The Automation Trap: Turning Struggle into a Lean Legacy, Ep #22

[0:00] Eric Nekich: You hear tons of people from, whether they’re talking about cutting tools, work, holding automation, that you’ve heard the phrase working on the business, not at the business, right? But to now have a metric that can run alongside that. That’s pretty amazing.

[0:20] Mike Payne: All right, shop owners, listen up here. I think all of us know we are in one of the most in capital intensive businesses. There is, and margins are tight and we’re, we’re always fighting issues. And then when we make money, what do we do with it? Stock market’s up and down all over the place. Well, I get asked a lot about where can I invest my money?

[0:40] I’m a firm believer as business owners, you’ve gotta 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.

[1:00] 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.

[1:30] 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.

[1:40] That’s where the real value in your business drives. So visit ProShop erp.com, book a demo and start realizing ROI today. That’s ProShop erp.com.

[2:00] Narrator: Talent is scarce experience, even more so driving a cost in 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.

[2:10] 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 host. Nick Goner, Caleb Merck and David Buick.

[2:50] Nick Goellner: Okay guys, all good things come to an end. This is the fourth and final episode of the automation trip and gotta be honest, it’s emotional for me.

Dave Vuyk: I thought you were about to say that we were gonna break up there, but then you said it was the series that’s coming to an end. Not,

[3:00] Nick Goellner: no. See, enough of us miss, you know, like periodically, like Caleb’s not here today, so it feels like you’ve got this in and out relationship.

[3:10] That’s always exciting. You don’t, everything

Eric Nekich: is, it seems like the end, but honestly, I think the folks at home will figure out that it’s kind of just the beginning, right?

[3:20] Nick Goellner: Ooh, are we talking a secret? Look at Eric in the future.

Eric Nekich: That was nice.

Nick Goellner: Thank you. Someday, everything we’re talking about will be obsolete, old news.

[3:30] And we’ll be recording about how silly it is to work like lean stream. I don’t think so. I think this is pretty solid. So you guys ready? Should I dive in? Let’s go start that duration. A quick little recap of where we left off. That’s a, yeah, I think that’s a good point, Dave. So. Why don’t you recap us?

Where were we since it was your idea? Let’s see if you even read.

[3:50] Dave Vuyk: Pay attention. A nice test. Rookie mistake. Well, if I’m not mistaken, in the previous episode we went through a value stream mapping process. We identified where the bottleneck was in Gary’s operation, which was a quality bottleneck. You know, they started going through a bit of a five s process.

[4:20] Getting things sorted and set in order and shined and standardized and, uh, sustain and basically. This kind of started the rebirth of iron and Clunk machining, uh, which has a fancy new name foreshadowing. Ooh. That in a second. And yeah, we’re gonna kind of learn about how that transformation, what that turned into.

[4:40] Nick Goellner: Yes, exactly. And he’s got a partner in Klaus. Klaus is not the enemy. So Klaus is now and has an equity position in Iron Clon. He and Sarah, the quality girl that got away. We all have one. We all have a quality girl that got away. They’re all kinda. Coming back and helping out, helping. Gary’s right at the point where he’s like, all right, I see a path to success here.

[5:00] Let’s go. I’m ready to work.

[5:10] Eric Nekich: You know what, as I kinda reread where we left off last session and then reading ahead what we’re gonna talk about today, you really kinda gets your blood pumping. I mean, we’ve hopefully all worked at companies where they start to figure things out and they put in these cool process improvements and you can kind of start seeing what the finish line looks like, and it’s always just.

Crazy, exciting, fun time to work at a company so I could really like get into the characters this week.

[5:30] Nick Goellner: I can see clearly now the rain is gone. Oh, my German accent that comes out Jamaican. Hopefully that doesn’t come back today. Well, we’ll see.

[5:40] Dave Vuyk: You know what? It’s so funny, I was scrolling LinkedIn just before we started recording and there was a guy who literally was just like posting pictures of his journey of buying a shop that was just like.

[5:50] An absolute mess. He talked about getting it all organized, throwing out the junk, and it just was perfect timing to see that. ’cause that’s exactly what’s going on in this story as well. Gary’s coming out of the slump and. Now we’re gonna learn about that transformation. Let’s get into it.

Nick Goellner: Episode four, the Lean Legacy.

[6:10] So 12 months later, iron clunk machining is no more. It’s now reborn as Iron Wheel Manufacturing. It’s a name. Klaus and Gary chose to honor the grit that turned chaos into flow. The squat, brick building gleams under fresh paint. It’s Windows Spotless reflecting a shop humming with purpose. Gary stands at the helm, his flannel shirt, crisp eyes clear from a night full of restful sleep.

[6:40] Lean automation built on Klaus’s foundations has unlocked a thriving culture. The team tracks two different OEE metrics. Overall equipment effectiveness, which is now hitting 85% with streamlined pallets and probes, and the innovative overall employee engagement, which measures, ideas, contributed and time spent on continuous improvement beyond the daily tasks, it elevates people above production.

[7:10] Gary says, glancing at a dashboard where Bill’s latest Kaizen suggestion is becoming an update to the standard work. Automation, robotic loaders, feeding high-mix pallets, supports lean flow, not fights it, and it frees up minds

Eric Nekich: for

Nick Goellner: creativity.

[7:20] Eric Nekich: Wow. Good stuff. You know, one thing that jumps is in that very first kind of sentence where we talk about the name change from iron clunk to iron will, and you talk about grit, and it always just reminds me of something, our president here, Noah always says, which is, you know, someone’s.

[7:40] Gotta do the work, right? So like it’s important, right, that even though we’re talking about manufacturing ideology and systems and processes, right? People gotta roll their sleeves up and make it happen. It’s still very much people driven.

[7:50] Nick Goellner: Yeah. Yeah. And you heard that in the end of the last episode too, like.

It’s not like Klaus just was born running an incredible lean company, Linda and Klaus’s wife, Heidi. They were relating. Klaus used to be stressed.

[8:00] Eric Nekich: Can I make an admission here that I’m not super proud of? Please. This is the first time I have personally read about overall employee effectiveness, and I honestly was speechless.

[8:20] I’m gonna plagiarize it nonstop moving forward. We’re gonna redo the whole department up here, like how cool. It is cool.

Nick Goellner: Well, David, have you heard of this,

[8:30] Dave Vuyk: to your point about it being a people-driven thing, like measuring that your team is on a daily basis, making improvements to the operational process is huge.

[8:40] Where’d you get that idea from Nick? ’cause I wonder if I know where you got that idea from? Honestly, like

[8:50] Nick Goellner: a little bit from Paul. Okay. And then a little bit just kind of made up, so I’m thinking, and maybe somebody does something like this, but I feel like I kind of made it up. So, OEE, overall equipment effectiveness.

[9:00] Okay. Like basically, are your machines living up to their potential? You have a certain amount of available machine time. How often are your machines actually running? You’ve got a target cycle time. How close are you to hitting that target? But then you need to like. Balance that out and counterbalance it with a quality metrics so you’re not just pushing crap through.

[9:20] And if you multiply those three, that’s OEEE. That’s the OEE everybody knows about. But that tells you like if your machines are living up to their potential. And we all know that the real engine of any company is the people. So how do you know if people are living up to their potential? And so here’s where Paul and Pro Shop were inspiring me a bit because like, and Dave, you used to work there, so you might be able to explain this a bit better than me, but like within the system.

[9:40] You can track how many hours you’re spending on continuous improvement. And I think Paul’s partner, Kelsey’s the one who like built that into it. And I was like, that’s incredible because the other OEE overall employee engagement, like you can just make sure your machines are efficient, but how do you keep GA getting gains?

[10:00] How do you keep getting to the next level? Sure. If you’re not opening and closing a door every 10 minutes and operating like the former chapters of the story and you’re working ahead of your machine. You’re. Running maybe two, three machines at once. You have time, because you’ve used the entire work holding envelope.

[10:20] You’ve extended the cycle time. You’re getting more quality parts per cycle. Well now like what do you do? You’re just like, well, I’m really efficient. You just sit there and watch Netflix on your phone. No, you go and like figure out what’s. Some sort of process improvement. What’s this? Some sort of product improvement.

[10:40] If you’re a product manufacturer like us, maybe you’re making a post and and filming like what you’re doing and promoting your company and creating some sort of content to tell your story. There’s a million things you can do that we would consider continuous improvement. And so like let’s track how much of our team is contributing to.

[10:50] Dave Vuyk: I was just gonna point out like measuring it, you know, not just doing it kind of willy-nilly, you know, as the spirit moves you, but like actually tracking it and setting an expectation for it. Even that, hey, you’re this percentage of your time, we want you to be booking your time against. Customer work, customer jobs, and we wanna make sure we’re still reserving percentage of your time to put into these continuous improvement type tasks.

[11:20] And I think that’s huge because without a system in place, without being very deliberate about making sure people have time to engage in that kind of work. Beyond just getting the customer work done, it often doesn’t happen. Right? So I think that can be so transformational and definitely that’s baked right into pro shop.

[11:40] Uh, I think what’s cool about that is everyone who gets ProShop kind of gets confronted with that concept, that idea. And most people that I talked to when I was there that saw that for the first time, they’re like, oh, interesting. It doesn’t hit everyone as the obvious thing to do. No, that’s amazing.

[11:50] Eric Nekich: You hear tons of people from, whether they’re talking about cutting tools, workholding automation, that you’ve heard the phrase working on the business, not at the business, right.

[12:00] But to now have a metric that can run alongside that. That’s pretty amazing.

[12:10] Nick Goellner: We’re in sales and business development. So we don’t really get to set these things in the shop, but I’ve got a good connection to our president is a lean guy, and I’m gonna be like, dude, Noah, I got this idea

[12:20] Eric Nekich: and I’m glad that this wasn’t like, like I thought that this version of OEE was like from some Strategizer book that I haven’t read yet or something.

But no, it’s from, it’s from Paul and a little Mind of the goner. Then I don’t feel so bad anymore. That I didn’t know about it.

[12:30] Nick Goellner: Yeah, you don’t know everything. This is manufacturing. Everyone has to pretend they know everything. So like, but Dave, you know, you’re like, okay, making it a metric. So if OEE is availability times performance, times quality, and you get, you know, three percentages multiplied by each other, which makes ’em smaller and that, you know, this is good math here from Nick.

[12:50] Okay. Like that’s a number you can improve. So what’s the overall employee engagement? It’s okay. Availability. Is your total hours worked? It’s divided by your total scheduled hours. Do people show up on time? How often are they like sick or not there? The best ability is availability, so. That’s the first one.

[13:10] And then performance in the context of what we’re talking about here is the percentage of worked hours spent on continuous improvement, which can’t be a hundred. Like you gotta make parts, you can’t just come in and have ideas to make things better, but you also don’t want it to be like 2%. You know, you wanna make sure, like if you’re doing everything we’ve talked about here, you’re, you’re staying ahead of your machine.

[13:30] And that frees up time for. Creative problem solving and then quality. Okay, so like how do I know if that time is quality time? What percentage of these ideas, or kinda like you’ve submitted a bill for, uh, continuous improvement initiative, what percentage of those turn into like updated standards that you can implement and adopt as part of like your new standard where the bar has been raised at your company?

[14:00] So that’s my OEE metric for. Connecting the employee to the equipment. Great stuff. Alright, let’s get into the second little scene here. Okay, bill and Bob, once skeptics, now lead the charge under their guidance iron will passed as 9,100 Aerospace Quality certification and ITAR Compliance for defense work.

[14:20] Their standard work, their ERP with integrated quality management and their five s philosophy is ensuring audit perfection and they’re not scrambling to prepare for it. They’re bolstered by their new certifications and they’re no longer chasing low margin scraps. From Shrewd Tech, Gary raises prices and he selects customers who align with iron rail’s values.

[14:40] That’s precision innovation and long-term partnership. The shop’s crown jewel. Is a massive contract from Space Core Enterprises for rocket components. And this was one through a customer tour where they highlighted lights out processes, which was five axis mills running almost 24 7 on automated pallets with zero point clamping, seamlessly swapping multi-part fixtures and in process probes that catch defects in real time, making automating, scrap a distant memory.

[15:10] Lean first, automate second. Bob Chuckles loading a fixture at the loading station in his Hennig workflow automation system. Employee engagement SOAR with time dedicated to continuous improvement Standards are often improved and updated per the new OEE metric. Fostering ownership and unlocking creativity that drives profitability in what has become a genuinely joyful.

Workplace Love the headache workflow

Eric Nekich: name drop there.

[15:40] Nick Goellner: Yeah. When is that? Getting excited for that. When you make incredible things, the ads are just organic. Okay. Like, like Paul gets all sorts of love for all his great ideas. Why can’t we have one?

Dave Vuyk: Product placement. Yeah, exactly. Scene two, brought to you by,

[15:50] Nick Goellner: you know, this is what we talk about all the time on making chips where manufacturers are trying to get out of the low margin crumbs.

[16:00] They’re trying to get into high margin contracts that are often in regulated industries. So shout out to ProShop. Shout out to people who operate this way. You can operate this way without ProShop, but their system is like literally built so that if you follow it, you’re inherently compliant. When it comes time for an audit, you don’t have to change anything because you’re already compliant.

[16:30] There’s a zero prep audit and I’ve been in places and our history as a business in former times, like my dad would be like, we got an ISO audit. What do we gotta do? Everybody grab a broom, everybody down. And so, you know, I remember that as a kid, like he’d come along, we got a nice lot of. He found a major, he found a minor, whatever it was, and I love this idea of like kind of the final two S’s and five s, standardize and sustain.

[17:00] And then you’re compliant and they can like do a snap audit. Surprise like, surprise, I’m here and you’re gonna be good. So

[17:10] Eric Nekich: don’t even lose sleep. One of my favorite parts from that little segment of this story is just like in one paragraph you kind of, you use this stream of language that’s like automation pallets, zero point, and then in the stream above it is like lean and lights out.

[17:20] And it’s just, I love the symmetry between all that language from not just like the conceptual. Part of it, right? Lean manufacturing, lights out, manufacturing, things like that. But then it actually is like, here’s the tactical technology that brings you to that point. It’s not like just this cloud. It’s like you can literally go get these things today.

[17:40] Nick Goellner: If you do it with the right mindset, if you have the right why? ’cause that’s what Gary did in the first couple chapters is he’s like, I’s our robot over there? And that case is a great shop, I’ll buy one.

[17:50] Dave Vuyk: Yeah, good point. Well, and what this scene kind of points out too, is there’s been a bit of a shift in the whole business model, right?

[18:00] From like a dirty chop full of. Vertical machining centers with dinosaur devices, auto chasing app here, low margin work to, hey, we’ve changed the way we operate, we’ve changed the way we think. We’ve integrated new technology and we found the work, the higher margin work that fits well with all of that and allows us to operate in this way very profitably.

[18:20] That’s quite a big pivot. Yeah,

[18:30] Nick Goellner: I think the other major pivot is like the. Last sentence. What has now become a genuinely joyful workplace like we’re all participating in creative problem solving. It’s joyful,

[18:40] Dave Vuyk: it’s fun, well, and creative. You have the bandwidth for creative solve, problem solving because you’re not chasing your tail fighting fires all day long, just trying to get ahead.

All that frustration and chaos kind of builds up.

Nick Goellner: Yeah, a hundred percent.

[18:50] Mike Payne: Manufacturers, what is your biggest headache? Is it measuring, improving profitability, gaining efficiencies with AI and automation? Maybe tightening up your cybersecurity, maybe getting your business rate to sell At CLA, their goal is to know you and help you with challenges like these and more.

[19:10] Every day CLA helps manufacturers tap into millions in revenue and cost savings, like one manufacturer that boosted capacity and revenues by 15 to 20%. Visit c connect.com to hear real success stories and learn how you can grow your top and bottom line.

[19:30] Nick Goellner: Alright, scene three. Gary’s leadership team thrives without constant oversight.

[19:40] Bill Heads operations, his daily standups are a hub for problem solving and innovative ideas, and Bob oversees quality, building it into every function of the business. Sarah. Now Iron Wheel’s director of quality and continuous improvement integrates machine monitoring with ERP data for real-time KPIs that are actually connected to the business results that drive Iron Wheel’s premium valuation.

[20:00] Gary can check his phone from anywhere. The system telling the true story flows. Optimize waste is minimized. People are empowered and issues are addressed instantly at the root cause. He can see exactly what’s happening at the shop. But he doesn’t have to because he has complete faith in his team At home, Linda packs for their anniversary, a dream vacation to Dora County, Wisconsin.

[20:30] Cherry orchards, lakeside sunsets, and no shop worries. The ERP keeps watch, Gary says, kissing her and the team. They’re self-starters now as they drive North. Linda dreams aloud of a vacation property there. If we keep this up, Gary Naz. We can do it. His marriage is as revitalized as his shop. I was laughing when I read this like, babe, the ERP keeps watch

Dave Vuyk: what every woman wants to

Eric Nekich: hear.

[21:00] Well win you. Yeah, exactly. Oh, Gary, what do you get? The woman who has. Everything. Yeah. Pro chop. ERP. No,

Nick Goellner: that’s so good. Oh, that’s so good.

[21:10] Dave Vuyk: Yeah. Not a lot to say here. After that I, I mean I quickly Googled Door County, Wisconsin and my goodness is a beautiful, everyone’s got a Google that and just bask in how wonderful it looks.

You could

[21:20] Eric Nekich: also just come here and I can take you there. That’s another we bring our wives too, and let’s make that clear. You know, we could talk about ERP. Yeah, exactly.

[21:30] Nick Goellner: So like one actual business point here, and then we want to get to do county again. Well, and we can all dream about it together. But Bob oversees quality, building it into every function of the business, like quality is.

[21:40] Not a separate silo. It’s built into everything that you do and it starts at sales. I mean, if you’re listening to the machine shop, MBA series that we’re doing on making chips, you’re listening to the Quality Management System episodes and you’re hearing about what I think is a bad idea, is to have like a separate quality department that’s elsewhere, you know, disjointed from what you do at he.

[22:10] We have Josh Green, an incredible guy who is the director of Quality and Continuous Improvement. Same title I gave Sarah. ’cause like continuous improvement and quality are completely intertwined and it’s intertwined in every function of the business. So yeah, to have like a department that’s kind of like its own building over there that like gets a wheelbarrow, full parts and then they have to figure out like what was right and what wasn’t right.

[22:30] We go back to earlier into the story, that’s what they were doing. And now you see it’s kinda like built into everybody’s job. Bob, one of the veteran machinists is overseeing it. And then Sarah is thinking from like a high level, like, okay, how are we getting the right data out of the machine monitoring system, connecting it to the ERP for a true MES and connecting the dots to like what’s happening in the shop and ultimately a business result.

[23:00] That’s the exciting part. Okay, back to door count. So great segue, Eric. Why don’t you tell everybody how that got into the story?

[23:10] Eric Nekich: So we have a tool, we use something that came to me from a coach, uh, by the name of Ray Green. And it’s an exercise we do called Vision Founder Fit. We’re essentially. You know, you’re working with your team to try to identify things that give them energy, things that drain their energy, right?

[23:20] Things that make them feel alive. But then ultimately too, getting some one year, three year, and five year goals on paper, right? Like, what’s the vision? Why are we doing this? Right? It’s not just about a paycheck for most people. For most people, they’re looking for more freedom, more autonomy, a different scenario for their family.

[23:40] So anyway, if you look at my vision, founder fit. You’ll find on there a home indoor county for my family. You know, like a second home if you will. We go up there, right out. We have a condo we rent up there a few times a year and we absolutely love it. As you saw in the pictures, Dave, it’s pretty cool.

That’s how that got in there and Nick was gracious enough to include it in this story, so thank you, sir.

Nick Goellner: You are my Gary.

[24:00] Eric Nekich: I’m the Gary. To your Klaus. It’s more like the other way around though. The Gary to your Linda.

Nick Goellner: No, you know you’re the smart one. I’m trying to Oh,

Eric Nekich: oh,

Nick Goellner: oh, oh,

Eric Nekich: oh, oh.

Nick Goellner: Sorry. Don’t. Hey, don’t make me move.

[24:10] Alright. All right. All cross the line. All right. So instead of just sitting here looking at images of DO County, let’s move out the next scene on Door County, serene Shores. Gary and Linda Toast under its sunset. The leg clapping gently. We’ve earned this. Linda says her hand and his Gary’s phone buzzes with an ERP.

[24:30] Alert. Oh, eee. Steady at 85%. And Bob just submitted an idea that we implemented remotely. The shop never stops, but I can. He smiles. They wander cherry farms and hike Bluffs, envisioning a cozy cabin here funded by iron wills, surging profits. And then Linda says, Gary, if you touch that phone again, that’ll be the last thing you touched for this entire trip

Eric Nekich: that was.

What I removed.

[25:00] Nick Goellner: I do not care. Alright. About your ERP system, stop talking about it.

[25:10] Eric Nekich: Gary sure knows now that he’s got the shop running right, he could really use like some pot to talk to women. Advice, trying relationship. Yeah. I

Dave Vuyk: would honestly just winding up to make a comment like, you follow this process like Gary did you see can be on your phone during a romantic getaway with your wife

Eric Nekich: too.

[25:20] Can we’ll be checking your ERP from Yeah, exactly.

[25:30] Nick Goellner: From your romantic anniversary vacation. Okay, back to the story, Sarah, bill and Bob have it covered. Gary assures her lean automation has freed us all. Again, Linda tells Gary how little she cares about lean automation, and Gary smiles cluelessly and thanks her for her honesty back home.

[25:50] The team’s engagement metric climbs as they tackle space. Corps’s demands, ideas flowing like never before. Gary gets it. Success isn’t just machines operating effectively, it’s people thriving. Creativity unleashed, and culture transformed.

[26:00] Eric Nekich: I love it. We laugh at those, you know, they’re on vacation, they’re enjoying themselves, and it’s easy to laugh at that.

[26:10] But in reality, like. That’s the sort of stress relief I truly believe comes with like owning these process improvements and these systems. Right. Like literally summing it up in the, not having to like, oh my gosh, an audit. Like just there’s a level of calm that does come with this.

Nick Goellner: Yeah.

Eric Nekich: It’s

Nick Goellner: that. Oh my gosh.

[26:30] An audit or I get, I’ve heard how many times have you heard like, yeah, I go on vacation and then I get punished.

Eric Nekich: Yeah. Reaction nonstop.

[26:40] Nick Goellner: You know, I just heard Mike recently talking about all these updates. He sent all these pictures when he was on his trip. I think he was in like Wyoming. Yeah, he was in Jackson or something like that.

[26:50] And he sent all these photos of like all these updates that his team was making when he was gone. ’cause they were like so excited to show him like, we got this. And he was so freaking proud. He’s like, honestly, it choked me up a little bit. And that’s what we all want. You know what? Whether you’re. The guy running the shop while your boss is away and when he gets back he’s gonna be like, wow.

[27:10] Great job, dude. Or you’re the one who’s trying to get away and truly disconnect. That’s a company you wanna work for. Yep. Agree. Thank you for your agreement, friends. You should have disagreed. No, I think it’s way more, that’s a load of crap. You should have went David Goggins and just been like, it’s gotta be stay hard, it’s gotta be miserable.

I think

Eric Nekich: everybody should be bald and have hypertension in their forties. You know,

[27:30] Nick Goellner: move on here. The story circles back with the local manufacturing associations. Tour of Iron will profiling the shop in Modern Machine Shop as a top shop turnaround. Klaus joins Gary as a guide. Striding like conductors through the symphony of Purrs and WS visitors gaw at Elite, yet practical automation flexible robotic loaders, zipping between C CMLs, loading dense pallets with zero point clamping for multi-part cycles in process inspection probes ensuring zero defects, mid run, integrated tool cribs and material management systems feeding 24 7 lights out production.

[28:10] Lean first value stream mapping has mapped our flow. Five s and employee innovation has built our culture, and then automation amplified it. Uh, that’s what Gary explains to the crowd during the tour. Klaus highlights the dual O Eeds equipment at world class levels in employee engagement, tracking continuous improvement contributions.

[28:30] This fosters a culture where ideas drive improvement. Bill demos a loader adjustment from his latest suggestion, and Sarah shares a paperless QMS update in the ERP. The tour ends with awe, iron will’s, legacy of lean automation, proving processes serve people, and it’s not the other way around. Alright, so this all started with Gary attending a tour at Lean Stream where Klaus was looking sharp.

[29:00] And now look full circle. People are actually touring his shop. He’s a top shop turnaround, which I don’t know if that’s a thing, but it is now. ’cause I made it up. Just like my new OEE metric, there’s probably someone in the crowd who’s jealous of Gary, and this could get even weirder. We never know.

Dave Vuyk: It’s probably like different for absolutely everyone depending on the shop.

[29:20] But what do you think would be like a realistic timeline? Like let’s say you bought a shop today that was kind of an iron clunk in its original state. If you were working towards this goal, how long would that take?

[29:40] Nick Goellner: Gosh, that’s a, yeah, obviously like a super loaded question, but I think I’ll be real. Like, I think the hardest part would be the people part.

[29:50] ’cause like let’s say you were this team and you, you acquired a shop. And it was just your job to com completely fix it. Like you can be like, all right, we’re gonna value stream, map this, we’re gonna set it up. So it’s super like paralleled to how we’re already running an elite company. But then like getting the right people in the right seat to work there, I think would be like the longest part.

[30:10] And since you said organic placement, this is why. Hire mfg leaders.com is so legit. I have to shamelessly plug it because like we used to be in this state where we would be like, well, we know that what we have isn’t working, but we just don’t have a person for this role. And then we were like, eh, they just don’t exist.

[30:30] They’re not out there. It’s a needle in a haystack. Everyone who’s grade is employed. Yeah. So. That’s what headhunters do. That’s what recruiters do. They go and find those people and see if they’re not like totally satisfied. Earl’s working somewhere because higher mfg leaders.com had a message in his inbox when he was miserable about the old iron clunk, you know?

[30:50] Dave Vuyk: Well, and that’s relevant to this story, right? Because. Director of quality, Sarah, like was one of the keys to turning things around. Um,

[31:00] Nick Goellner: exactly. And she didn’t even take the job. She came there through this weird, you know, partnership, acquisition thing. But initially she chose a company that looked like Lean Stream instead of a company that looked like Iron clunk, but she was torn between the two of them.

[31:20] And he said, to answer your question, Dave, like in a really roundabout way. I mean, we’ve had, we have this one business at Enig that’s doubled in size for seven years in a row. And the easy part, not that it’s easy, but the easy part is building expansions, filling it with equipment, all that kind of stuff.

[31:30] ’cause we’re basically just replicating what we have in the other facilities. The hard part is like getting new people in, getting ’em to adopt our. Our culture and, uh, getting them to, you know, be that next engine for the next facility.

Eric Nekich: I would say that even a journey of a million miles starts with a single step forward.

[31:50] So there are a lot of falls you can put in play that don’t require. Extra staff, new equipment, hefty investment, right? We talk about this all the time, right? Process reliability. How does that start? Anybody can start, you know, installing the five Ss in their facility. Most people can afford to start like transitioning, work, holding and things like that, right?

[32:20] So I think the worst thing you could do maybe in this situation is look. Try to look at it on a very linear timeline. When does the day come when we’ve caught lightning in a bottle and now we’re iron, well just start moving, you know? Yeah,

[32:30] Nick Goellner: exactly. Yeah, that’s really good point. ’cause like probably the most impactful things they did didn’t really cost any money.

[32:40] Like it doesn’t cost money to learn how to map the flow of a facility and like spend some time studying. I guess it costs time, but like. Spend some time studying lean principles and looking so many resources. Yeah. Yeah. It’s looking introspectively and being like, how far away are we from what I just read?

[32:50] Usually it’s a massive chasm, so start to close it one step at a time.

Eric Nekich: You can do a lot of damage early with a library card. You know

Nick Goellner: I can, man, I love that.

[33:00] Eric Nekich: Is that in Proverbs? It is actually.

[33:10] Nick Goellner: Oh yeah. Good. This is in my, it was in my morning Bible devotional. All right. The final scene here as the visitors depart, Gary stands with Klaus watching the Shop Pulse with energy.

[33:20] We did it. Gary says his voice full of energy and Klaus collapses. You did it with your new mindset. Automation isn’t a trap. It’s freedom. And I have to admit, I stole your overall employee engagement metric at Lean Stream. Iron Wheel thrives. Selective defense contracts feeling their growth. Gary Heads home to Linda, dreaming of Dora County Escapes and a legacy for their children.

[33:40] The lights Di and Gary sleep soundly, but the shop never stops. In manufacturing’s tough world Iron wills stands tall. Proof that lean principles paired with smart automation and engaged people breed not just efficiency, but empowered lives, fruitful careers and unbreakable culture. The automation trap.

[34:00] Shattered. Boom. Mic drop. Mic drop. Very nice. Mic drop. That’s it. That’s it. That’s the story, man. Now let’s make it real. In about a thousand shops all over the country,

Eric Nekich: you know, we’ve all been in shops that have made those transformations, you know, and, and, and it truly is a amazing to watch it happen.

[34:20] Nick Goellner: You don’t have to be acquired or buy a company to do it.

[34:30] Like you were saying, Eric. A lot of these things are free. You can start now. You can study the principles in this narrative and start to implement them. But if you are shopping, like if you wanna build your business through an acquisition. There’s a lot of sense in acquiring an iron clunk and turning it into an iron will ’cause you’re gonna get it for a great price, and if you think you can turn it around and you feel like there’s enough there to work with, it might be easier than just like greenfielding your own project.

[34:50] Dave Vuyk: If you go through this process, take some pictures beforehand and after pictures be pretty cool to watch. In fact, you’d probably be surprised if you reviewed those on a quarterly basis as you’re making progress what that does to kind of fuel your momentum. That’s great, Dave.

[35:10] Nick Goellner: So for the future of the Lights Out podcast, we probably aren’t gonna write narratives and have story time, but I thought that was like a fun way to like humanize and yeah, make like a big anecdote for what we see happening all over the place.

[35:20] I want to get into like. Breaking this down exactly kind of how to implement certain things. I wanna bring in our automation physician, Caleb Mertz, to really get us into the anatomy of some of these systems and exactly how they work and why they work the way they do, and how to, you know, like, decide are we gonna do.

[35:40] Robotic machine tending with a, you know, part loading cobot or are we gonna do some sort of pallet automation? And how and why do we decide those things? When does a custom automation solution make sense? It’s crazy what’s possible. I know this is more of a technology podcast then anything. But you can’t disconnect the technology from the people.

[36:00] And yeah, excited to keep this rolling with you guys.

[36:10] Eric Nekich: Yeah, I mean to what you just said, I mean it that happened in the story, right? We just talked about that a few minutes ago. Where they try to separate the automation from the people and from the overall outcome, and then you end up with just the robot.

[36:20] Nick Goellner: Exactly. Our next episode, we have an awesome guest. I’m super excited to bring on Utah Mat Surah. The fourth generation from the famous Matsuro family who makes some of the most incredible machines on this planet. You might have heard of him. Um, yeah, you may have heard of the Matsuro name. He is doing some things that are, I think, unique to his generation.

[36:40] He’s putting himself out there. I see him on like LinkedIn, you know? In English. I can’t speak a lick of Japanese, but he’s out there to, you know, putting his face out there telling his story. You know, the one thing about Mizu, it’s synonymous with automating machine shops. Like they make incredible machines, but they’re really known for lights out operation and automation.

[37:00] Eric, tell everyone what our friend in Switzerland shared about that Mat Sur that he’s got and Triag.

[37:10] Eric Nekich: I mean he shared a lot about it, I think. Are you referring to that? It basically, because labor cost is so high in Switzerland, I mean literally trying to get as much runtime as you can without human interaction is vital if you’re gonna remain competitive.

[37:30] And so they run that matsuura basically almost 24 7. And they run one shift.

[37:40] Nick Goellner: Yeah, exactly. I was like, the guy’s name is be the owner. And I was like, be at, so like. How long has that machine been running? Lights out and he’s like, well, we’ve run, I think completely six days a week. And that’s been like the past 15 years.

[37:50] I’m like, what? I’m like, man, what about like. Crashes or anything like that. He is like, no, we’ve never had to replace the spindle. Like, we’ve never crashed it. So, so shout out to him. He was so hospitable to you and I, Eric, like we had such a great time over there, but a lot of the, the Klaus in this story is really inspired by that guy who’s taught me a lot about how to run an elite shop, so

Eric Nekich: That’s awesome.

[38:10] Yeah. He also made a great comment about the automation that he gets and the reason he chooses like those pallet pools the way he does, because. Square footage, which I guess it wouldn’t be square footage in Switzerland. So square meters are very, very expensive also. And so really finding systems like that use space intelligently, like I’m so pumped to talk to Udo.

[38:30] I think that’s gonna be just an amazing experience. Seems like someone who’s got a lot to share.

[38:40] Nick Goellner: Yeah. Yeah. It’s exciting. So we’ll uh, see you guys next time. It’s now time to turn the lights out on the automation trap. End this episode. You wanna clap twice for me, Eric,

Eric Nekich: to Gary and Linda.

[38:50] Nick Goellner: I love it. Hey guys, it’s Nick and I’m so excited about Machine Shop Mastery being part of making chips.

[39:00] So my good friend Paul Van Mader, he’s been a partner. He’s been a sponsor, he’s been a friend and he’s been involved with making chips for a long time. And now his podcast that I love is part of our group. Here’s why you should listen to it, Paul. It doesn’t just run a software ERP company for machine shop leaders.

[39:20] Paul was a machine shop leader. He loves machine shop leaders. He’s the one leading the charge to thank all the machinists out there for all the incredible work they do. The best thing about him is he actually knows how to make their incredible work turn into an incredible business. So when you listen to Machine Shot Mastery, you’re gonna hear Paul and his guests talk about exactly what they’ve done to overcome their challenges and make their business successful.

[39:40] You’re gonna get those kinda like heart wrenching stories that tell you what people have been through, things that you can empathize with because you’re a manufacturing leader too. So check out Machine Shop Mastery and learn how to master your machine shop. Hosted by my good friend Paul Van Mader, under the Making Chips Network.

[40:00] Thanks.