44. You Don’t Have a Capacity Problem — You Have a Visibility Problem

[0:00] Inside of ProShop, when you accept, we call it a customer PO, you might call it a sales order, you know, same thing. When you accept an order, the idea is to take that customer order and issue a work order inside of the system so you have something to plan to and schedule and purchase to and work to and build. And part of that process is what we call contract review.

You want to do that and make sure that before you hand that work order off, that you know that, you know, did you get the part rev correct? Is the part number, the due date, the price, are all of those things correct? So you can confirm to the customer that they’re going to get what they ordered and then that’s going to go, that project is going to go through the system with all the right information. And one of the key things that we include, it is a little checklist at the top of the purchase order, is did you verify the shipping address? So often when, you know, we’re talking about again, you know, small to medium manufacturers, right? But they might be selling to primes and there could be three or four shipping locations. So if you accept a job and you don’t know, or you’re looking at the vendor or the customer PO rather, and it says, hey, this needs to go to the warehouse.

Okay, great. Then put it to the warehouse. But if you don’t do that and that work order gets processed and it goes all the way to the end and it gets over to shipping, the person that’s sitting in shipping has to second guess, is this going to the right address? Talent is scarce, experience even more so, driving up costs and sleepless nights.

You may even think to yourself, can I do this? But this new era brings new technology and a different perspective on your operations. What you will hear will turn on a light bulb in your mind so you can turn out the lights in your shop. Get ready to sleep soundly while your shop never stops.

Get ready for making chips lights out with your hosts, Nick Golner, Caleb Mertz, and David Buick. Hello, folks, and welcome to another episode of the Lights Out podcast. My name is David Buick.

[2:28] You’re one of your hosts, and I am joined by my co-host Eric Nekic and Nick with the fancy lamp. Let’s go. You saw me getting that thing set up right there.

I had to look nice because we have an awesome guest today. Yeah, he is definitely worth the extra effort on the studio lighting. And so without further ado, we are welcoming onto the show today Mr. Brian Anderson, Solutions Architect with ProShop ERP.

Hey, Brian. Hey, guys. Welcome, Brian.

Nice to see you at the intro. Yeah. So, Brian, I mean, Solutions Architect, that sounds like a really cool title.

Could you walk us through kind of what your role is with ProShop and what that means? Yeah, yeah. This is actually a new role with the company. We’re, you know, of course, ever evolving, trying to make sure that our clients get everything that they need.

And we identified a little bit of a gap between the sales process and the implementation process. So we developed this role to bridge that gap and make implementation work as smoothly and as seamlessly as possible. So what the Solutions Architects do is understand challenges and problems talked about through the sales process, usually dive into maybe some late stage sales demos, that kind of stuff, and really get into some technical details and then take all that information and move it forward.

[3:54] So we actually build a roadmap, architect, if you will, what the plan is going to be for implementation, identify metrics, if they have specific challenges, are there metrics related to those challenges that we can track and set up. So it’s one sort of continuous workflow from prospect to signing to implementation. And that’s going to help speed up the process and make sure that clients can use ProShop quickly and efficiently and get everything that they’re hoping to get out of it.

That’s awesome. And I mean, I imagine there’s not too many listeners today who haven’t heard of ProShop. But for the uninitiated, the few that are probably out there, could you could you give us a quick summary on what ProShop ERP and the problem it solves for shop owners? Yeah, well, we don’t solve just one problem.

Very often we solve many. You know, ProShop, we built ProShop inside of a manufacturing company, a machine shop. And of course, you know, living the life, experiencing all the problems that I’m sure all the listeners are familiar with, everything from on-time delivery numbers to quality issues to even some staffing issues and scheduling and so on.

ProShop has aspects of it that put everything together and provide visibility. And we do it in in a way that includes regulated industries. So if you have certifications, ProShop has the tools for that.

We’re paperless and digital, so it’s easily accessible. We’ve been browser based since day one for the last 26 years now. It’s not like it’s been ported over and it’s messy and it’s hard to use.

And I know it’s, you know, everybody uses a browser, right? So they can log in, they can figure out the system, whether they’re, you know, a tech genius or somebody that’s coming in off the street, you know, new to the company, you know, ProShop just provides a platform to manage the business from front door to back door and realize all the potential that machine shops actually have. So you can focus on the important things, right? Let the software do all the extra stuff, get rid of those spreadsheets, and then you can focus on making parts and making your customers happy. I don’t know if I could have said that any better.

That’s amazing. I don’t know about you, Nick and Eric, but I mean, it’s a warm June afternoon and I’m just excited that we get to talk about the sexiest topic in manufacturing, ERP software. And I’m not joking, because honestly, I mean, I’ve been a customer of ProShop in the past.

I worked for ProShop in the past. I’m just glad Brian’s here because I’ve witnessed from both those perspectives how knowledgeable he is when it comes to operational process excellence in machine shop settings. I think people might forget that you worked at ProShop.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I just, I think the coolest part of that was just being able to be a customer first and then kind of help guide new customers through that same journey. Brian, I’m sure that never gets old when you’re starting with a shop who’s dealing with some challenges and kind of playing the guide to help them resolve those.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m a machinist by trade. I’ve been a machinist since I was in high school and, you know, cut my teeth in various shops and moved into the shop where we built ProShop.

And I’ve worked in many different roles. So in this day and age, I don’t work in a machine shop, but I get the pleasure of chatting with people that do every day. And, you know, realizing that, you know, while some challenges may be unique, so many of them are just shared challenges across the board and be able to relate and say, yeah, okay, I know what you’re talking about.

You know, let’s jump into that and let’s explore that and see, you know, what your opportunities are and what we can do to help with that. Yeah, quick story, like just along those lines of how you guys help so much and how you have that real world experience. And we’ve been partnered with ProShop with making chips and lights out since I think the beginning of both of them.

And one thing that’s awesome is just like how much you guys really know and care about your real customers. There was a listener that sent me a text yesterday and he was asking questions about ProShop, like I’m a ProShop guy. And he’s like, yeah, we’re kind of struggling to work it into our workflow.

And we’re struggling with this and struggling with that. And I’m like, dude, you should talk to Paul. He’d love to talk to you.

And so I like set up a little group text and they got on a call. And then I got a text back from that young man later in the day, like, hey, thank you so much for connecting me with Paul. We’ve got a plan to help us out and help us figure this thing out.

And I was just thinking, like, how many software companies does the founder reach out to some small shop just because they’re having an issue? That’s like what you get with Paul. And that culture just permeates the whole ProShop team. It’s really awesome.

Yeah, we are blessed with that too. Very accessible. I think everyone at that company, it’s been phenomenal.

Well, thank you. That actually means a lot. I’ve been with the company for a long time and I love hearing that.

I love hearing that. 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 market’s 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. Brian, on that note, would you take us through a quick kind of timeline of your professional journey? Because I know you talked about being a machinist and I know it’s kind of a cool story.

So, I think listeners would probably love to hear about it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

So, as I said, I started machining when I was in high school. And actually, I didn’t set out to be in manufacturing. I was trying to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

And my goal was to go to college, get my A&P license, become an aircraft mechanic, basically, and start working in light aviation. So, in high school, I did machining as a backup. Half my day was at a trade school.

And I got a little certification from the program and did a summer, I wouldn’t call it an internship. It was a summer job working for a machine shop and then went to college. And in three quarters, looking around, realizing what was going on, and talking with guys that were twice my age, and they’re working out on the flight line and all inclement weather and thinking, you know what, boy, those machine shops are always nice and warm.

There’s always good benefits and everything. So, I actually kind of left that and just went and focused on machining. And then from there, again, went through several different machine shops, landed with ProCNC in 2000, came on as a machinist, and we were, I think I was employee number eight, right? So, very small.

But they were poised to grow and wanted to really set a foundation of employees, and I got to be part of that foundation. That was the same year we really were feeling like, you know, ProShop, if you know the ProShop story, we were outgrowing Excel, couldn’t find another solution that made sense. So, hired a web developer, started building ProShop to just connect everything.

And in that timeframe, moving through, working inside of ProCNC with multiple different roles, you know, pretty much on the operations side of the business, you name it, I’ve probably done it. Inspections, receiving, shipping, shop floor, project management, scheduling. In fact, I did scheduling for over 10 years in our company.

I got to be one of the people, as every other employee, that helped design ProShop from a user’s perspective. So, ProShop isn’t built just to manage the business. It’s actually built so everybody in the business can utilize it and effectively do their job better.

And that comes from the idea that everybody needs to have insight into what they’re doing. They need to have tools available. Not every tool works the same for every person, and you have to realize that when you’re building these tools, because, you know, not one size fits all.

It just doesn’t work that way. We, you know, evolved the software over many, many years. 2014, the founders sold the company to an international medical device manufacturer, and I stayed on.

And in that first year, 2014-2015, I transitioned away from kind of the local shop role doing project management and shop management, and I actually moved up to more of a corporate level where I worked at a lot of the different manufacturing facilities, and my title then became resources development manager. So, my job was to go in, understand the things that we made, how we made them, and advise on how to improve those things, whether it was capital investments or automations or what have you. And I got to work in a lot of different areas, a lot that I was familiar with in machining and some that I weren’t, fabrics and silicons and other things that were just different for me.

But I really spent a lot of time refining my understanding of shops and understanding of manufacturing at a much, much higher level. Fast forward a little bit, 2017, and I actually came over to the software company, started working with Paul and Kelsey, and I think at that time I was probably employee number six. So, software as a startup, they came into the market in 2016.

I joined them about a year later. We didn’t have processes then. We did everything, hand to mouth.

Started working in implementation and training and built that out, and then moved over to the sales team in, I think it was 2020, 2021, something like that. Really worked to my previous role, which was product solutions engineer, which was really technical demonstrations on the sales team, until that brought me to my current role of solutions architect, where, again, I kind of help see challenges and see problems and help patch those things and build systems that can be replicated over and over again. So, a lot of my goal professionally is to, this might sound a little funny, I want to work myself out of a job.

I want to make it so the job can be done. You never want a single point of failure. We all know that that’s not really a good thing.

If I can work myself out of a job, I’ve probably performed that job pretty well, and then I can look at the future and look at additional things that might be new challenges for me, that kind of a thing. I love that you use the word systems. I think that that really speaks to the product and everything that we’re about here on the Lights Out podcast.

We always kind of say looking at throughput and productivity versus just individual processes, and it certainly sounds like that’s kind of in your wheelhouse also, Brian. Yeah, yeah. I had a co-worker reach out to me the other day, and he was like, I made a comment on one of our internal channels and said, oh, you know, it’d be really cool.

It was a brand new tool that we were using for something, and, you know, I used it 30 seconds, and I responded, and it was like, hey, it’d be really cool if you could do this also, and a co-worker reached out and was like, yeah, that’s you, Brian, always trying to improve something and looking forward. It’s like, oh, I guess it’s in my blood. I love how, like, comprehensive ProShop is, you know, and I was talking to a business owner the other day in Europe, and he was like, oh, here’s what we use for our ERP system, and I was asking, okay, how does it work? What does it do? And basically, it just produces financial reports.

Like, that’s pretty much the gist of it. It’s more like a financial software than anything else, and then when you hear a ProShop customer, a ProShop user talking about how they use it, it touches, like, every aspect of the business, kind of like you were saying. I mean, it helps the people become more productive.

It’s standard operating procedures. You’re basically inherently compliant with regulated industries if you’re using ProShop the right way, and so that systems word and, like, really subscribing to a standard that’s a very high standard is what I see from the ProShop customers. Yeah, and if you work in a compliant method, going from compliance to certified, the road is much cleaner and oftentimes much shorter and much more attainable, and so, yeah, we try to build our systems with that in mind.

If you have good process, not only does it improve the business, but it also opens up new doors for you. Brian, you’ve sat across from hundreds, if not thousands, of shop owners and had a conversation with them about the challenges they’re facing and how ProShop could be the solution. What’s the problem that they think they have versus the one that they actually have when you’re having some of those conversations? Yeah, shop owners and managers often, they have the disadvantage of not being able to see the forest through the trees, right? So, you know, usually they think, okay, my scheduling is the problem, or I can’t retain the staff that I need to retain, or, you know, our quality isn’t good, or our on-time delivery is not good.

And those are all symptoms, right? Those are all symptoms of something much larger. And if I could boil it down to one word, that’s visibility, right? You don’t often know what’s going on and what’s going on across the business. I mean, if we think about how a lot of companies operate in a more traditional sense, they really hyper-focus in, you know, small areas instead of being able to step back and look at the broader scope.

And it’s natural. It happens because that’s kind of the easiest thing to do. It’s hard to see what’s going on from the front door to the back door unless your tools are built to just do that anyway.

[19:39] And so, when they focus on, hey, I’ve got a delivery problem, they don’t know where to go next, right? It’s saying, hey, okay, we’ve got a delivery problem. I guess I need to work more over time to solve that. Like, that’s not necessarily the right answer.

How do you have a delivery problem in the first place? That’s the answer to the question of, you know, how do I fix my delivery problem is why do I have a delivery problem in the first place? And then after that, you ask more questions, right? And then that’s going to get you to, you know, the root causes of all of these things. And it ends up all being systemic. And again, if you don’t have the visibility, you’re never going to be able to find what is causing those problems in the first place.

[20:25] You just became my favorite guest. Yeah, became my favorite guest all time, lights out history. When all the other guests find out, they’re going to be upset about that.

[20:35] Yeah. Based on what you said there, Brian, you know, in your previous role as a product solutions engineer, you know, you’re basically telling machine shop owners that their process is broken. So, how often does that go well in a first meeting? You know, you want to listen to them, right? Like, that’s the thing.

And I think that’s something that we as a company have figured out to do quite well. There is no doubt, there are unique problems and every company has the unique problems. But so many of the challenges that companies face are actually really common and can be evaluated.

And so, you know, when you’re having conversations with a shop manager or an owner, you really need to meet them where they are. Because, you know, very often you jump on a call and that call, let’s say it was booked a week ago, right? And so, last week when they booked the call with me today, last week their challenge was on-time delivery. But today what happened was they failed a quality inspection and have scrap.

So, when they get on the call today, what we know from our notes from last week when we booked the meeting in the first place is totally different. Their attitude is different and the things that they need to focus on are different. And so, when you start a call, the very first thing you have to do is say, all right, like, you know, let’s get in front of this, let’s make sure that we’re aligned with what we want to talk about.

And we at ProShop have the breadth of knowledge to be able to pivot and talk about those things and meet them where they are and say, all right, let’s design what we have to design to help you solve these problems. Because ProShop is a vast system, it does all kinds of stuff. We help them build out what those, sort of tease out, I guess, what those challenges are and why they’re experiencing them.

And then, you know, once they kind of open up and say, yeah, this is what’s going on and I know that, then the next part of the conversation of saying, well, the reason we’re talking is because you’re doing it wrong. You don’t say it like that, of course, but the reason we’re talking is because you’re doing it wrong. Let me show you a better way to do it.

And of course, ProShop is flexible because not every company does operate exactly the same. You know, some people want to use inventory. Some people want to buy material direct.

Whatever it happens to be, ProShop can accommodate that. We just kind of need to know the details and that can all be brought together. Here’s an example as you’re talking, I’m thinking of like, like learning to see, learning to see the actual real problem.

And your job in many ways is to guide customers into doing that. And Eric, we have this example at the company that we were just talking about this week. I just said he was my favorite.

[23:24] So we have this area where we need to be running unattended. We need to be running through the night. We need to be running lights out.

And we’re struggling to do that with this one product group. And some of the guys from the operations team are like, yeah, you know, problem is we just have a capacity problem. We need more people and we need second shift and third shift to be staffed.

[23:44] And the word capacity problem is something that Eric and I were challenging. It’s like, well, we have plenty of capacity. That machine with the pallet system can run 24 seven.

[23:55] So like our problem isn’t we need to buy another machine or we need to have a second or third shift. Our problem is that we’re not using the machine to its full capacity. What we really have is like a utilization problem.

And so we kind of like got alignment with our with our team members. I’m like, hey, let’s define the problem the right way. And I imagine, Brian, that’s some of what you’re doing in the earlier stages with your customers is like making sure you have the same definition of the problem and you’re kind of shooting at the same target.

Well, to that point, you know, I mean, you know, and I really want to hear your answer here, Brian, but, you know, we’ve been in enough shops to know it can go the other way, too. Right. So many people think that we’re going to throw a robot at this issue and it’s going to solve all the issues and everything in the world will be right again.

And I mean, you can get in just as much trouble going the opposite way. So very interested to hear your input here, because I think it’s something that every shop at one point or another is going to wrestle with. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, robotics are interesting and yet challenging. Right.

We need to be cautious with how we think about robotics. You know, for that note, you know, whether it’s, hey, I’m a small shop, I can’t afford it. I do short run productions or prototype.

It doesn’t work for me. You know, there’s lots of objections to using robotics in machine shops, although I can counter almost all of those, by the way. But maybe we’ll save that a little bit.

But I think, you know, Nick, you really hit on something. You know, let’s define what we’re talking about. If we don’t all agree what we’re talking about, we can’t have a specific conversation about how to deal with those things.

So when we have a clear definition and we all agree that we’re talking about the same thing, then the next thing is, okay, well, what’s, you know, what’s the goal, right? What are we working toward? And then you can kind of back into what the solution is by just clarifying what it is that we’re talking about. It’s no different than taking, you know, a complex five axis machined part, looking at the 3D model and being like, I have no idea how to make this. Well, you start with the first thing.

What’s your material going to look like? And then the next step down is how are you going to get closer to that shape? And then you just, you work your way into it. It’s, you know, every problem that we deal with is going to really kind of be structured in the same way. Robotics are a great way to deal with and manage utilization.

They can be scary for a lot of companies that don’t use them, because like I said, you know, there’s the investment, you know, the capital investment, the fear that, hey, if we bring in a robot, it’s going to replace me, right? If I’m a machinist or an operator out there, right, that’s a real thing. We don’t want that to happen. And I would argue that the vast majority of manufacturers that we talk to, you know, small to medium machine shops have no interest in replacing their operators and employees with robots.

That’s just not even part of the conversation. What they’re trying to do is better utilize what they can. And, you know, with robotics, there’s the 3Ds, right? If it’s dull, dirty, or dangerous, robots are probably a good option for that.

Or let’s actually pull that back. Not even robotics, but automation, right? If we’re talking about a turning center, hey, why are you manually loading those bars? Get a bar feed. Why are you manually unloading those parts or a parts unloader, right? Like that’s, I mean, they’re robots, essentially.

They’re just, you know, job-specific robots. And all of those things are designed to help and reduce the 3Ds to make sure that we can keep people doing what they’re good at doing. And yeah, that’s a, I mean, so one thing I say all the time is like, it’s the, we’ve got to be more concerned about like people taking a robot’s job.

And a robot’s job is a dull, dirty, dangerous, monotonous, boring, mindless task that if you love and respect your people, you shouldn’t have them doing that anyway. They’re capable of so much more. Yep, exactly, exactly.

[28:07] But, you know, on the topic of throughput, as it pertains to ProShop, you know, I think if you’re looking at throughput as a whole shop metric, not a per machine metric, what I think is awesome about ProShop is how it kind of actively helps to eliminate the reasons why you might have a throughput problem in the first place in terms of, hey, I can’t find work instructions. I can’t find the right gauge. I can’t find the right tooling.

These are some of the reasons why a manufacturing or a machine shop specific ERP can beat the heck out of a more generic ERP system because those kinds of things have been thought about and built into the solution. So I don’t know if you can speak to that, Brian, just a little more, just what some of those kind of cool features of ProShop are that help to eliminate these common reasons why a machine might sit idle. Like my European customer who’s like, yeah, I have an ERP.

And it’s like, what? All that does is produce financial reports. That’s not really an ERP. Not like what I know from ProShop.

[29:15] Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, when we get into the details, everything about how you need to make the job can be documented. And again, you know, ProShop is flexible.

Sometimes you’re not actually documenting something because it’s a prototype job. You’re giving it to your, you know, 25-year senior machinist and he’s just going to knock it out. And, you know, that’s a great world to be in.

But when we have a plan and you execute to that plan, you’re probably going to have a high likelihood of success. If you don’t have a plan and you build it as you go, well, everything that you could have planned out, you know, every problem that you could have planned out of the process, now you’re going to be dealing with in real time, which means that some of those problems are going to be scrap. Some are going to be expedited tool purchases or shipping or some other problem.

So if we think about the ability to plan a project, get in and understand every step of the way, okay, yeah, we have to put a machining op here. And then after that, we’re going to put a deburr operation because it can’t be done at the same place or the same location. We have to send it out.

Well, when we send it out, the first thing we have to do is inspect it because it’s been machined and we want to make sure we’re not going to go get a bad part anodized. So we’re going to have an outgoing inspection step that checks for scratches and all that kind of stuff. And if you don’t put that in the plan, the machinist is going to be like, all right, I’ve got all these parts and then hand them over to shipping.

And then shipping is going to maybe ship them or not know what to do next. So, you know, with the tools inside of ProShop, you can lay out all of those things. And within each one of those steps, then you can get into the details.

If you have a cutting tool list for the machine, load it up. That’s going to educate the purchasing agent. So do we have the right tools for this? You can juxtapose that against the schedule.

What day do we need the tools and the material to arrive? So then the purchasing agent, when they’re going to buy stuff, they don’t have to get everything here tomorrow or on the next available truck. They say, oh, this is going to happen later in June. I can put off delivery for a week or two.

And that helps with inventory controls. It helps with cash flow. And to really make sure then that you’re getting the stuff that you need at the right time.

Hey, if you’re talking about production jobs, what’s the torque spec for that fixture, right? And, oh, well, go find Ted. He was the last one that ran it. OK, sure.

Shops do that all the time. Or, well, shoot, it was here. It was on a Post-it note.

[31:43] Paper documents can get lost. And we all know that anytime 10 minutes in a shop, a piece of paper, it’s covered in oil. It’s what happens.

And probably coffee cup stains and the like, right? So we bring it into a digital environment where it can be tracked and easily accessed by the person that needs it. And then they can use that to perform their job at whatever stage their job or their role requires them to execute that. But I’ll go a little bit further here.

[32:16] And when you plan out what the process is going to be, how a project is going to run, you give yourself opportunity to look for things that you might not otherwise see. So let’s talk about unattended running, right? Whether it’s a pallet machine or not. In the traditional sense, when we say, hey, we want to run that machine tonight when we leave.

[32:40] OK. So that means that I need to prep the project. It’s an hour-long cycle.

So we’ll get an extra hour tonight if we load up one more part right before we walk out the door. Again, no pallet machine here. Just like, hey, we’re going to get an extra hour of cycle time.

[32:56] Cool. No problem. That’s assuming, though, that, OK, what we’re doing is we’re going to do the entire machining operation, everything.

We’re going to rough it. We’re going to finish it. We’re going to put all the holes in and do the deburr, all that kind of stuff.

[33:10] And so we get that hour. OK, that’s great. But if you now instead have a full plan of how you’re going to manufacture that and then you identify that, oh, man, if I could run this job tonight for four hours instead of just an hour, I’m going to get four hours to do that.

But I can’t because I don’t have an automatic loader. I don’t have a robot loader. I don’t have a pallet.

[33:31] So what do I do? Oh, no problem. I’ll split the job. I’ll put in an operation for roughing the parts and then I’ll have an operation for taking those rough parts and finishing them and doing whatever.

And that needs to be done with somebody on staff because that part of the program is only 20 minutes. The roughing takes 40 minutes. So then what you do, you tool up your machine, you throw in a couple of extra vices.

And now pretty soon you’ve got six parts at 40 minutes apiece and you’re running them through and you get that extra several hours of time. Now, it’s only roughing. You’re not going to come in in the morning with finished parts, but it is all time that you just took out of your schedule for when you’re staffing the machine live.

Right. And if you have that ability to see what the plan is and then quickly on the fly, just rearrange things that opens up opportunities to actually say, oh, well, I can utilize my machine. Yeah, I got to spend a little bit more time programming because I got to break apart the program.

It’s not that much time. Right. And that time can happen offline.

Right. So it doesn’t have to have the machine sitting and waiting. And so then, you know, we get the opportunity to come up with creative ways to increase our utilization and sometimes without actually having much in terms of a capital investment with pallets and robots and all kinds of other things.

[34:52] So that’s where, again, that visibility, I think, comes back into play is because once you start seeing it. Doors start opening, opportunity starts showing itself. Yeah, you’re you’re really making an investment in your leadership and in the decision making of your team members when you give them that visibility.

And as you’re talking, I’m just thinking like these are all just lean principles. This is like the theory of constraints. You know, what’s the what’s the herby in the process and how do we you know, that’s as fast as you’re going to get there because the whole chain needs to cross the finish line.

And so it’s like I think sometimes and tell me if you feel this is true, people might look at a software company and think, hey, we’re we’re in the trenches, we’re in the shop floor, we’re we’re the manufacturers. You know, these are just software guys. Do they really understand what we’re going through? And then you listen to you and everything you just explained, you’re like, you’re going to run a shop a lot better if you take this advice.

So how do you see that? I mean, do you do you ever see like you have to kind of overcome that hurdle with your customers? Like, hey, I’m not just some some guy selling software, you know, that’s some sass, bro. I’m yeah, I’m an actual real shop guy. I think in my I think in my experience, you know, I try to shoot straight.

Right. I think people just pick up on it. Right.

I don’t need to convince anyone. You know, I can I can talk apples and apples. It’s it’s honestly, it’s when we talk with people that are maybe not manufacturers.

Right. They’re they’re the accountants. Right.

[36:31] They’re the bookkeepers. And, you know, they’re they’re hugely important to the business. Of course, you know, every every job, every role is important.

But if they’re not fully in the loop, they don’t fully understand the manufacturing aspect of the business. They’ll they’ll not understand the value of the way that we perceive things. And they’ll focus more on, like, inventory transactions and, you know, how we calculate profit and loss and that kind of stuff, which, again, all important things.

But, you know, you’re not going to have an inventory transaction or calculate profit loss unless you can actually make something effectively. Right. You’re like making me laugh, Brian, because you’re heading so close to home for me and Eric right now.

We’ve been having all sorts of conversations about inventory adjustments and all these shenanigans happening in the in the spreadsheets in the background. It’s like, let’s just make the parts right. Let’s just make the parts like when people aren’t there, like.

Making sure everything goes well, you know, so good. You’re clearly someone who’s been on both sides of this in the shop and then obviously more on the systems and the tech side now. But that’s really beneficial.

I have to believe that the fact that, like, you were number eight at one company and number six at another, like that really gives you a pretty interesting lens when it comes to these manufacturing challenges, because you kind of grow up with them to a certain extent. Right. Yeah, you live these things and, you know, some lessons are hard learned and you don’t forget those.

You know, we’ve all had challenges. We’ve all made bad decisions. Thankfully, that’s not what defines us.

Right. It’s how we work through those things. It’s our successes that typically define us and our successes are built off of failure often.

[38:18] And so when you live through it and you can step back, say, all right, like that didn’t go as I wanted it to, but utilize that, make lemons out of lemonade or lemonade out of lemons, rather, you know, you can step back and you can really build something that is actually arguably way more important than the one thing that you failed on was. Right. And that is system, that is plan, that is tools to make sure that those types of things don’t happen again and that you can improve your process over time.

And it doesn’t have to be major. Right. We’re talking about little things.

Right. We go to work every day. Every day we have the opportunity to do something small.

But if you do that every day, then pretty soon it adds up. And, you know, Brian, that’s such an interesting point. You know, we the Goldner way, that’s what we call it here.

[39:16] You know, headache and AME and it’s, you know, the whole thing is like around just trying to get one percent better every day. And I wonder, like, do you find it common? Like there’s a lot of shops that are just trying to catch lightning in a bottle and it’s almost having like a negative impact on growth. And yeah.

Yeah. You know, let’s let’s do the big stuff first. That sort of a thing.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, there’s a time for that. I think changing ERP could be one of them.

Right. That’s that that lightning strike moment where we want to get in and say, all right, you know what, let’s rip the bandaid off and get it all done. You have the opportunity.

And there is value to that, because in the idea where if you are making big changes, you can energize people, get people excited. And so there is opportunity built into that because you can get some really good results with the context of having some excitement building around that. But what so many people miss is just that opportunity to fix things.

Right. You know, one of the things that rubs me wrong, it gets me in my core is when I go into a facility and and, you know, I talk to somebody and this could be pro shop clients as well. And I’ll be chatting with somebody and asking, you know, why do you do things that way? Why are you doing it that way? And they’ll say, well, that’s the way I’ve always done it.

It’s not a great answer. I get it. We’ve been doing it this way for 20 years and we’re not changing today.

[40:53] Why the profanity, Brian? It’s just, you know, that’s that’s not a good reason. Right. I mean, if you tell me, well, I have to do it this way because if I don’t do it this way, the person that gets the job next is going to have this problem.

Then I know that I can actually move to the next person and say, hey, tell me why you need that person to give you this so you can do what you need to do. And then, you know, again, that’s that ask why a bunch of times, right? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? And, you know, Nick, you’re right. I think that you really nailed it on the head.

[41:27] I’ve done a lot of reading. We did a lot of training in ProCNC in the early days for lean manufacturing, reading theory of constraints, that kind of stuff. And yeah, this is all, you know, these aren’t my ideas.

This is just me being or having spent time learning about these things and then and then actually trying to use them and implement them and learning from my mistakes and so on. If you run a job shop, manage a job shop or spend your day trying to squeeze more output out of the same people, machines and hours, this one’s for you. During IMTS week, the job shops, workshop and networking reception takes place on Tuesday, September 15th.

This half day program is built specifically for shop professionals like us who want practical ideas that they can actually take back to the floor. You’ll hear how other shops are reducing operational costs, improving output, applying AI in shop ready ways and implementing automation where it makes sense. Plus, you’ll get a detailed industry outlook and the chance to connect with other job shop leaders who are solving the same problems you are.

If you’re walking the aisles, get in the room. Learn more and register at IMTS.com. Let’s go to an example of like something that most people would think of as like a major investment or some sort of expensive investment in increasing capacity. But maybe you have a like a your favorite story of just a couple small 1% better adjustments that really unlocked capacity for one of your customers or maybe just an example from the industry.

[43:09] Yeah, we have one and if you’ve sat on a demonstration with me or if the listeners have sat on a demonstration, they may have seen me do this. Inside a pro shop, when you accept, we call it a customer PO, you might call it a sales order, you know, same thing. When you accept an order, the idea is to take that customer order and issue a work order inside of the system.

So you have something to plan to and schedule and purchase to and work to and build. And part of that process is what we call contract review. You want to do that and make sure that before you hand that work order off, that you know that, you know, did you get the part rev correct? Is the part number, the due date, the price, are all of those things correct? So you can confirm to the customer that they’re going to get what they ordered.

And then that’s going to go that project is going to go through the system with all the right information. And one of the key things that we include, and it’s a little checklist at the top of the purchase order, is did you verify the shipping address? So often when, you know, we’re talking about, again, you know, small to medium manufacturers, right? But they might be selling to primes and there could be three or four shipping locations. So if you accept a job and you don’t know, or you’re looking at the vendor or the customer PO rather, and it says, hey, this needs to go to the warehouse.

Okay, great, then put it to the warehouse. But if you don’t do that, and that work order gets processed, and it goes all the way to the end, and it gets over to shipping, the person that’s sitting in shipping has to second guess, is this going to the right address? Do I need to call the customer? Do I need to call the project manager and verify that it’s right? And, you know, that’s like, you know, less than five minutes. Let’s just say it’s five minutes for that job to get out the door.

But if that’s five minutes on every job you ship, by the end of the week, that’s a pretty big chunk of time, right? So, you know, just literally, you’re looking at the customer PO, you see the delivery address right there, you select it out of the list, and then everything else is going to happen the way it’s going to happen. And that only takes seconds. So if we take these small little things throughout the system, and we add them up, we can see a very realistic change in timeline and efficiencies, because, you know, you just take little slivers at each point, and you start improving on them.

And it all adds up for every single project that we work on. And that’s where it seems subtle. But having a system that really, truly operates for everybody in the company, that’s where things start to make a difference.

[45:45] And it’s not just about the bookkeepers, and it’s not just about accountants, and project managers, and other people that are kind of at the administrative level of the business. It’s everybody that can make improvements in the process at any point. I wish my brother Noah was in this call, because you’re like speaking his language.

You know, there’s value stream mapping, and people have usually seen that, like, if you’ve studied any form of lean, and then we kind of, in the Goldner way, which is kind of our operating system, it’s not software or anything, it’s just how we how we do everything we do. We’ve got something called a process success map. And so we go to the furthest downstream process, like you, you mentioned shipping, that’s the last thing before it goes out to the customer.

[46:30] And we ask that person, what does, like, perfect inputs to you look like? Like, what is an A plus grade for how you want to receive whatever the finished product, so it’s perfect, ready to ship? Like, everything happens that day, you had a great day. And so the furthest downstream process gets to define what success looks like. We agree, we say, hey, that’s good.

That becomes the standard. Now you move one step back, do it again. And so you kind of start at the end, and you go all the way back through.

[47:01] And now everyone’s defined exactly how they want to receive the work. We call them customers, even though they’re not buying anything from us, they’re our internal customer. And we’re making our customer successful every step of the way.

And ultimately, that really helps the end customer, the external customer, the people who actually give us the money. And so as you’re describing the way you guys think, and the way your software works, I’m just like, imagining Noah being like a total fanboy. Yeah, he’d be like, Oh my gosh, I could design PSMs in ProShop, and it would be so great.

So yeah, I really love hearing that. Yeah, no, the internal vendor and internal customer idea, definitely, you know, utilize that a ton in our shop and in building the software, because it’s true. I mean, you know, what I output, it goes to somebody, they’re going to consume it.

So they are a customer, even if they’re not paying me, right? Yeah, right. You know, they’re part of the organization. And that’s, you know, that’s similar for how we can think about everything that happens.

And, you know, one of the common areas that we hear about is, hey, I have trouble in scheduling, I need I need, you know, a bunch of help with scheduling. Scheduling is one part of the machine. It’s one cog in the machine that keeps everything running.

If you’re planning or you’re purchasing, is it done correctly? Well, scheduling isn’t going to work correctly either, right? So it’s not, it’s not just one element of operating the business that makes the difference. It’s everything that works together. And, you know, just like every machine that we operate every day, all of those systems have to work in unison to get the right results.

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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. This is the Lights Out podcast.

And I was just talking before we hit record about how I’ve been using like Claude and co-work and stuff. And I’ve got this concept I’ve been working on for helping me produce like a newsletter, you know, help me, Eric and Dave, we’re all collaborating on this newsletter and I’m workshopping some titles for it. And one of them is like when the lights go out, like almost like a, you know, horror film or like a scary, scary story or whatever.

And all the things that can happen and that we need to think about and all the problems that can happen when nobody’s there. Let’s connect that to ProShop and your solution. Like how does good data and that visibility you were talking about help you trust a machine running unattended? Yeah.

So when you collect data, you can do something with it. And it is true that we can collect vast amounts of data. So ultimately we need to do something effective with it.

And there’s lots of ways to do that. And of course, you know, we’re working on new ways. Stay tuned for what that looks like.

You guys, let’s try to pull it out of you, man. Yeah. Your listeners are, if they’re willing to stay in tune with ProShop for the next very short little while here, we’ve got some pretty exciting stuff coming.

Being able to take that data and evaluate that and have it help us make decisions, then we can improve what our process is. And that means then that we can improve things that are difficult to do otherwise, or make us feel uncomfortable, right? Which is like, hey, I want to run that machine unattended, but I don’t know if I can depend on the tool life to do so. Which, by the way, I do believe the vast majority of what I’ll say machine shops in our customer space don’t utilize the tools that are already built into their machines for things like, you know, tool life management and so on.

Just don’t think that they’re doing it. I think there’s an untapped capability there that could help them a lot. Not even anything to do with the ERP, by the way, but that’s maybe another topic.

Yeah, we at SlyTech could talk about that for hours with you, but, you know, the understanding where your tool life is at and how to replace it before it gets too risky near the end of the life and things like that. That’s right in our wheelhouse. Yeah, but from an ERP perspective, if I can look at previous jobs and know, okay, I’m making 100 parts and I went through three roughing end mills, so that means I can make approximately 35 parts with one roughing end mill.

[52:13] How many have I made so far? Well, I’ve made 20. That means if I set the machine to run the night, I’m probably only going to be able to get 15 parts out, depending on the time frame, right? So you can actually go back and know from previous runs what your lives are and, you know, what did you spend on that tool? We can say even things like, what kinds of inspections have we captured? And is that capturing whether or not the parts are good? Because, of course, you know, if we could 100% inspect every dimension, great, that’d be awesome. But realistically, we probably don’t want to do that.

That’s a huge amount of time and for very little benefit in most cases. So let’s build up an inspection plan that we can deliver to the operators and they can execute and they can say, hey, I’m checking part number 16, have it automatically tell them what are the key dimensions to inspect? Is it, okay, I have to inspect this one now and then, you know, the outside diameter on the next part, whatever it happens to be. And building out those plans, we can then review those, know that the feature is we’re getting creep, we need to comp our tools, we need to change our inserts, you know, ProShop allows for different levels or different ways of approaching a process and measuring things, whether it’s an actual measurement and inspection or what we spend on tooling or even how much time did somebody spend loading the machine, right? If we know that the cycle time is 45 minutes and I only get one part an hour, well, we know that it’s a 15 minute load.

Well, geez, that might seem like a long time. What do I need to do there, right? So you can then capture that data and then evaluate, oh, well, we should probably revamp the fixture because they’re using feeler gauges every time they’re loading the part to make sure it’s in the right place, which probably isn’t the best way to do it. So, hey, we, you know, we’ve got to make a thousand of these things.

Let’s just remake the fixture so we don’t have to do that anymore. And we can cut that down to sub 10 minutes. And then we’ve saved a bunch of time or whatever happens to be lots and lots of opportunities when you have the tools at your disposal.

And that’s what ProShop is really good at, is giving you the tools that you can utilize to see those things and measure them. Because if you can measure it, you can affect it, right? Yeah. And that’s what, that was the point I made about this is really an investment in leadership and the strategic leadership, more information, better decisions from your leadership.

And that’s not just like the leadership of the company, like the owners and the presidents and the executives, like everyone can be a leader, but it’s really hard to lead when you, when everything’s a swag gas. I’m a huge proponent of investing in your people, everybody across the board. I don’t care if all they’re doing is taping boxes and shipping them, you know, you can invest in that person and that is better for the company as it is better for them as well.

Again, maybe a different topic, maybe over a beer sometime, you know, that’s kind of it. Yeah. No, absolutely.

Everything comes down to values and how you treat people at the end of the day, even, even all the tech conversations on Lights Out, it seems to always come back to that. Yeah. I’m excited about the latest technology is giving us, I mean, you know, when we think about artificial intelligence, just AI in general, you know, it can be, it can be daunting, right? You know, I tend to be an early adopter for a lot of technology and have been my whole life.

I’m jumping in, I’m using multiple AI tools in my daily workflows. I’m using cloud co-work and I’m using cloud code to do certain things to help me do my things more efficiently. What we want to do is we want to be able to think of AI as a tool to democratize data, right? Because the data’s there, right? We know that there’s tons of data out there, but, but accessing it and doing something useful with it can be challenging and AI can really help level the playing field with that.

If you know how to ask it, I mean, not to say that it doesn’t do some weird things sometime and give you some results that are definitely not true. It does, you know, with the right lens, the right prompts, we can take what we know or what data we have and help build something useful with it that’s going to help educate us moving forward. And, you know, I don’t think it’s to be feared.

I think it’s to be utilized in a way that will, will improve what you’re doing with the right lens on it. Of course, always, always that caveat there. Yeah, absolutely.

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like I just got a masterclass on process improvement among other things. What do you guys say we, we sum up this episode and, and drive it home? Yeah, you’re the best man. You’re the closer, as I always say.

Bring us home, David. I would say, I love how topical this episode was for us personally. I think that doesn’t happen a lot, but it’s, it’s, you really was great having you on.

[57:17] We had like a ton of topics that are like we’re dealing with in real time. So thank you so much, Brian. Yeah.

That’s why I, there’s a couple of times where I was just like laughing and smiling, looking at Eric through the camera. Cause it’s like, well, we talked about that today. Yeah, I think, yeah, super relevant.

Yeah. It’s been, it’s been great. I, as you can tell, I like, I like talking about this stuff.

It’s, it’s my jam. Yeah. When, when we see you hopefully at IMTS, we, we can, we can pick up and keep it going for sure.

[57:51] Awesome. Just try to stop me. Well, until that time, that is a wrap for today’s episode of the Lights Out podcast.

Brian, thank you so much for being on with us. You made a genuinely compelling case that the path to running in the dark might just start with getting your shop organized in the light. Where can people find out more about ProShop, Brian? ProShopERP.com. LoveyourERP.com. I know that’s a weird statement, but if you talk to our clients, they’ll, they’ll bolster that.

[58:27] They love the ERP. Yeah. That’s awesome.

[58:30] Well, we’ll make sure that those links are in the show notes, but to everyone listening, if you got even one idea out of this episode that you can use next Monday morning, do me a favor, hit follow so you don’t miss the next episode, leave us a rating and a review. That’s one of those things that actually helps other machine shop folks find the show and drop a comment telling us your shop’s biggest throughput killer. And we’ll read all of those if you’re willing to share them with us and share this episode with that one guy in your shop who thinks that automation is just a fad because it’s obviously not.

We are the Lights Out Podcast, part of the Making Chips Network. On behalf of Dave, Nick, and Eric, this show’s hosts, keep those spindles turning and turn your lights out. Thanks, folks.