan’s got a calculator. 30 minutes times, let’s just call it 350 days. It’s 10,500 minutes.

[39:36] Frick me if I’m blowing the math. It’s 175 hours. It’s, it’s over a month that we’re spending checking that one part, you know? And let’s just say for even numbers, I’m trying to, you know, spend a hundred. Hey, no, no one’s grading your math here. I wouldn’t know how. That was 175 hours times. Let’s just say a hundred bucks an hour. Okay. Why not making that on it? But that, that’s time that the guys out in the shop could be making a hundred bucks an hour for the shop on higher value things. Or learning something so that where they can make more per hour because they’re a more skilled employee. Absolutely. You know, that’s $17,000 a year revenue that we’re spending checking one family of parts. Such a great way to look at it. Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, you’re like, well, what’s the big deal? It takes five minutes. Well now, so the micro view, it’s a, it’s like a hybrid system. It’s got, it’s a vision system with probing. So it’s kind of like a vision system. Like you would imagine like a Keyent system is, but far more accurate. Also American made, which is a huge thing for me, but it also has probing built into it. So you have, you know, a pseudo CMM built into it for dimensions that maybe we use it to probe down into bores and side features that you want to be able to measure.

[41:01] So now we’ve programmed it for that job. You take it from the machine, you set it down, you hit go, walk away, go do something else, you come back when you got a little time. And it’s visual, just green check marks. You got a good part and you carry on about your day. So yeah, you had the initial programming time for that particular job, but now it’s automated, you know, and that same with that, you know, we, we did three days of onsite training, which I paid for. And I was able to get grant money for that through McHenry County. So that was cool. Um, they paid for the training, but yeah, we did training and then we did, you know, some, uh, incentivized job setups with the guys like, Hey, you know, if you get to this milestone, you know, there’s, there’s, uh, something on the other side of it. And so now, you know, it’s become part of our, our plan. We don’t check every part on it. You know, if you’ve got a basic turned part, you don’t need to put it on the micro view. Um, but there’s stuff that we can check now that we weren’t able to check before that we can use that thing. Concave convex surfaces. Like, you know, unless, um, you have a gauge for that or some other more intricate way to check it. Now we can use the vision system or the probing to, to check those features.

[42:17] So that was born out of like, again, how do we achieve this goal? Well, Hey, I just saved four months plus of, of labor that somebody was checking that part, you know? So. But what I, what I absolutely like love about that whole story is that you were looking at inspection through the automation lens, right? If you know how many companies we’re in where quality is the biggest bottleneck and it’s like, you weren’t just going out looking for a CMM or looking for a comparator, you’re like, you were looking for an automated solution to that challenge. And that to me in lies the difference, right? Phenomenal. I love it. Hey guys, it’s Nick for making chips. And I just wanted to tell you, if you’re looking to push your shop forward this year, you need to be at the DN solutions manufacturing without limits event. That’s where I’ll be at the DN solutions, Chicago tech center, May 5th and six. And I’ll be standing next to a lights out monster, a DVF 5,000 with a Hennig workflow feeding the beast. And they’re running more than 15 other machines live on the floor. Not just demos live cutting too. Plus you’ll have expert led seminars, automation insights, and the chance to talk directly with engineers and other manufacturers solving the exact same challenges you have. And they’re making it easy.

[43:35] Breakfast and lunch are included both days. So you just show up and focus on learning. If you want to see what’s possible for your shop, this is the place register now at the link in the show notes or visit dn-solutions.com that’s dn-solutions.com. Dude. So you’re like known for coining these terms that we use over and over again, and you did it again on the shop. So as kind of a closing thought, and as we wrap up the episode, what is lights in manufacturing? Lights in manufacturing. So I completely made that up out of thin air, but for us, what it means is, you know, lights out, everything’s outside of the shop running while you’re not here. So I guess the light that lights on manufacturing would typically be, you know, what you’re doing while you’re in the building. To me, lights in manufacturing is automating the processes while you’re in the building. So how can we build time freedom from your day-to-day activities? So you can be more productive while you’re actually in the building. So that’s what lights in manufacturing means to me. So less babysitting of a monotonous, redundant task over and over again, and more creative problem solving and using your human potential. Yep.

[44:53] Absolutely. So. I love that. And such a great way to end the episode here is like the whole target of lights out isn’t just to like, and this is a good thing, but leave and have your machines making parts all night. Yeah. You also want to automate while you’re there. So you can be a more productive individual, a more effective business leader and a better teammate for everyone else who’s giving you their blood, sweat, and tears and time. We did a fun video on my social media. If you guys want to check it out, it was shortly after we installed it and we were kind of doing like our Christmas celebration, but it’s a picture of the robot loading a vice in and out of the machine. And then the camera pans over and we’re all drinking beer and it’s like, you know what, if we could get it to the point where we just all got paid to drink beer or go mountain biking or fly fishing or golfing or rock climbing or snowboarding or whatever it is that we’re into, then that’s the Holy grail, you know? So. I mean, full circle, right? Eric, I mean, we talked about the culture to start the episode and he’s like, I genuinely like these dudes. We, we have the same hobbies. We, we care about the same stuff. We like to sit and drink beer together. We like to go mountain biking together. We like to play golf. You know, what a full circle moment. Time freedom creates the ability to do that.

[46:09] Yeah. Better, better place to work, better quality of life for you and the people you care about, which hands down, no one would question after listening to you talk, sir, that that’s definitely the people that work for you. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Couldn’t do it without them. That’s awesome. So to wrap everything up, I miss Dave right now. Cause he’s always got this, like, did he write that and memorize it? Closing? Yeah. He does. Yeah. So we’re just going to have to like, we’re just going to have to like cut and paste that into the end of this recording. I can give it the old college try. It won’t even be close to David, but if you liked what you heard here today, please make sure to like subscribe and share and download the episode wherever you get all your podcasts. For me, it’s Spotify. Some of them, uh, whatever the purple icon is on my iPhone. Uh, see, again, we’re just going to have to redo the whole thing. Wherever you hear the radio thing, my, uh, my grandson is listening to. Thank God you’ve been on here twice. You know, this is actually real. Yeah, yeah, they are literally sitting in front of me. And as a call to action here, let’s consider lights in as much as we consider lights out. All right. Well, I think it’s time to turn the lights out on this episode. Thank you very much for listening.

[47:24] Make sure that you like and subscribe the show and share it with anyone who might also enjoy it, whether that’s a coworker or another industry professional, you know. Thanks everyone. And we’ll catch you on the next episode.