Working in the machining industry I hear the term “lean manufacturing” mentioned a lot. But what does the word “lean” really mean in this context? And how do you implement it in your company? 

To help me clarify these questions, I interviewed Matthew Rassi, founder of Twenty Helping Hands. He’s a lean manufacturing consultant who has been working in the manufacturing industry for over two decades.

Matthew says that the first step for a company to adopt lean manufacturing is to bring all of its people together to exchange ideas, from the CEO to the person sweeping floors. 

In his experience, the people on the shop floor often have valuable insight for solving problems that upper management hasn’t even considered. The collaboration process also motivates employees because they feel heard.

Matthew and I talked about supply chains and limiting waste, but the most important concept I learned in our conversation was the lean principle of running directly at problems instead of dodging them. How on earth do you do that? It helps to have someone like Matthew to guide you on that path.

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Interview Highlights

Noah Graff: How do you define lean manufacturing?

Matthew Rassi: It’s a framework and a structure that helps you find the waste (in an organization) and remove it.

But it’s not just tools and it’s not just a framework. It’s also the mindset, the way that we think about things, concepts such as running towards problems instead of hiding them or hoping nobody finds them.

Actually admitting to each other, I made a mistake. I want you all to know about it, so you don’t make the same mistake. It’s a very tough culture to change.

Noah: Do you think humans are naturally inclined to try to avoid problems rather than to solve them proactively?

Matthew: I would agree with that. We don’t like pain. And we’re very proud individuals. It takes a humility. It takes a recognition that there’s something that’s bigger than me here. As you step into that role, it’s very freeing. You no longer have to be perfect.

Noah: What makes manufacturing companies reach out to you for your services?

Matthew: Their manufacturing is faltering. They have very long lead times. Their costs are going up. They’re fearful that they’re going to continue losing people or they cannot get enough people. 

My moniker is accelerating your output without hiring more people, without buying new machines. And that acceleration can be both in increased output or it can be in reduced lead time. And both of those can lead to increased sales.

Noah: What’s the first step when you’re brought in to consult companies?

Matthew: I come in and do a discovery visit. I need to spend three to four hours with the owner and with those on the floor walking through their process to understand what they are doing.

We’ll look at areas that we think are going to need improvement. And, what we want to do is start getting engagement from employees. The more information you share with your team, the better decisions you are going to make. 

Noah: What type of information do you share with your team?

Matthew: For example, “Our revenues are about here. Our profit level is about here.

We’ve been continually declining or we’re growing. Our lead time is too long or not long enough. These are our biggest customers. These are our three biggest quality issues.

Whatever the situation is, they need to know where you’re at in the market.

Noah: Do you encourage employees to share ideas?

Matthew: We want to start sharing. Sharing information,  opportunities, responsibilities, ideas. Ideas is a big one. You need an influx of ideas. Not every idea is a great idea, but every idea is good and should be recorded, and ideas build on each other. 

You start getting engagement. And your people are not just going to go down the street for a dollar an hour or more. They will feel listened to. They’re seeing improvements. This is how we start to make progress.

Noah: It must be hard to get everyone on board with the new way of running things.

Matthew: Typically in an organization, you’ll have about 25% of folks who will be on board and excited because finally there’s change and they’ve been begging for it.

And then about half the folks will kind of go along either way. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, they weren’t too committed. 

And then you have the bottom 25% who are just resistant to change no matter what. As long as they are not poisoning the rest, those people can be brought along as well. But if they start poisoning, then you have to make changes. (Think of) people as the sensors of an organization’s (progress).

For more information about Matthew Rassi’s services and a free Starter Handbook about Lean manufacturing, go to his website, https://www.twentyhelpinghands.com/.

 

Listen or watch the podcast to get the real impact of this interview!

 

The post Escaping Your Comfort Zone with Lean Manufacturing, Matthew Rassi-EP 216 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

In honor of this weekend’s PMPA National Technical Conference, we’re resharing a podcast we did last year with Elliott May, engineer at BME in Port Huron, Michigan. BME builds original custom attachments for cam multi-spindles. They also rebuild Acme-Gridley screw machines.

Elliott and I talked about a lot of fascinating things in this interview. How to keep old mechanical beasts relevant, getting young people into machining, and what it’s like to work closely everyday with your dad—who’s also the boss.

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Main Points

Custom Attachments

Elliott says that customers come to BME when they want to make a part on a cam screw machine but can’t figure out how to make it happen. The company offers an extensive line of proprietary attachments such air operated pickoff assemblies, rotary recess attachments, and synchronized slotting/milling attachments. 

Elliott’s father, Brett, started BME 15 years ago. Nine years ago, Elliott started working at the company at age 14. His first job was cutting steel bars with a bandsaw. Later he worked in shipping and receiving, and then graduated to assembling attachments for multi-spindles. After studying engineering for a few years he began working in tandem with his father engineering attachments. Generally they are tasked with tweaking attachments already in their product line to suit the jobs of specific customers. A few times a year, they are called upon to engineer more novel devices, when a customer’s job calls for something special that they haven’t invented yet.

Elliott says his father, Brett, is the “idea guy.” Brett analyzes what he wants to accomplish, then Elliott puts the idea down on paper (often CAD). They both are constantly putting their heads together to solve problems. It’s not uncommon for the two to stand at several whiteboards for long periods of time, brainstorming various drawings, trying to work out a solution. Elliott says they have a good chemistry at work, and over the years his role has changed as his knowledge and skills have grown. He admits that when he was younger and less experienced he may have been too overconfident in his ideas and he had to be put in his place. But nowadays, it sounds like he is genuinely challenging his dad in the engineering room.

Acme Rebuilding 

As a used machinery dealer myself, selling old cam multi-spindles, I grilled Elliott on a lot of the same questions we grapple with at Graff-Pinkert, our family business. I asked him if rebuilding old multi-spindles from the ground up, particularly Acmes, was a good business to be in. Graff-Pinkert still refurbishes some cam multi-spindles such as Wickmans and Davenports, but the work we do is much less comprehensive than that of BME. Also, we stay away from doing a lot of work on Acmes. The parts for Acmes can be very expensive, and the Acme rebuilding process is extremely labor intensive.

For a rebuilt Acme, BME charges several hundred thousand dollars. The price depends a lot on what kind of turnkey the customer requires, if any. Elliott says the rebuilding and attachment businesses compliment each other. Often the rebuilt machines come equipped with BME’s proprietary attachments. He says he believes the cam multi-spindle business has a significant future because the machines are often still the best option for high volume jobs, assuming companies have the personnel to run them.

Elliott May, Engineer at BME

Young People in Machining 

I asked Elliott why it’s a struggle to get young people to go into manufacturing and an even greater struggle to get them to run old multi-spindles. He says manufacturing has to shake off its bad reputation from the past, as having a top-down style of management that doesn’t care about the needs of employees. He suggests that if manufacturing employees could count on a clean, pleasant work environment, and felt supported and heard by management, more people would want to go into the field. 

Working with His Dad

I was very curious to get Elliott’s perspective about working closely with his father, as I also work with my father. I asked him if he felt like he was in a strange position as someone who is not the boss, but also not a normal employee either. It’s a position that I’ve often analyzed for over a decade. 

Despite being only 23, Elliott says he has the advantage of having the longest tenure at BME of all its employees. He also says because of his experience and confidence in his ability, he earns the respect of his coworkers. I remarked to him during the interview that he often referred to his dad in the third person as “Brett,” rather than “my dad.” He says it’s a useful way to draw less attention to himself as the boss’s son, even if everybody knows he is. I personally have seldom used this strategy because referring to my dad as “Lloyd” just feels strange. But I admit that I sometimes refer to him as “the boss,” or some other euphemism, when I’m talking about him at work.

It was Brett’s idea for me to ask Elliott to be on the podcast. I could genuinely feel his enthusiasm about the idea when he suggested it to me over the phone. I joked to him that it seemed like he was really “kvelling” about his son excelling in the business. He easily inferred the meaning of my Yiddish. 

After interviewing both Brett and Elliott, it’s clear to me that both men share a passion for the nuts and bolts, and working together.

Question: What’s something important you learned from your father?

The post Innovating New Attachments for Screw Machines, with Elliott May—EP 143 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

I’m dealing with a customer right now who seems interested in some CNC machines Graff-Pinkert has for sale. They told me they needed this type of machine ASAP! And these machines are RARE!

They even said they had a big job for the machines already and they are on the “verge of pulling the trigger any day now.”

But then they stopped returning my phone calls. They’re ghosting me, and my crock brain is getting the best of me.

I know these kinds of scenarios have happened to most of you listening to this, either in your professional life or your personal life.

And no matter how successful you are, you have to be very strong mentally to deal with this problem in the right way.

As machinery dealers buying and selling equipment all over the world, this happens to us at Graff-Pinkert, constantly.

Today, I’m going to tell you how I deal with customers like the one I just mentioned, people who stop returning my calls or seem to be just stringing me along. So the next time it happens to you, you won’t go crazy and hopefully you’ll make the deal in the end.

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Interview Highlights

As I just mentioned, right now I’m working on a deal for some expensive CNC machines. It’s a significant deal. Not the biggest one Graff-Pinkert has ever had, but it’s up there.

It seemed like they really wanted the machines. We worked with this customer for different deal a little while back, so I think they like us and trust us.

I went back and forth with the customer for a month. Closing the deal seemed to be getting nearer. But for the last few weeks, they’ve stopped being available when I call or text. They are GHOSTING me.

I’m frustrated. I’ve put a lot of time and energy and thought into this deal. I like to think that I’m a great person who someone would want to talk to. Yet they don’t even have the decency to communicate with me, to tell me yes, no, or maybe. 

Enough venting. 

It’s time to snap myself out of this crap and explain how I deal with situations like this.

Let’s break this down to a typical ghosting scenario

You had a nice back and forth communication going for a little while, and things seemed to be progressing in a good way. Then all of a sudden, your customer isn’t available when you call and doesn’t call you back. They also stop returning your texts and emails. Let’s be real here, if this has been going on more than a week, it’s not a great sign. But it still doesn’t mean the deal is dead. If a customer showed significant interest once upon a time, the game is not necessarily over.

Don’t take their silence personally.

The first thing to remember when you’re being ghosted is don’t take it personally.

Taking things personally when people don’t get back to me has historically been a weakness of mine. I’ve been ghosted by people I’ve known for years who I felt I had a great relationship with. I’ve been ghosted repeatedly by my old best friend, and it used to hurt me and piss me off, but I still appreciate him as a friend, so I stopped taking it personally.

If I can deal with my friend of 36 years seemingly falling off the face of the earth, I should be able to deal with less important people I haven’t known that long who aren’t calling me back.

Recognize your fear of the unknown.

Maybe the worst part of getting ghosted is dealing with the unknown. Humans are naturally tortured by fear of loss. It often feels worse than actually losing. Fear of loss, AKA death, protected us in the wild for billions of years.

We plead with the heavens. Why can’t they just say no if they don’t want to work with me? If they just say no, the fear of loss will be gone, the torture will be gone. I will at least know where I stand, and I can move forward with my business and my life. 

This is true. Getting told “no” can be a beautiful thing, and I’m going to talk about that in a bit.

Why you might be getting ghosted

In order to stay sane and prevent yourself from doing something stupid when you get ghosted you need to understand why the person might be ghosting you.

The number one reason in my opinion why people aren’t getting back to you about your big important deal—they just don’t care as much about it at this moment as you do.

It’s possible the opportunity you’re providing is fantastic and the other person could be interested. But it’s just not at the top of their mind right now.

Maybe they’re distracted by personal stuff like a family member who got sick or they’re sick. Or, they’re on vacation. Maybe something else is going on with their business that’s just a bigger deal than your deal—at this very moment.

It would be nice if people had the courtesy to just tell me that they’re deflected with something else. After all, a text or an email takes 30 seconds. It’s something I think I’d do, but not everybody is that courteous. So don’t worry about that. Just stay mindful that a lack of communication might have nothing to do with you.

Another significant reason people ghost you is that they don’t know what to say to you. They’re having trouble making a decision. Maybe they’ve been offered an alternative to what you’re selling and they don’t know which one to choose. 

Maybe they’re embarrassed about their indecision because that they’re not sure they have enough money to pay for your product. That happens a lot to us, dealing with both startups and big companies.

Many people are uncomfortable saying “I don’t know what I want to do,” or “I’m not ready yet to make a purchase.” 

Also, your customer might be calculating that it would be poor strategy to tell you that they’re indecisive. 

Stay mindful of those possibilities. It can take a long time before people are ready to make a deal.

My dad says that deals are like fruit. Sometimes you just have to wait for them to ripen. We’ve waited years for single deals to finally break.

You have to keep things in perspective.

Another thing that can help when you’ve been ghosted is to remind yourself to keep perspective about this deal. This BIG deal. Is it really that big in the scope of your life?

When I’m getting stressed out by a deal or other problems I encounter in life, I think about what the great negotiator, Jim Camp, wrote in his book, Start with NO. He says that all you really NEED in your life is food, air, and your loved ones. Everything else is just stuff you want.

Always have multiple deals going on simultaneously

It’s important to make sure to never let yourself be consumed by one deal—no matter how big or important it seems. One way I do that is by keeping a lot of other interesting deals going on at the same time.

If you have other good things going for you, you’ll be less consumed by the person stringing you along. Better yet, you’re going feel less needy, which will make you happier and more confident. 

You will also be less likely to call people too many times when you’ve been ghosted. When you call a customer too many times, even when they are truly interested, you come across as needy and you lose negotiating power if the deal does happen.

But if you have a lot other deals going for you, when your ghost wakes up you’ll have a chip on your shoulder when you finally talk. You’ll approach the conversation knowing that YOU have value. And your customer will believe that you have value because they called YOU.

Use “no” questions.

Besides being mindful of the reasons why a person could be ghosting you, what else can you do?

How can we wake up this ghost and wake them up in a good way that makes a deal more likely to happen?

You need to use “no” questions.

“No” questions are questions designed to get someone to respond to you with a “no” rather than a “yes.”

Why are “no” questions helpful?

Psychology studies have shown that people have a much easier time saying “no” than “yes.” It’s as if people are abused animals whose guard automatically goes up if they sense you want them to say “yes.” The reason for this is because it implies you’re trying to get something from them.“No” questions are super useful in a negotiation because they make you seem much less threatening.

In the case of contacting a customer, using “no” questions make it more likely they will pick up the phone and that you will come across as less needy. 

How do you do it?

Whenever you contact anyone in a professional context, after you introduce yourself, always ask, “Is it a BAD time to talk?”

Contrast that question with, “Is it a good time to talk?” When you ask if it’s a “good time” you’re asking FOR something. You’re asking for their time. You’re asking for the most scarce resource any of us have. That’s going to increase the possibility the person who answers phone is annoyed by your call. You also seem needy and low status as you’re begging someone to grant you their time. 

Back to the person who’s ghosting you. 

If you send someone a text message asking if it’s a BAD time to talk, first of all, they will appreciate you being mindful that they have things to do. Then, many people will think to themselves, “Hmm, well, I guess it’s not a horrible time to talk,” and they will respond. Or, they will say, “Actually it is a bad time. I’m at a meeting, I’m at funeral, I’m in Ireland.” But at least they will say something to you rather than staying silent.

There’s another power “no” questions have when you’re trying to wake up a ghost. They can create a fear of loss for the person you’re trying to talk to. When you text or email someone, “Are you no longer interested in my product or service?” if they ARE actually interested, it might make them nervous that you could give up on them if they don’t reply back. 

Or, maybe your “no” questions will just make the ghost feel more comfortable telling you they’re not interested, which is disappointing but at least you can get on with your life. There will be other deals. And hopefully, most of them will be with people who don’t ghost you.

If your “no” question attempts are failing you I’ve got something extra in my the arsenal. 

It’s what I call the “nuclear bomb.” It’s the last resort after you’re tortured for at least a month by a customer. It’s for a deal that seemed so promising, before the customer’s silence frustrated you and vexed you to the point where you’re ready to lay it all on the line to find out whether or not the deal is truly dead.

You send the ghost a one sentence email. In it, you have a subject line that says, “Have you given up on this project?” Put that same line in the message. No “Hello.” No “best regards.” Just that one line. I’ve done it more times than I wish. Nine times out of ten they write back. In my memory, it usually resulted in them saying that they were still trying to make a decision, but they just didn’t know what they were going to do. 

Whatever they answer, it’s almost always a relief because at least they communicated with you.

Hopefully by that point you’re no longer obsessed with the deal anyway because you have others going at the same time.

Remember these lessons.

If a customer ghosts you don’t take it personally.

Keep every deal in perspective in the scheme of what truly matters in your life.

Be mindful of the reasons why your customer might be silent, because they still might be interested, and it’s counter productive to let deals stress you out.

Have lots of opportunities going on at the same time, to keep you sane, make you less needy, and because that’s the way to run a successful business anyway.

Finally, use “no” questions—both to prevent a customer from ghosting you, or to wake them up in way that doesn’t make you come across as needy.

Don’t give up too early, and don’t blame yourself for a result that might be out of your control.

 

The post Ghosted by a Customer, What Do You Do?—EP 215 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

On this week’s classic episode of Swarfcast, we’re talking about preventing fires inside of machinery. Our guest is Mike Campo, Midwest Regional Sales Manager with Firetrace International, makers of fire suppression systems and solutions. Fire suppression systems keep businesses, people and equipment safe by automatically detecting and suppressing fires in high-risk equipment, like CNC machines, vehicles and wind turbines.

Mike says that machine tools are most at risk for fires when running oil based coolant while unattended. Suppression systems aim to hold back the fire, helping to mitigate the damage and allowing time for emergency personnel to respond.

Scroll down to listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app.

Main Points

Mike shares his background. He has been in the fire protection field for 43 years. He began his career in the engineered fire systems business, protecting data centers and telecommunications centers. He eventually went on to work at Firetrace International, a fire suppression system manufacturer that specializes in protecting critical small environments like CNC machines and wind turbines. (2:50)

Mike talks more about the niche market of working with what he calls micro environments. He says that the Firetrace system is designed for small enclosures, not rooms or spaces where there are people, such as a residential structure. (3:40)

Mike says that sprinklers are a valuable type of fire suppression for structures and are often mandated by local fire codes. He says Firetrace works heavily with the wind energy business to help protect wind turbines, which have structures that do not lend themselves to using sprinkler systems. He says that though an insurance company or local ordinance may instruct a business to purchase a fire suppression system for specific equipment, there are generally no official laws requiring a machine shop to install fire protection systems on its machines. (4:45)

Mike says the biggest risk for fires in machine shops occurs when machine tools are running unattended using oil based coolant rather than water soluble. (8:40)

Mike says that machine tools running oil create an oil mist that can ignite. Mist collectors can help evacuate some of the mist, but any kind of activity that would cause a spark in the oil mist such as a broken tool or failure of an oil pump, could lead to a violent fire. (10:50)

Mike says fires often occur when machining titanium, stainless steel, and aluminum because a lot of friction can occur, which can lead to broken tools. (12:10)

Mike explains that various Firetrace fire suppression systems correspond to different sizes of machine tools. Different volumes of space inside the machines require different amount of chemicals necessary to suppress fires. Larger machines necessitate larger tanks. (13:40)

Mike describes how the Firetrace systems work. A man in Great Britain developed a thermoplastic tubing that could hold pressure for a long period of time. Initially this technology was applied to create a fire suppression system for engine compartments of farming equipment. When pressurized, the tubing becomes a linear pneumatic heat sensor, so that if the tube comes into contact with high heat or flame, the tube ruptures, releasing the pressure that is holding down a piston in the fire protection tank. It releases and then dispenses chemicals to control the fire. (16:00)

Mike points out that Firetrace’s system “only works when it fails,” meaning that it will only go off only when the tube loses pressure. Thus Firetrace systems should not produce false alarms or go off when they are not supposed to. (18:00)

Mike says that Firetrace fire suppression systems target Class B and C fires. Fires are classified into four types, A, B, C, and D. Class A fires occur in materials such as wood and paper. Class B, fires are caused by flammable gasses or liquids, such as oil based coolant. Class C fires are electrical fires, which can occur in the electrical cabinets of machine tools. Class D fires are metal based fires. Those can occur when machining certain metals such as magnesium. Mike says that Firetrace’s system is not designed suppress metal fires, and the most common way to put out those fires is applying sand-like powder. He says if you see a yellow fire extinguisher next to a machine it’s probably meant to put out metal fires. (18:50)

Mike talks about the chemicals used by the Firetrace system. He says Firetrace’s goal is to have a clean fire suppression system that leaves no trace after use in the machine. (20:30)

Mike says that Firetrace is usually purchased aftermarket, though a few machine tool builders offer it as an option for purchase. (24:35)

Mike says the wind turbine business has been very successful for Firetrace. The company sees mostly electrical fire applications in the turbines. (27:25)

Mike says that the Firetrace has been very busy lately. Medical and automotive industries make up the majority of the company’s machine shop customers, while the Aerospace sector has fallen off since COVID-19 hit. (28:40)

Mike says that the cost of a fire suppression system for most CNC machines is $6,000 to $7,000.. He says that Firetrace’s systems are engineered to be simple, as they have no electrical components. Installation typically takes 2-4 hours. (29:25)

Mike says there are several competitor fire suppression systems which emulate Firetrace’s technology, as well as some others that function differently. He says that some systems that come installed on used machines coming from other countries might not be in compliance with US regulations. (30:35)

Mike talks about something he recently learned. He says COVID-19 has presented him with challenges that come when working from home. He says he has been honing is patience for working a lot in close quarters with grandchildren (who he says he loves dearly). (34:50)

Mike states that Firetrace is a simple technology, but the company is constantly performing R & D. He says although the system rarely fails, pressure leaks can present a challenge, whether it’s a leak in the suppression system or in the machine itself. (38:40)

Question: Have you experienced a machine fire in a CNC shop?

The post How to Prevent Fires in Your Machine Tools with Mike Campo-EP 98 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

Our guest on today’s show, Howard Sheldon, grew up working in his family’s third generation precision turning company. He planned to eventually take over the business from his father, but unfortunately succession didn’t happen the way he had hoped.

Howard left his family company in his mid-30s, and 10 years ago started his own Swiss turning company, Sheldon Precision Engineering Ltd. 

Howard turned out to be a natural entrepreneur, and he has built a thriving business that gives him the lifestyle he wants.

Starting a business from scratch gave Howard the opportunity to create his ideal company and run it the way he envisions, instead of being constrained by the ways of a business that had been around for half a century.

If you’re currently working in a family business or you’re dreaming about founding your own manufacturing company that YOU can run the way YOU want to, I recommend you have a listen.

Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link.

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View the podcast on our YouTube Channel.

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Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion!

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Interview Highlights

Interview Howard Sheldon grew up working at his father’s screw machine job shop, which his grandfather had originally started in 1948 as the Wembley Screw Company in London.

Howard’s father eventually bought the business from his grandfather after a messy situation in which his grandfather had tried to sell the company behind his father’s back. There was contention over ownership and equity that caused strain in the family relationship. Howard’s father had even started another machining company in secret around the time of the turbulent succession. 

Growing up, Howard worked summers and holidays at his father’s shop. After graduating from college, he came on full time. He started in the maintenance department to get exposure to all areas of the operation. The first machine he ran was a Wickman multi-spindle that he nearly crashed his first time running it.

Howard’s dream was to eventually take over the family business from his father. However, as he got older and wanted more responsibility, he kept “banging into” his father who didn’t want to cede control. Howard likens his father’s demanding management style to a combination of Alan Sugar and Gordon Ramsay’s brash business personalities.  

Howard says his father didn’t think he had the tenacity to really run the company long-term. This took a toll on his confidence in his own abilities, despite the tremendous manufacturing knowledge he had gained by coming up through the ranks of the family machining business.

Eventually, Howard left his father’s company to pursue other career paths. He started a private tutoring franchise but realized after a year the business did not have great upside.

Then he landed a job as an applications engineer for cutting tools manufacturer Iscar. While servicing manufacturers’ tooling needs, Howard realized he had deep technical expertise to offer. He also observed that the business owners he called on were “regular people” who had just decided to take the entrepreneurial leap. This restored his confidence that he could successfully run his own machine shop.

In 2014, at age 37, Howard started his own CNC turning shop, Sheldon Precision Engineering, with one used Citizen A32 Swiss lathe in a 1,000 square-foot building. Over the next 10 years, Howard grew Sheldon Precision, reinvesting profits into more Citizens and Miyanos. 

Howard is currently implementing systems at his company such as the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to establish a clear vision and organizational structure for scaling responsibly. He wants the business to be able to run independently from him as much as possible.

He recently changed the workweek for his seven employees to a 38-hour week over four days. (In England, the standard work week for manufacturing is a four and half days.) I asked him if his people request to work overtime, and he said they never have because they value their time with their families. Howard also has set a goal for himself that he will be able to work a four-hour workweek by the time he turns 50.

Howard told me, “You’ve got to make your business work for you. If your business is a pain in the ass, and you’ve got to slog your guts out each week, it’s not working for you. You’ve got to let go of the shop floor eventually. Get people to do it. And then you can work on the business and get it working for you.”

Despite his difficult relationship with his father, Howard says he has tremendous gratitude for the knowledge of business and manufacturing he learned from him. He knows he would not have created the successful company he has today had it not been for working at his father’s company and then leaving it. 

Eventually, Howard’s father visited Sheldon Precision Engineering. He was extremely proud of the business his son built, and their relationship flourished.

 

The post Leaving your Father’s Manufacturing Company and then Founding Your Own, with Howard Sheldon-EP 214 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

It seems that today’s younger generations of workers, such as millennials, want to understand why they are instructed to do their jobs in a certain way more than their predecessors. Many of today’s employees are not content to just follow orders and take home a check. They want to feel invested in their work, they want it to mean something. 

So we are featuring this classic Swarfcast episode.

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Our guest on the podcast today is Reid Leland, founder and President of LeanWerks, a precision machining job shop in Ogden, Utah. Lean Works operates using open-book management, which means the company shares its financial information with all its employees on a regular basis.

Reid says this transparent management style makes its employees aware of how their performance impacts the company’s success. They feel accountable to not only work hard but more intelligently, in a way that benefits the company the most.

Reid learned about the open-book management approach at his previous company, Setpoint Engineered Systems. It was popularized by entrepreneur Jack Stack, author of the best selling book The Great Game of Business.

Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app.

Main Points

Employees Must Understand the Company’s Financial Score

All employees at LeanWerks are required to complete a rigorous training program in which they learn how to understand income statements, balance sheets, and cashflow. 

The object is to teach employees the ultimate financial score of whether the company is winning or losing. Open-book management is intended to illuminate the strategies and practices that make a company profitable and eliminate waste. For instance, at LeanWerks, shop employees might look at how many parts are being scrapped on a job and then study the balance sheet to understand how much the scrap impacts profitability. After analyzing the data, they might adapt some practices—not because they are told to do so from upper management, but because they understand and believe in what they are doing.

Flat Organization With No Hierarchy

Open-book management is based on the tenet that the intelligence of the group is better than the intelligence of any one individual. It also proposes that if everyone at a company shares information, the company will make better decisions. LeanWerks has weekly huddles in which its people discuss what’s going on at the company, what they need to fix, and what will happen if things don’t change. The company’s 35 employees all have the power to influence its decisions. This is advantageous because people working in various departments can contribute valuable perspectives that an upper management team might overlook. 

Reid says he likes that transparency eliminates hierarchy and makes everybody accountable, including him. He is OK with the fact that if he makes mistakes they are out in the open for people to see and call him on.

During the interview, I grilled Reid repeatedly about the obstacles open-book management could create. I asked him if he runs into the problem of having too many cooks in the kitchen who have conflicting ideas about how to direct the business. Surprisingly, he says the company does not waste a lot of time bickering over decisions. 

Reid Leland, Founder and President of LeanWerks

Psychic Ownership

Every month, LeanWerks’ employees have the potential to receive monthly bonuses if the company has turned a profit. This gives them extra incentive to make the company succeed, but Reid says the inclusion of employees in the decision making process is a more significant element in making them feel invested in the company’s success.

Reid says that LeanWerks’ people feel stress when the company is having a hard time and feel good when the company is doing well. He is proud to say that these emotional swings don’t only fall to him and his wife, who also manages the company.

He says that during three financial crises the company faced in 2009, 2015, and 2020, open-book management was instrumental in the company’s survival. All of the company’s people taking ownership and feeling accountable enabled it to endure. They were adept at taking difficult steps when necessary.

In the past, some talented employees left LeanWerks because they didn’t want to participate in open-book management. One talented machinist who quit lamented to Reid that his job at LeanWerks was the one job he had in his life where he would go home and worry. Reid says he is ok with missing out on some talented people who are not a good fit for his company. Talented employees are not enough for him, he wants partners.

Question: Would open-book management work for you? Why?

The post The Benefits of a Manufacturing Business Sharing Financials with its Employees, with Reid Leland-EP 132 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

My guest on today’s show, Thadd Mellott, called us at Graff-Pinkert because he needed a Star SB20 CNC Swiss machine. His company, Circle M Spring, in Warsaw, Indiana, produces medical parts, including implantable orthopedic components. Circle M Spring is currently merging with a medical component design company that specializes in sports medicine. Thadd is incredibly excited about the merger because he now will have the rare ability to supply medical components directly to hospitals—a privilege that most machining companies can only dream about.

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Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion!

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Interview Highlights

Currently, Circle M Spring operates as a Tier 1 supplier to major orthopedic manufacturers like Zimmer Biomet, DePuy Synthes, Medtronic and others, producing components like reamers, slap hammers, implants, screws and instrumentation. The company also makes firearm components for AR-15 rifles, which Thadd says is unique for machining companies in Warsaw, Indiana.

Circle M was founded in 1998 by Thadd Mellott and his father after his father took early retirement from a 37-year career at another spring company. Thadd was a junior in college doing pre-med but decided to quit school and go into business making springs with his father when he was given the opportunity.

I asked him if it was a difficult decision to pivot from a career path of becoming a doctor to starting a machining company. He said that growing up around Warsaw, Indiana, he had already worked a lot in machine shops. The idea of going into manufacturing seemed like a great opportunity, so he didn’t think twice.

Over the years, Circle M Spring diversified, producing medical parts, including implantables as well as firearms after landing a government contract for gun components. The orthopedic work came about due to Circle M’s location in Warsaw, which many people consider the “medical device capital of the world.”

Now, Circle M is merging with two other companies to create a new parent entity that Mellott will be president of with 51% ownership.

One company is Rebellion Medical Solutions – Founded by Brandon Miller, a former high-level executive at Biomet who started a medical device design firm after the Biomet/Zimmer merger.

The other company in the merger is a medical device OEM owned by a former NFL player. The company is minority owned, which gives it the privilege of selling products directly to hospitals.

The merger allows for a vertically integrated operation – Rebellion handles product design and securing FDA 510k clearances, Circle M is the manufacturing arm, and the former NFL player’s company can distribute devices straight to hospitals without going through larger orthopedic companies as middlemen.

The merger structure provides several key advantages according to Mellott:

It can rapidly fulfill requests from surgeons for customized instruments and implants without the delays and bureaucracy of bigger companies. It also can offer competitive pricing without markups that major orthopedic companies apply.

The newly formed company will have the ability to expand into other medical fields beyond orthopedics by leveraging its integrated capabilities. Special status as a minority-owned business will allow access to lucrative government and diversity supplier contracts that major players cannot pursue.

While Circle M Spring will still also supply larger orthopedic firms, the long-term goal is to grow the hospital sales channel for its own product line and become a more disruptive player in the medical device space.

Another benefit of the merger is that it allows Thadd to realize his passion for positively impacting healthcare that dates back to his pre-med days when he had ambitions of becoming a neurosurgeon after his brother’s death from an aneurysm.

At the end of the interview, he told me he wanted to be a doctor because it would be great just to help people. He has a daughter currently going to school to work in the medical field, and he sees that trait in her as well.

 

Question: Who is your company’s dream customer?

 

The post Supplying Medical Parts Directly to Hospitals, with Thadd Mellott-EP 213 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

In the last year, our used machinery company, Graff-Pinkert, has been successfully growing our business brokering division. This podcast and Today’s Machining World have played a huge part in our marketing. They have established us as thought leaders in the machining industry, and that is bringing in customers. It only took 24 years of writing and six years of podcasting. Today’s podcast discusses this concept–how creating a podcast and media like it are a powerful way for a B2B company to promote itself.

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Our guest on today’s podcast is Joe Sullivan, founder of Gorilla 76, a successful industrial marketing agency specializing in the manufacturing arena. My goal in this interview is to uncover the secrets behind effective B2B marketing. Today, anyone who owns a smartphone has the tools to tell the world about their company. But how do we use those tools to stand out from the competition and get new customers?

Most of clients of Gorilla 76 are medium-sized manufacturers such as OEMS, capital equipment manufacturers, and software companies specializing in the manufacturing field. Generally these companies have marketing budgets ranging from $125,000 to $200,000 per year, but Joe says that smaller companies don’t need to hire an expensive marketing firm if they approach marketing in the right way. He breaks down a B2B marketing strategy into three principles.

Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast. Or listen on your phone with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app.

 

 

 

Interview Highlights

Create Focus

No matter what size your company is, you need to narrow your marketing focus to a few specific areas. If your shop makes products for 10 different sectors, you should focus your marketing on one of them or a select few. 

After you decide which customers you are marketing to, you need to identify which individuals at the companies most influence the buying process. Often this group of people consists of engineers or people in a shop operating equipment. After identifying your target audience, you need to research what they are trying to accomplish and what problems they are trying to solve. Frequently, Joe’s company gathers information by interviewing people at targeted companies, often on video.

Create Valuable Content Assets

Once you know what your buyers are trying accomplish, then you are ready to create content that appeals to them, often in the form of blogs, videos, and podcasts. Content creators can consult experts at a company about various topics and then communicate their knowledge via a targeted medium. The main purpose of the content should be to help customers solve problems.

Video or audio content can be very powerful because the expert’s knowledge comes straight from the mouth of the source, which gives it clarity and authenticity. Video demonstrations have the ability show processes, which makes them an effective teaching tool.

Joe says marketers need to remember to show, rather than tell. Don’t tell your audience you’re the best, of which most businesses’ websites are guilty. Instead, tell visitors the things you provide for your niche and demonstrate you’re the expert.

Proactively Distribute Valuable Content to the Right People

After you produce great content, you have to find a way to reach enough of the right people. You have to proactively push your content in strategic ways so your target audience will find you. To do that, you have to first research where your customers often consume information online.

Joe says it’s important to remember that usually less than 5 percent of your customers are in a buy cycle at a specific moment in time. If your prospective customers are not in an active buy cycle and you are constantly shouting at them to buy your product, they will tune you out. Instead, focus on being helpful. Stop worrying about giving away your secret sauce to your competitors or being judged. Just help.

Question: Which blogs, videos or podcasts about the machining industry are your favorites? (Besides this one!)

You can find Joe Sullivan’s marketing firm at gorilla76.com and listen to his podcast, The Manufacturing Executive, on all the podcast platforms. 

The post How to Market a Manufacturing Business by Becoming a Thought Leader, with Joe Sullivan-EP 137 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

Today’s episode is Part II of our interview with Roger Duffy, owner of F&F Machine Products.

In Part I we touched on Roger’s natural entrepreneurial instinct and how he loves to push himself to get out of his comfort zone.

In this episode, we’re delving further into Roger’s business adventures and philosophies. 

He believes in a theory he calls the “Goldfish Bowl Syndrome,” which he observed in the growth of his own business. He says a business can be like a little goldfish in a small fish bowl that gets transferred to a large aquarium and quadruples in size when it has space to reach its full potential.

If you haven’t heard Part I (Episode 210) yet, I suggest you go back and listen to it before you go any further.

 

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog

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Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion!

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Interview Highlights

Growing His Business Out of Its Goldfish Bowl

When Roger started working at F&F, before he bought out the company’s owner, the shop was in a 5,000-square-foot building with a handful of Brown & Sharpe screw machines. Roger built up the customer base and filled the shop with 32 Brown & Sharpes. 

As time went on, the company became more diversified and took on higher precision work. He had to purchase more equipment—modern, high precision machines like CNC slant bed lathes, CNC Swiss, and CNC mills. 

More machines necessitated a new larger building. First he considered putting up a 7,500-square-foot building, but he was advised to go larger. In the end, he decided to construct a 20,000-square-foot building. He doubled his number of machines and then doubled again the following year.

Roger likened his business to a little goldfish in a small bowl. When he gave himself room to grow in a larger building, his business flourished like a goldfish that becomes a carp after it is placed in an aquarium. Later on, he bought more properties including a 40,000-square-foot building, which he quickly filled as well.

Learning to Scale his Business and Delegate

Before he became the boss, Roger was on the floor at F&F setting up machines. He says he was really good at the job and liked being on the floor, but he got bored doing one thing too long. Running F&F Machining like a real business was the next challenge he had been itching for.

Roger says he was inspired by the business approach of Andrew Carnegie. He says that Carnegie didn’t make his fortune by being an expert on steel. He made his fortune because he was great at finding and organizing other people who were experts on steel.

Roger reduced his time on the floor. He hired talented people and took the time to train them. He learned to delegate responsibilities and experimented to find the right roles at the company for employees. 

Ironically, he still refers to business ownership as “buying a job” because it requires such immense work and responsibility. He cautions against romanticizing “being your own boss.”

I questioned him about the “owning a job” statement. If he had scaled his business and learned to delegate, hadn’t the business matured beyond the stage of “owning a job?” 

After a brief pause, Roger agreed that F&F could function without him–at least for a period of time. It’s just that he loves his business. He loves the challenges of growing it. He loves trying new types of work and new types of machines, and nobody is going to care about his business the way he will.

He can’t NOT take it home with him. He wouldn’t want it to be any other way.

Question: What have you done to grow your company over the years?

The post Breaking Your Machining Business Out of Its Goldfish Bowl, Roger Duffy (Part II)-EP 212 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

How many times has something happened to you that really sucked but then eventually turned out to be a good thing or even a great thing that happened for you? 

Today, I’m going to tell you a story about when a big machinery deal went to hell and then how its failure led to an amazing turn of events—a way better result than if things had gone the way they were supposed to go.

You know. Serendipity.

We’re going to explore how good things can come out of bad things, so the next time when something seemingly bad happens to you, or me for that matter, we’ll be mentally prepared to turn the bad into something really good, or even life-changing.

Listen to the podcast on all podcast apps.

Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link.

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Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion!

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Interview Highlights

Spring of 2017, I met up in Stuttgart Germany, with Rogerio, a Brazilian customer, to hopefully broker him an INDEX MS42C mfd. 1999. For those who don’t know, INDEXs are the Mercedes Benz of CNC multi-spindle screw machines. New ones cost millions of dollars, old ones can cost hundreds of thousands. 

As soon as I landed, my Brazilian customer and I drove three hours to go inspect the machine. After checking the machine, Rogerio told me he wanted to buy it, but he asked me to reserve the machine for a few days so he could talk it over with his boss. I warned him that it really wasn’t possible to reserve a machine, no matter what anybody says. But he just couldn’t buy the machine that day, so I asked the seller to reserve it and he agreed.

I stayed the night in Stuttgart, and I when I woke up, I called the seller to touch base again about the machine. Then he told me that he had just sold it. At first, I was sort of baffled when I heard it. It was the kind of thing where the letdown doesn’t register right away. Then I hung up, and yelled some four letter words as the disappointment set in.

I laid in my hotel room bed thinking about what to do next. I had planned the trip to have some extra time available in Europe, something I always used to do when I traveled internationally, just in case various serendipitous occurrences pop up. It’s something you do during the period in your life when you travel to cool places and don’t have any children waiting for you back home.

I had flown across the Atlantic to close a very nice deal that disappeared less than 24 hours after I had arrived, but still I wanted the trip to count for something. 

Lying in bed, I thought about who I knew in Europe who might have machines for sale. I called one my best customers in Barcelona, Spain. I figured I might as well first try calling a destination where I loved to go. I asked him if his company had any machines for sale. He told me they had three INDEX MS42Cs that were around the same vintage as the one in Germany that had gotten away from me. That morning I got on a plane to Barcelona to check them out. 

The machines were in good working condition, and my Brazilian customer was interested, but he couldn’t fly back to inspect the machines for several weeks, so I went back to Chicago in the meantime. 

Three weeks later, my customer was ready to meet me in Spain. As “luck” would have it, my girlfriend at the time and future wife, Stephanie, had lost her job just a few days before. She disliked the job, but she still felt rotten about being let go and didn’t have any new options lined up. The bright side was that now she had free time, so I asked her to come with me on my trip. We would make the trip half business and half vacation. 

Stephanie and I met up with Rogerio in Barcelona. We all went out to dinner and had a great time. He’s a great guy. A few years later I interviewed him for this podcast!

Back to the deal. 

Instead of selling Rogerio one INDEX MS42C, I sold him two MS42C machines! We made a much better deal than I would have if the original deal had gone right. Rogerio got two machines rather than just one, and he received a day of free training from the company selling the machines.

Stephanie and I enjoyed several wonderful days in Barcelona. Then we drove through Basque Country visiting machining companies, ending our roadtrip in San Sebastian, which may be the most romantic place we’ve ever seen.

While we traveled around Spain, a guy from the Netherlands called Graff-Pinkert, looking for a very rare model of multi-spindle screw machine. He wanted two Schutte SF20 chuckers. I quickly remembered that I had a dealer friend in Milan, Italy, who owned two of those exact machines because I had visited him several times. There are just a few Schuttes configured like this in the world, so they stuck in my brain. Those machines had probably been sitting in my friend’s warehouse for 20 years.

Stephanie and I caught a plane to Milan. I sold those machines to the Dutchman on the spot. It was really satisfying to connect the dots around the world that I had created from years of treasure hunting. Graff-Pinkert has done many deals over the years with this Italian dealer, but there were several times I had been to his warehouse and never bought anything. Now those visits had paid off.

Everybody asked me when we got back why I hadn’t asked Stephanie to marry me on the trip. It truly would have been a perfect conclusion to the serendipitous fairytale, but I just wasn’t ready to do it yet. However, we later referred to this trip as our “first honeymoon.”

I can imagine what many folks are probably thinking now. Great story, Noah, but nothing that bad had happened to you. Big whoop, your customer didn’t buy a machine and you wasted some time and money, and your wife didn’t like her job anyway. This is true, but the same concepts that I used to bring about the serendipity in this story can be applied to bigger “problems.” To make those problems turn out to be a good thing in the end.

So let’s analyze what happened in my story.

I’m giving you a caveat before I go any further. These concepts I’m going to talk about apply to having the right mindset. They are a struggle to execute, and I’m not claiming to have mastered them—sometimes I think I’m OK at them. Often I feel stuck like most people out there.

And, I admit that I don’t know what hardships you’re going through, and I’m sure many of you out there have had to deal with a lot bigger problems than I’ve ever had.

On the flip side, when you’re not dealing with horrible problems—just moderate problems—you can think about them rationally. Problems can become puzzles.

Puzzles, NOT Problems

My first principle is that I don’t have problems, I have puzzles.

I stole that beautiful saying from the great music producer Quincy Jones. I read it to myself in the morning before I write out my schedule in an effort to put my head in a rational place.

If you learn to look at all problems as puzzles, like you would in lower stakes situations, then when you are in a truly bad situation you hopefully can take the same rational approach. Just telling myself, “I don’t have problems, I have puzzles” calms me down when a situation is stressing me out. Then it puts me in a mindset to analyze things and figure out a creative solution.

Have Gratitude

My second principle for creating serendipity when I have problems is having gratitude.

If you’re down on yourself, you’re not going to have the energy, the creativity, and the optimism to try stuff that might change your crappy situation. 

Gratitude is scientifically proven to make you feel happier. I know I sound like a zillion other podcasters and authors preaching this, but honestly it works for me.

I dictate a gratitude list into my phone in the morning almost daily.

If you’re feeling really down, try writing or recording a gratitude list. Just saying it into the air doesn’t seem to have the same power for me. 

When you start thinking about the good things in your life and the things you like about yourself, you get shot of dopamine, and you’ll get some sound perspective about the situation. Then you can get back to thinking about problems like puzzles.

Having perspective on your situation is really important to stay positive.

The great negotiation expert Jim Camp once said that the only things you really NEED in life are food, air, and your loved ones. Everything else is just stuff you want. It’s another thing I like to tell myself when I’m frustrated with my circumstances.

But you might be asking now, what do you do when you have real problems? Like lack of food, air, and your loved ones. What do you do when things seem desperate.

Use Desperation as an Advantage

My last principle for creating serendipity is to use desperation as an advantage.

Desperate circumstances can be an advantage to turn a problem into something good.

We hear stories all the time about how being in a desperate place brings people to accomplish things they never thought possible. People undergo pain, and then afterward they have the ability to withstand more pain, which helps them reach big goals and overcome obstacles. 

Also, desperate circumstances can lead you to the point where you’re forced to make changes. You have no choice but to act, to make a tough decision that you may have put off for a long time because you were too afraid to do something. All of a sudden you’re liberated.

For instance, my brother got divorced from his wife, which released him from a miserable relationship and then led him to a new career as a life coach for men. He had struggled to hold onto his marriage for a long time—until finally that was no longer possible. Then he was free. And if you ask him now about how he feels about his failed marriage, he says he’s grateful because he wouldn’t be in such a good place today had it not ended.

I know I haven’t talked about truly horrible things that can happen to you, like the death of loved ones or mental and physical torture. 

But still, I try to believe that all events in the end can be seen as negative or positive. It may take a long time to see the positive effects that come out of tragedies, but they do happen.

Ultimately that result is decided by our mindset.

So remember, the next time things don’t go right for you, having the right mindset has the power to turn something bad into something great. See your problems into puzzles, stay grateful, and use difficult circumstances to your advantage.

This is seeking serendipity.

The post How to Turn a Business Failure Into an Opportunity—Seeking Serendipity EP 211 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.

Recently, we have seen a growing number of mergers and acquisitions in the manufacturing space. After these deals are finalized there’s a lot of uncertainty for the employees caught in the middle of reorganization. Our guest on the podcast today is Jennifer Fondrevay. Jennifer is a best selling author and the Founder of Day1 Ready, [...]

The post How Do You Manage Employees When a Company is Acquired? With Jennifer Fondrevay—EP 175 first appeared on Today’s Machining World.