00:00:00:00 – 00:00:01:00
Unknown
Well. Hey there. Matt. Welcome
00:00:01:00 – 00:00:23:03
Unknown
Hi. Good morning.
00:00:23:05 – 00:00:50:01
Unknown
Sure. Yeah. My pleasure. Again. Appreciate the invite. So, autopilot. We’re a precision machine shop based up here in Bozeman, Montana. Beautiful. Bozeman, Montana. you know, both milling and turning. We focus primarily on, precision machine for the aerospace and defense industry. And we actually do quite a bit in the outdoor industry. So, obviously, based on where we are, there’s a lot of fishing and hunting and climbing and skiing opportunities.
00:00:50:01 – 00:01:09:14
Unknown
So we, we make a lot of components and, parts for that industry, which is just kind of nice, you know, R&D and testing, you have to do all that stuff. So, yeah, it’s it’s pretty fun. Yep.
00:01:09:16 – 00:01:34:05
Unknown
Yeah. not one of the founders. autopilot’s been around since 2006. So we’re we’re coming up on, close to 20 years. I bought in about six years ago. I am definitely, not a machinist. Not an engineer. very nontraditional path to get in here. so I was actually, had about a decade and a half in investment banking.
00:01:34:07 – 00:01:55:09
Unknown
I was living in Bozeman and, you know, kind of the the way that this all happened, very, you know, just just fate, basically, I reached out. We have a we have a kind of a sister company that we own called Bozeman Rail. we make fly rails and fishing components just for fun. Little hobby business on the side.
00:01:55:11 – 00:02:21:04
Unknown
And, you know, I was doing my an investment banking thing and had heard of Bozeman Rail, you know, seen the magazine ads and read about them in trade publications and realized, oh, they’re here in Bozeman where I am. you know, I think I went on the website and then hit, you know, the contact us button. And so at Bozeman Rail or whatever it was, and not knowing what I was getting into, just said, hey, do you guys do you do tours?
00:02:21:04 – 00:02:38:00
Unknown
You know, I love to fish. I’m a big fly fisherman. I would love to see how a fly rail is made. You know, a couple days went by and I got a response like, yeah, I guess, you know, price of admission is a six pack. I was like, oh, okay. I kind of like these. Yeah, I kind of like that.
00:02:38:00 – 00:03:00:01
Unknown
So, you know, scheduled it just out of the blue. I didn’t know who I was talking to. rolled in at whatever time our, you know, that the factory tour was set to, to start and met, my now business partner, also named Matt. you know, he gave me a quick little tour of, the, the machine shop, and I, you know, I had no idea.
00:03:00:01 – 00:03:21:12
Unknown
I didn’t I didn’t know the difference between a mill and a lathe. Again, machining was not my thing. so he gave me the tour, and, you know, a five or a ten minute tour turned into a two hour conversation. you know, I was just asking questions, and he was doing the same. And, you know, he basically told me, like, listen, Bozeman rail is like this.
00:03:21:12 – 00:03:39:14
Unknown
Much of what we do that, you know, the machine shop has customers in different industries. We do a whole bunch of stuff. the the real thing is just on the side, a little, little hobby kind of thing. So he was, you know, he was asking me about my background and, like I said, it turned into a multi-hour conversation.
00:03:39:14 – 00:03:57:02
Unknown
We really hit it off. And at the end, he he basically said, hey, you know, I’m really thinking about growing this business. If you know anybody with similar skill set to you, let me know, because I’m looking for a partner, you know. Yeah, well, no, I, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t I didn’t think anything of it.
00:03:57:02 – 00:04:16:02
Unknown
You know, I was happy doing the banking thing, and, so months went by, you know, I didn’t really think of anything. We didn’t have any any contact. And then I just, you know, for whatever reason, I just. I was like, maybe I should reach out to this guy again. So we we had a beer and I was like, hey, tell me more about, like, this machine shop thing.
00:04:16:02 – 00:04:30:18
Unknown
What? You know, what do you what do you do? Like, what do you need? you know, he’s a brilliant engineer, but the business side of it, he just, you know, admittedly. So he’s like, I just I need to. I want to grow this. There’s a lot of opportunity. I just need help. I need somebody to help me out.
00:04:30:20 – 00:04:50:04
Unknown
And, you know, long story short, I turned into about a year and a half of us kind of doing the dance, you know, trying to figure out, is this going to work? Can I buy? And what what value am I going to bring? what growth opportunities are there driving? Is this stupid for me to do, you know, believe in one industry going into another I know nothing about.
00:04:50:06 – 00:05:08:11
Unknown
And, yeah, it happened. I just, you know, I kind of, you know, just just decided to make a career change and bought in, so, you know, we both own at 5050, I serve as the, you know, the chief financial officer is kind of the the president. we’re both doing day to day stuff, but a very complementary skill set.
00:05:08:13 – 00:05:27:08
Unknown
like I said, you know, I’m not an engineer. I always joke, I can barely read a PDF on that. I get, you know, which way am I holding this thing? And and, so I’m, I’m doing all the stuff, you know, the quoting, the marketing, the H.R., the you know, all that, you know, the day to day stuff and these kind of bigger picture, the technical side of things.
00:05:27:08 – 00:05:33:16
Unknown
So, yeah, it works out pretty well.
00:05:33:18 – 00:05:43:19
Unknown
Yes. Yeah. I’m getting there. This.
00:05:43:21 – 00:06:08:18
Unknown
No autopilot. that was that started in 2006. Really actually as a product development firm. And then. Yeah, the Bozeman Trail was, that actually. Well before my time. But that was started around, I want to say 2009, 2010 during the, the housing crisis, really just as a means to keep the spindles turn and work had had dried up and, and, you know, there was just kind of a need to keep them going, keep people on payroll.
00:06:08:18 – 00:06:14:02
Unknown
And yeah, that was the birth of that.
00:06:14:04 – 00:06:19:15
Unknown
correct.
00:06:19:17 – 00:06:45:06
Unknown
Yeah. Word about. Yeah, about 20 people. you know, I think there were about 5 or 6 when I joined up. we’ve got about a dozen, you know, C-in-C machines, about half a half million, half turning. So, yeah, it’s still relatively small. We actually own, our own anodizing company that used to be part of autopilot, and we spun that off into its own kind of its own thing about three years ago.
00:06:45:10 – 00:06:53:03
Unknown
So there’s about another ten people over there.
00:06:53:05 – 00:07:04:17
Unknown
Yeah.
00:07:16:06 – 00:07:36:13
Unknown
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It is intense. It’s definitely, you know, there’s you know, it’s not a fly part, it’s not a medical instrument, but there’s still very tight tolerances in the, in the fly rails for sure. Yep.
00:07:43:21 – 00:08:09:10
Unknown
Yeah. You know, great question. there’s a lot of shops, I imagine, at some point in their journey, you know, we were we were the standard. You know, word document, Excel spreadsheet, not even a system. We weren’t on another ERP system. it was just a lot of paper, a lot of, kind of unlinked, you know, workbooks and tribal knowledge that’s, you know, and that’s, that’s kind of how we lived and breathed.
00:08:09:10 – 00:08:29:13
Unknown
And, you know, if that job needs set up and guy number one’s the setup guy, and he’s not here while we wait until he gets back kind of thing, which is, yeah, it was tough, but it, you know, it worked. so I guess one of the, the benefits are silver linings of me coming in, just green, not knowing anything.
00:08:29:15 – 00:08:54:17
Unknown
you know, I could kind of take a fresh look at things like that and say, hey, you know, is this is this the best way to do things? you know, not long after I had joined up as a partner, started researching, you know, ERP systems. I actually, as a side note, knowing that I was going to jump into this industry, first thing I did was Google, like manufacturing podcast and the making chips guys popped up.
00:08:54:19 – 00:09:14:17
Unknown
And so I started, you know, I was on airplanes all the time. And so I would just download episodes and just listen to these just like, you know, started here in ERP system and ERP system and pro shop and pro shop, you know. So it was one of those things where I kept hearing and thinking, you know, there’s got to be a better way than just these, these paper travelers.
00:09:14:19 – 00:09:38:10
Unknown
We had talked to some folks in the industry and basically the feedback we got was, listen, you know, autopilot, you guys are at the time, you know, half dozen eight people. It’s not going to make sense for you to, to, you know, bring on an ERP system. Those things are six figures. You’re not going to you’re not going to spend $100,000 plus for a teeny tiny little, you know, machine shop.
00:09:38:12 – 00:09:54:02
Unknown
it’s not tailored to you. It’s not, you know, it’s just not going to make sense. So we kind of put it on the backburner thinking, yeah, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s just why would we spend $100,000 on that? It’s not it’s not even going to help us out. so push it to the back for a little bit.
00:09:54:04 – 00:10:12:21
Unknown
and then I think you and I ran into each other. There was, there was a defense show, up and Spokane that you you had a booth. And I remember just walking by and, you were given a demo to somebody, and it stopped me in my tracks. It was one of those. I’m like, whoa, okay.
00:10:13:00 – 00:10:31:17
Unknown
All right. This is. This is what I was looking for. So, you know, just just one of those where. Okay, this this truly is for small to midsize, you know, manufacturing stuff. So that really kind of brought that back to, like, you know, I came back from that conference, sat down with my partner Matt, and said, okay, let’s look at this.
00:10:31:17 – 00:10:48:07
Unknown
Let’s let’s check this out because I think this is going to work.
00:10:48:08 – 00:11:15:14
Unknown
so we would have, you know, we would actually color code. We’d have, you know, a green piece of paper as the front, you know, if it was a first article or, sorry, a repeat job and a, a blue traveler like piece of paper, if it was just more of a one time job. but yeah, a lot of, you know, you talk in the print on the back, you’d have your little inspection, you know, workbook that was printed out so they guys could put it in and they could record some times.
00:11:15:16 – 00:11:32:08
Unknown
And in theory, you know, when you’re done with the job and you look at all that, staple it together or, you know, standard if you have to, to send to a customer for the the first article report, tuck it in a file cabinet. And then again, in theory, you get that next order, you pull that out and you review everything.
00:11:32:08 – 00:11:52:11
Unknown
But yeah, nothing happens like it. Like it’s verses a week, you know, you lose some, you spill coffee on them. They, you know, smudge, you know, all that stuff. So it just yeah. Wouldn’t wasn’t working too great.
00:11:52:13 – 00:12:17:18
Unknown
Not not at the time that I joined. a handful of years ago, we actually were a certified. I want to say it was maybe Rev Rev be maybe, maybe Rev C went through the process. It was all paper. I mean, there were binders, as you can imagine, just, you know, everywhere. did that and then, it was well before I joined.
00:12:17:18 – 00:12:42:06
Unknown
Yep. So I want to say this is maybe like 2012. I joined up in 2018. So, so the company was as certified an ISO 9001, but intentionally let it lapse, you know, basically, went through everything, got the certifications, and then for whatever reason, started pulling customers. Hey, is this is the actual certification important to you?
00:12:42:11 – 00:13:07:13
Unknown
As you know, it’s it’s fairly costly and it’s, you know, tricky to maintain. And the the feedback from customers at the time was, no, as long as you’re compliant, that’s really all we care about. Just, you know, if you follow, you know, just the, you know, the boundaries and the guardrails of the system, that’s what we want. So instead of paying, you know, X dollars per year just to have the piece of paper hanging on the wall, we let it lapse.
00:13:07:15 – 00:13:27:09
Unknown
and then fast forward to, you know, a couple of years ago when the answer changed from now it’s not that important. Yeah. To you, it’s absolutely necessary for what you want to do. you know, we kind of dusted off the binders. we had pro shop at the time, so kind of matching that up with the, you know, the template, the Kuma’s template within Pro shop.
00:13:27:11 – 00:13:55:05
Unknown
you know, helped us get all that in there and get the certification pretty quickly. Yeah. you know, it was about, I want to say nine months, but that it very easily could have been half that. you know. Yeah. We’re plugging through. And this also was, was kind of during the, the aftermath of Covid. And so a lot of the, you know, the on site meetings were pushed and they went to zoom meetings.
00:13:55:05 – 00:14:19:09
Unknown
And so, yeah, that kind of kind of delayed things a little bit. so, yeah, I’d say if we were, if we were really like if we were starting at today, would we get that done in probably four months versus the nine it took? You know.
00:14:19:10 – 00:14:44:21
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. We did so, so we a little bit of both. A mishmash of both. you know, since we, had let it lapse, went from Rev C to Rev D on the S&P 100 standard. you know, and again, I think the big change with that was you don’t have to follow this rigorous checklist. You build, you know, your kms.
00:14:45:00 – 00:15:05:09
Unknown
but then it’s, you know, whatever you got to do what you say you do, you can say what you do. You don’t have to do what we say. so I think taking that liberty and really kind of looking at, okay, how is the business now, you know, looking at the forms, that we had from, you know, half a dozen years ago and say this is still applicable, that it’s not let’s, you know, let’s start fresh.
00:15:05:09 – 00:15:43:14
Unknown
Let’s use kind of, you know, the flying start or create a new, quality, you know, quality standard, for example, quality procedure or. Yes, this is still applicable. Let’s maybe, you know, button it up a little bit updated. and loaded in. So yeah, it was, it was a combination of both.
00:15:43:16 – 00:15:48:18
Unknown
Sure.
00:15:48:20 – 00:16:11:14
Unknown
Yeah. It went really smooth. we had we basically told the the shop, when we signed up. Hey, this is happening. but then we we had a few kind of integrators, for lack of a better phrase on our side that we. Yeah, we nominated myself, my partner Matt, and then, and then one other person to basically serve as, you know, we’re going to be the guys going through the training, with Michael Collins.
00:16:11:14 – 00:16:31:06
Unknown
He was our our implementation specialist, did a great job. and again, it was all, you know, it’s all, you know, web based sound. No, no on site stuff, which, which went fine. it was nice because we could, you know, the, the onboard routing, you know, we were able to tailor that exactly to what we’re doing.
00:16:31:06 – 00:16:47:06
Unknown
You know, if there was something, if the three of us, you know, got something pretty quick, we could tell Michael. Hey. Yep. We got it. Let’s move on to the next thing. and and conversely, if there was something, we were like, we’re not what I quite. Goodness. Can you can we spend an extra couple hours on this?
00:16:47:08 – 00:17:08:14
Unknown
he would, you know, he’d kind of slow things back, roll it back a little bit and spend some time on the areas that we really needed to work on. So we did that for probably about, I want to say 3 or 4 months to go through the whole module, you know, the whole onboarding. We took that. And then when we felt comfortable, you know, we rolled that out to the whole shop again.
00:17:08:14 – 00:17:31:03
Unknown
They were they knew it was coming. but we went live, and, you know, for maybe a handful of jobs, kind of dual tracked, you know, it’s still you guys are familiar with the paper version. Let’s do this. But let’s also implement, you know, the web based pro shop version. just today, it wasn’t cold turkey. You know, Friday you’re using paper and Monday it’s all web based.
00:17:31:05 – 00:17:50:06
Unknown
and the the feedback was great. You know, we had, there was there’s no pushback. I mean, there’s obviously the little hiccups of, hey, where do I find that again or what button do I push or, you know, whatever it may be. But the, yeah, we were anticipating a little bit of, of pushback or hesitancy.
00:17:50:06 – 00:18:12:06
Unknown
I mean, it’s a big culture shift. but honestly, it was, you know, it was very well received even. You know, I was a little surprised, some of the more tenured people in the industry where you kind of think that, oh, you know, that’s that’s not for me. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got it all up here, you know, they were some of the first to say, oh, yeah, this is, you know, this is great.
00:18:12:07 – 00:18:26:20
Unknown
This is really going to help. Yeah.
00:18:26:22 – 00:18:45:17
Unknown
We did. Yeah. We had once, once the three of us on our side who were who were sent through most of the trainings once we kind of got, you know, aware enough to really describe it ourselves, we did kind of a half day offsite with everybody, got them out of the machine shop, rented kind of a conference space downtown Bozeman here.
00:18:45:17 – 00:19:12:19
Unknown
And, and we started kind of walking through, you know, would create some training work orders and templates and walk them through, yeah, showing some videos, show them, you know, here’s how you find the inspection plan. Here’s how you enter in inspection data just to kind of get, you know, doing some dry runs. And again, I think having the, you know, just that, that training, you know, the ability to create kind of a training client, and create kind of mock work orders.
00:19:12:19 – 00:19:37:16
Unknown
I do that actually, when I’m onboarding, you know, new hires, machinists and operators, I’ll create a kind of a training work order for a kind of a dummy part, basically, and walk them through. Here’s how you clock in. Here’s how you find that the the drawing, you know, the the balloon dimensions here. So you enter in all that stuff and I think just, you know, the more and more somebody is practicing that, obviously the quicker they’re going to take up to it.
00:19:37:16 – 00:19:57:15
Unknown
So yeah, we wanted to make sure it wasn’t, although people were excited, we wanted to make sure it wasn’t like, all right, ready, set, go. You know, we’re going to start using this. So there was a lot of kind of, you know, walking through with them a lot of time on the shop floor to, to help people and, and yeah, if we needed it, you know call into the tech support and hey you know we’re having an issue.
00:19:57:15 – 00:20:04:06
Unknown
And yeah it went really, really well.
00:20:16:19 – 00:20:35:10
Unknown
Yeah. Probably the the most immediate change that we saw was, you know, in setups where, you know, I kind of referenced that that tribal knowledge, which I would like to thank. Our shop wasn’t the only one who who operated like that. You know, you got a lot of people that that guy knows that part. And that guy’s, you know, he’s an expert on that part.
00:20:35:10 – 00:21:02:00
Unknown
And, you know, when you get those orders and they do it. So just having the ability to, document set up instructions, tool is, you know, run descriptions. How do you how do you load parts for operators, etc.? and just having that there. So we kind of took that mentality, you know, I want to be able to show anybody that I hire off the street, you know, put them in front of a work order and they can kind of click through.
00:21:02:00 – 00:21:20:07
Unknown
And, you know, it’s pretty intuitive. You know, you can you know, you can kind of get a good sense of, what you’re doing. And there might be, you know, 10% where you need to ask some questions, but get your tool as you get your, your work holding, you know, you know, number of ops and just, you know, what you’re doing.
00:21:20:09 – 00:21:42:20
Unknown
so I think putting that in, which wasn’t something we were great at, when we were on the kind of the paper version, you know, set up instructions, you do them once, and then they would get lost and, and, so just having that there, the ability to put part photos and screenshots from your, your camp program, you know, this is this is how we’re loading it.
00:21:42:20 – 00:22:03:19
Unknown
This is, you know, this is where we’re, you know, we’re we’re we’re putting the chores on the on the table, you know, even videos, I mean, that’s, you know, just I, I’m a visual learner. I think a lot of the, the younger people that we’re hiring to, I mean, they’re just used to that, you know, they’re used to pulling up their app and clicking through here and just, you know, watching a tutorial.
00:22:03:20 – 00:22:24:14
Unknown
and so going from, from, you know, from paper to having interactive, you know, set up instructions. I mean, that was probably the immediate, you know, wow. This is this is pretty cool.
00:22:24:15 – 00:22:43:16
Unknown
Yeah, I would say, you know, I don’t have an exact number, but it was probably about a 50% increase in throughput. Just I mean, just the, and, well, it’s still continuing, by the way. I mean, it’s, you know, this is something just to take a step back. you know, we went through we implement approach of let’s, let’s do the low hanging fruit.
00:22:43:16 – 00:23:17:11
Unknown
Let’s move from paper travelers to just the electronic work order. you know, there’s just a lot you can do, I think, with, you know, just having everything there in the work order, breaking it out by number of apps, being able to kind of click into each operation you’ve got everything you need just for there. So it’s, you know, it’s it’s, highlighted just for what you’re doing, knowing that there’s a whole bunch more within Pro shop and there’s stuff, honestly, there’s modules that we have, you know, just kind of started to scratch the surface with, so we started kind of, you know, kind of, okay, big picture.
00:23:17:11 – 00:23:42:22
Unknown
Let’s, let’s have this kind of run the inspection, the quality system, the work orders, kind of the day to day stuff. like I said, that was that felt like about a 50% increase in throughput. and we kind of tabled this a little bit more complicated modules, which we’re now tackling. for example, tooling, you know, that’s something within our shop that we have always we’ve known it’s an issue.
00:23:43:01 – 00:24:03:17
Unknown
We have we’ve known we had to do something to address just our tooling catalog, our, our tooling library. but it just never went anywhere. We had we had ideas of how we’re going to catalog and inventory our tools. We’ve had outside tooling vendors come in and try to help us, you know, provide us some tool cribs.
00:24:03:17 – 00:24:23:19
Unknown
And, and it just never went anywhere. And then we just, for about a year, year and a half ago, we had our, our shop floor manager, Josh, really said, I’m doing this work and we’re going to figure this out. And so putting all the tools within Pro shop, where they used min max orders, you know, really getting it in there.
00:24:23:21 – 00:24:40:06
Unknown
And it’s been awesome. I haven’t had anybody in the last year come in with an empty plastic sleeve like, hey, boss, we’re, we just broke our last tool, you know? That’s that’s the worst knock on the door. You can get.
00:24:40:08 – 00:24:46:06
Unknown
Totally, totally.
00:24:46:08 – 00:24:58:20
Unknown
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:58:22 – 00:25:22:19
Unknown
We did? Yeah. It, you know, that kind of kind of correlates, just with the ability to schedule as well. So just, I think having more transparency into. All right, this job is going to take X hours to set up. We’ve got a couple day run time. Great. But what’s queued up next? You know, let’s make sure we’ve got the next trap queued up and we’re not you know, we’re not sitting around for a half day like, oh yeah, who’s going to who’s going to set that up?
00:25:22:19 – 00:26:02:14
Unknown
Do we have everything as material even been ordered? so just the ability to have the schedule flow, I think a little bit more, more fluid, you know, so they got that, we saw that, which obviously correlate, you know, spindles are just turning a lot more, a lot less downtime. and again, I think it’s the transparency of, you know, going from, okay, the job is done when somebody comes up and says, hey, I’m done to now working and saying, like, okay, the estimated completion date is this, if the next job is is supposed to start, you know, half day, day after, you know, worst thing that
00:26:02:14 – 00:26:23:12
Unknown
could happen is we’re ready, and then nobody’s ordered tooling or materials or, you know, you know, whatever. so just that transparency to just have them click, you know, one job to the next, one job to the next. so yeah, that definitely helps quite a bit.
00:26:23:14 – 00:27:00:15
Unknown
You know, no, we’re not. And it’s something I’m being very candid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. it it shows up. well, we’re actually my partner, I, we were, we were getting into this last week in a good way, saying like, we need to do this. we are. And this was, this was, kind of a side conversation off of some war room planning that we were doing where the pre-processing checklist, you know, we kind of, customize around it, tried to simplify it quite a bit, where if I’m a machinist and I’m ready to get going, you know, just I always call it the sanity check to the guys, like, let’s look around you
00:27:00:15 – 00:27:28:13
Unknown
know, are we working on the right rev the right print, like, do we know number ops that we’re doing? Do we have material. Do we have the tooling? Do we have work order in any any inspection gauges or equipment we need just kind of a quick scan. You know we’ve exactly you know, I mean, frankly, we’ve had jobs, plenty of jobs over the years where we’re ready to start and then, yeah, you do that and you look around, you’re like, oh, no, I didn’t I didn’t order that one.
00:27:28:15 – 00:27:52:14
Unknown
You know, custom, you know, whatever tool. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And then you’re. Yeah, you’re back to your you’re coming, you’re down for a couple days. And so trying to avoid that. but the guys just weren’t using them. they were not using the pre-processing checklist despite kind of paring that down to just simplifying it as best as possible.
00:27:52:16 – 00:28:21:20
Unknown
but that is something that we’re, as we’re, we’re, tightening up our war room planning exercises, you know, really going to take a step back, look at, you know, what does that preprocessing checklist need to be. And then and the really kind of kicking that back out and saying, yeah, we we have to use this. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s going to be a mandatory thing.
00:28:41:19 – 00:28:50:10
Unknown
Right.
00:29:08:07 – 00:29:24:20
Unknown
Right.
00:29:30:01 – 00:29:43:13
Unknown
You know.
00:29:43:15 – 00:29:54:13
Unknown
Exactly. Right, right.
00:29:54:15 – 00:30:14:01
Unknown
Totally. And and we do a lot of that. you know, we do a lot of that at the very beginning in what we call war room planning. So a lot of that, you know, instead of right before the machine is, is about the, you know, go to the machine and do their thing. you know, we’ll do that kind of in our, our risk and planning assessment.
00:30:14:03 – 00:30:31:21
Unknown
you know, kind of confirm all that stuff. Yeah. Is this a repeat job? Even if it’s, even if it is a repeat job, is it a complicated job? What scrap. If we had looking at the process development, you know what? What? You know, did anybody make any connotations or notations from the last time to say, hey, you know, I know we’ve used this.
00:30:31:21 – 00:30:54:02
Unknown
Yeah, this, this ball and mill for, you know, last three times. But it was invest in some more expensive, better tooling, for example. you know, because we’re snapping tools left and right or, you know, whatever it may be. So we do that. It’s just not it’s just not, you know, is religiously through the the pre-processing checklist is I want it to be.
00:30:54:04 – 00:31:04:12
Unknown
Yeah. There you go.
00:31:15:08 – 00:31:36:11
Unknown
We started in, kind of late 2019. So it’s it was right around, you know, the spring of, of 2020, about four years ago when we really went live with everything.
00:31:36:13 – 00:32:05:02
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, we’ve we’ve almost doubled in revenue, since then. and. Yeah, it’s, it’s been about, a similar percentage growth in terms of number of employees and, and, it’s good. We’re going through a good growth phase right now. and there’s, you know, there’s just a lot of stuff going on. We’re we’re, overwhelmed in a good way, just on the the stuff that we’re quoting and, you know, the stressors in my life now are all good things.
00:32:05:02 – 00:32:22:07
Unknown
You know, what kind of five axis machine are we going to get? And, you know, where are we going to find, you know, people or automation to, you know, to keep these jobs on track and, you know, keep the on time delivery up. So, I’d rather take those stressors than, hey, where’s the next job going to come from?
00:32:22:07 – 00:32:47:22
Unknown
So it’s. Yeah, it’s good. We’re we’ve got a, we’re at we’re at a good spot right now.
00:32:48:01 – 00:33:10:06
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Great question. And a lot of it is just different clientele in different industries. We weren’t doing a lot in aerospace and defense. ten years ago, you know, there were, there were a handful of companies that, it was preferred if not require that we were ISO 9001, but, the stuff, we just weren’t doing.
00:33:10:08 – 00:33:31:19
Unknown
and so again, 4 or 5 years ago, that was as we’re doing strategic plan and we knew we wanted to get into to aerospace defense. and, you know, as we just started interacting with, with potential customers, that was the pushback of like, yeah, yeah, if you do want to make that type of part, you absolutely need the, the certification.
00:33:31:21 – 00:33:58:14
Unknown
There might be a few things here and there that you could do, maybe create some fixtures or something, you know, something non-production that you wouldn’t need. The aerospace certificate or certification. but the, you know, the, the overwhelming result, or answer is, yes, you you absolutely need that. And so, it was a quick decision. Just the potential versus the, you know, the cost to go through that.
00:33:58:16 – 00:34:20:08
Unknown
so, yeah, we kind of buckled back down and, and again, so that the customers previous, you know, they were really aerospace customers, they were, you know, medical, commercial heavy industrial. And their response there was, hey, you know, we like the concept, but, you know, you just need to follow the, you know, the, the guidelines. So you don’t actually have to have the certification.
00:34:20:08 – 00:34:37:04
Unknown
You can be compliant. And we’re still good with you.
00:34:37:05 – 00:35:05:12
Unknown
But yeah, we have. Yeah. It’s been, it’s been fun. I mean, there’s so much cool stuff happening. so we’ve we’ve picked up, some nice aerospace customers. some of the top prime defense contractors, is starting to build some momentum with that. And then on the, on the commercial space industry, I mean, like I said, just just some cool stuff happening, to the point where, you know, a lot of these companies, you know, I’ll read about them in a magazine, never having heard of them.
00:35:05:12 – 00:35:26:03
Unknown
And then, you know, you do a little research like, wow, you know, I didn’t even know this existed. so that’s that’s been the challenging thing is just kind of keeping tabs on what’s going on in commercial space. Yeah. We’ve picked up, a handful of new clients, primarily in the last six months. you know, satellite, you know, equipment and components, of rocket companies.
00:35:26:03 – 00:35:31:16
Unknown
I mean, it’s, you know, it’s it’s pretty fun.
00:35:31:18 – 00:35:58:20
Unknown
It’s been a journey. you know, totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you’ve been you’ve been great on the feedback. And, I mean, the overwhelming, answer is just just, you know, hustle and I and just trying to trying to get out there. you know, our marketing strategy has been a little bit of everything. You know, once we got our our aerospace certification in, I think it was late 2021.
00:35:58:20 – 00:36:19:04
Unknown
So or this later this year, we’re coming up on our our three year renewal. you know, you got the certification. You actually got the piece of paper, you can put it on your website. And so I just went through and probably went to, I don’t know, I probably went to hundreds of websites, filled out the supplier survey, you know, got in their system just to get in there.
00:36:19:06 – 00:36:58:06
Unknown
you know, some of it was LinkedIn, you know, just reaching out, to buyers, you know, and lately starting to go to, to a handful of, space and aerospace and defense, conferences and just networking there. So it’s been a little bit of everything. but it’s kind of nice. And, you know, in some of the, one of the larger primes that we’ve gotten into, for example, got in there and that actually, it’s it’s funny, that was just a blind website supplier survey that we filled out a year went by and we got a we got a call out of the blue from somebody we didn’t know was saying,
00:36:58:06 – 00:37:20:08
Unknown
hey, we’re looking for smaller machine shops to work with. We just went through our database and, you guys popped up, you want to work with us? And we said, well, yeah. it does work. They came they did a site visit. you know, fast forward about a year. We’ve we’ve got about a year’s worth of, of, some really nice purchase orders, under our belt with them.
00:37:20:08 – 00:37:47:16
Unknown
But then other buyers in that same company are starting to reach out to us. Just people again, same, you know, same end in. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it’s kind of nice. Just, if we can build that. I mean, that’s how any company wants to grow and get more clients, right? It’s just it’s purely reputation based. so it’s it’s kind of nice to see that coming to fruition as well.
00:37:47:17 – 00:38:06:08
Unknown
Yeah, it. Sure. It was good. I actually I happened that week to have Covid, so I was I was working from home, so I didn’t actually get to be there. you know, the team did a great job, just kind of kind of doing that. But it was just it was one person who came out. and it was interesting.
00:38:06:08 – 00:38:30:15
Unknown
He was he was almost again, this is a huge, you know, prime defense contractor. And they were they were almost trying to sell us on, hey, here’s why you should work with us. And we’re thinking like it should be the other way around. We should be begging you for work, you know? so he was kind of going through some of their, some of their new projects that they’re working on, talking about, you know, deliveries and requirements and things of that nature.
00:38:30:15 – 00:38:51:07
Unknown
A lot of it, you know, it was on cyber security, you know, gave him the, the tour of the shop and, yeah, resonated really well, I think we’re, you know, I think we, we show very well now, I’m very proud to kind of tour potential clients and existing customers through the shop right now.
00:38:51:08 – 00:39:11:19
Unknown
Whereas, again, maybe 3 or 4 years ago, before we had moved into this new space, it was it was almost embarrassing. It was, you know, it was cluttered. It did not show. Well, and so the guys on the shop floor, you know, credit to them, like, like a lot of this has come from them where they, you know, little things like shadow boards and.
00:39:11:21 – 00:39:33:08
Unknown
Yeah, the tooling inventory, you know, the fixture shelves, everything is, you know, I love as an owner, seeing a lot of these ideas come from the guys in the shop floor instead of me, like, pushing it on them, saying, hey, we need to do this. They’ll come with an idea. Then, you know, they got to justify whatever price or time it takes.
00:39:33:08 – 00:39:49:00
Unknown
But, you know, the guys on the shop floor, it is kind of nice. I mean, they, I get the sense they’re they’re absolutely. See, in the vision that we’re laying out and they’re, you know, they’re helping out on their own. We’re not having to kind of, you know, keep people, you know, within the guardrails. So, yeah.
00:39:49:00 – 00:40:14:09
Unknown
So that that back to your question, that tour went really well. And, yeah, we’ve, we’ve since picked up, a handful of purchase orders from them. Yeah.
00:40:14:10 – 00:40:45:15
Unknown
Yeah, it’s it’s definitely the latter. We don’t really have a formal system. I we’ve we’ve all kind of read the Toyota way and some of the, the five best books out there in the lead manufacturing processes. But, you know, our, our excuse, up until recently has been, listen, we’re a job shop. I mean, it’s, you know, you can definitely see the value for lean manufacture in in five hours when you’re a huge production plant spitting out millions of the same parts a year, every little second, every little foot of movement has an impact in a cost.
00:40:45:15 – 00:41:13:02
Unknown
But for a job shop, you know, we’re we’re a lot of times we walk in the door, we don’t even know what we’re quoting. And we could be making that same part later that day. So it’s just it’s tough to kind of implement lean practices, but we’re definitely, the leadership on the, on the shop floor, is taking what we can just the, you know, the low hanging fruit, organization doesn’t matter if you’re doing one part or a thousand parts, you know, having your your tools, your equipment.
00:41:13:02 – 00:41:36:17
Unknown
Right there or being able to find them, you know, just helps. and so, yeah, I spent a lot of just homegrown stuff. A lot of guys come in with ideas. there’s a few things that we’re looking at through our local MSE program where they do have some classes, to kind of go through, and you can get, you know, lean certified on, on various practices where we’re looking at maybe sending a person or to, to that, to kind of take it to the next level.
00:41:36:17 – 00:41:48:09
Unknown
But, thus far, yeah, it’s just been, it’s been ideas on the shop floor that, you know, people are they’re just bringing them. And I love it.
00:41:48:11 – 00:41:57:10
Unknown
No, I haven’t heard of that. But yeah. Okay.
00:41:57:12 – 00:42:04:09
Unknown
Oh, cool.
00:42:17:03 – 00:42:35:02
Unknown
That’s.
00:42:35:04 – 00:42:41:16
Unknown
Yeah.
00:42:48:19 – 00:43:13:03
Unknown
So it’s. Say. It’s such a simple concept, right? Like, you know, but but the implementation and, you know, the repetition of something like that, you know, I don’t call me on the staff, but it’s something like it takes 30 days, you know, to form a habit. You know, it’s everything after, after this resolution, going to the gym, eating healthier, you know, you start out for a week and yet, you know, you’re feeling all good.
00:43:13:03 – 00:43:40:20
Unknown
And then into January comes and it’s like, well, we kind of got sidetracked. So something like that. I think it’s just, you know, hammer at home and just make it a part of the routine. But, simple in practice, but very difficult to implement stuff like that. But yeah, I’ll definitely have to check that out.
00:44:00:10 – 00:44:05:20
Unknown
Yeah.
00:44:05:21 – 00:44:10:03
Unknown
Sure.
00:44:10:05 – 00:44:21:04
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely.
00:44:21:06 – 00:44:51:05
Unknown
Not not necessarily on on that particular visit, but, we had, we had, an existing customer come in. this was right around the end of last year, so we’ll call it call it four months ago. they’re a customer that they’ve got, you know, they’re they’re actually based in Boston. and they had their, their board of directors and some, some employees come out here as they were looking to move from some production or some, some prototype stuff.
00:44:51:05 – 00:45:11:16
Unknown
Onesie Tuesdays to hey, we’re going to take these parts that you’ve been making and we’re going to do some production runs. And so to bring those guys through and, you know, which again, I love, I, you know, I’m, I’m very proud to, to do it and walk people through. But I love pulling up on pro shop. You know, just I don’t stage this.
00:45:11:18 – 00:45:32:01
Unknown
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But having work orders and I go straight to the end process checks whether it’s a customer requirement or not. And just saying like, look at this. This is, you know, if we’re looking at traceability, whether you require it or not, this is just good practice. So having, you know, again, I’m like, I don’t I don’t know what this part is.
00:45:32:01 – 00:45:55:07
Unknown
I don’t have a print pulled up. You can imagine these are, you know, 25 different dimensions. Green is good. Yellow still good red. If you see a red that’s bad. you know, and walking them through and just showing the ability, you know, everything’s time. We know what what, associate what operator took that dimension on what day and what time with what equipment?
00:45:55:09 – 00:46:18:16
Unknown
even having the, the little spark lines at the end, you can kind of see the inspection trends, which that’s where, you know, it’s very specific. But I’ve found especially in this, this particular customer, he was out here with their team from Boston. I mean, just seeing that and, you know, I kind of use that as a predictive analytic looking at, you know, something is is kind of hovering right on nominal.
00:46:18:16 – 00:46:36:05
Unknown
To me. That’s a it’s a very in control process. We we’ve got that dialed in. if you start seeing some movement, you know, maybe to the upper or lower boundary, you know, who knows what’s happening, maybe it’s time to flip and insert and, you know, get a fresh cut in tool. Maybe there’s some offset adjustment that needs to be made.
00:46:36:05 – 00:46:54:20
Unknown
But, you know, doing that before a tool breaks or before a park is out of spec, and that, you know, I mean, their jaws just like drop down, it was, it was, you know, pretty cool. So that work the stars align. We had a good work order going on that I could pull that up and all the data was filled out and it, you know, felt really good.
00:46:54:20 – 00:47:17:04
Unknown
But, yeah, I think I think having that and then just, you know, also showing people, existing customers approach up just how everything is kind of tied in and linked together. You need your materials, sir. While I click here, it shows what my purchase order number was to that vendor. It’s got the search here. You know, there’s no more rifling around and losing stuff and and yeah.
00:47:17:04 – 00:47:45:12
Unknown
So that that resonates really, really well.
00:47:45:14 – 00:48:06:05
Unknown
Totally.
00:48:06:07 – 00:48:21:01
Unknown
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:48:21:03 – 00:48:52:07
Unknown
Yeah. It’s tough to test to classify that. I mean, it’s definitely helps change it for the better. We’ve got, you know, a lot of younger, aged people joining our firm, you know, people right out of trade school or college. so we’re not we’re not composed of a bunch of near retirement aged machinists. and again, I think back to the generation that we’re hiring now, there’s so used to everything being digital, being immediately accessible.
00:48:52:08 – 00:49:18:07
Unknown
I think back, if we were still on our paper traveler system, you know, we get potential employees to and through. And maybe I’m overreacting, but I can just see them kind of like, no, it’s not. It’s not for me. so it’s a big selling point. You know, it’s not just customers. It’s potential employees when they’re coming through where, you know, showing them everything is real time.
00:49:18:08 – 00:49:45:08
Unknown
you know, I think that is definitely helped to shift the culture. like I said, we’ve gone from from more reactive just in general to proactive, where, you know, everybody sees the benefit of utilizing, pro shop to its ability to tool in modules, Fisher modules to work, you know, set up instructions, etc.. So, the culture again when, when I’m not, you know, telling people, hey, this is coming for me.
00:49:45:08 – 00:50:02:20
Unknown
I need you to do this. This is, you know, you got to do this. They’re coming to me saying, hey, you have to do this week. We’re going to do this. We’re just telling you about it. It’s going to save, you know, hours of time and, you know, so again, that’s just it kind of kind of warms your heart a little bit as a, as an owner.
00:50:02:22 – 00:50:36:12
Unknown
So like yeah, these, you know, they’re not just coming in and punching and punching out like they get they want to see improvements. And you know, I always tell new hires like I’ve got thick skin, man. You’re not going to offend me if you come with with, an idea. The solution? I’m always really surprised, you know, just hearing, like, horror stories about other shops and other places of employments where you can’t propose ideas, you can’t, you know, your job is to be chained to that machine, hit your quota clock and clock out, you know, just hit your parts and do it again the next day.
00:50:36:12 – 00:50:54:07
Unknown
In the next 20 years, in. You know, that’s not how we are. It’s, you know, I almost get it’s a red flag. If somebody doesn’t come to me saying, hey, you know, I want to do a set up or I want to be a machinist, I want to program that part. You know, we want to see them kind of, you know, hungry to to move to the next step.
00:50:54:07 – 00:51:11:06
Unknown
And if they’re not, you know, again, it’s kind of like, well, what what are you doing here? If you, if you don’t want to improve yourself, you know, maybe this isn’t the right spot for you. So, Yeah, the culture. Culture is tricky because you can’t just you can’t, you know, wave pixie dust and, hey, here’s the culture.
00:51:11:06 – 00:51:54:20
Unknown
And it’s exactly what I wanted a minute. You can guide it a little bit, but, No, it’s it’s really good right now. I feel, just the, the mentality and the energy in the shop floor. and I’ll go out and, you know, I’ll put my little laptop on a desk out there and, and work and just kind of observe and, yeah, it’s just it’s fun to see the energy right now.
00:51:54:22 – 00:52:04:17
Unknown
Oh, you’re glitching out just a little bit.
00:52:04:19 – 00:52:16:08
Unknown
I can I can hear you now. Can you hear me?
00:52:16:09 – 00:52:27:13
Unknown
Oh! Oh! Gotcha! I can hear you. Fine. Now you’re.
00:52:27:15 – 00:52:37:07
Unknown
Okay, I heard a little bit about employees. And just find and find a people.
00:52:37:08 – 00:52:56:20
Unknown
Yeah.
00:52:56:22 – 00:53:25:14
Unknown
Yeah. It’s tricky. And again, fully understand that we’re. We’re not the only ones. I mean, all across the country, all across different industries. I mean, labor, wages, housing, you know, it’s all it’s all, very complicated right now. So the traditional, method that used to work for us, you know, we’ll hire a couple people out of our local, trade school, or, you know, we we’re a small community here in in Bozeman.
00:53:25:14 – 00:53:50:17
Unknown
And so there’s just not a lot of machine shops, and we we really don’t like poaching from one another because it gets very personal. but, you know, that being said, I mean, there’s just not a lot of opportunities you’ll get some guys just kind of going through machine shop. The machine shop. that doesn’t work anymore. I mean, it’s, a lot of people the, the housing, issues is really, you know, it’s a real thing for us here.
00:53:50:19 – 00:54:26:01
Unknown
We’re still a rural environment in Bozeman. I mean, you know, our population’s about 50,000. Our average house price just went above $1 million. And so getting some of these, getting people to stay here, to afford to live here, you know, both perspective and, and current employees. I mean, it’s tricky. So we’ve had we’ve had some turnover in the last year or two, you know, guys coming in and saying, listen, you know, I hate to leave, but I got to move to, you know, a town a couple hours away because, you know, cheaper housing and I can afford to live there.
00:54:26:01 – 00:54:50:02
Unknown
And and, you know, it pains me as an owner because I, you know, I want nothing more than everyone to have the ability to buy a house here. And if they want to start a family and raise a family and stay here. But I also, you know, and I tell them this, like, I also can’t just raise your wage to what it needs to be to accommodate your housing situation, because if I did that for everybody, we’d be out of business in 45 days.
00:54:50:02 – 00:55:13:01
Unknown
You know, I need to balance, you know, our our payroll, you know, appropriately. Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve had to pivot and be creative. I mean, there’s, there’s certain automation that we’ve been bringing in house. We’ve got, three soon to be, I think four, universal robot cobots. Just simple stuff. Just park tending, machine tending, bar feeders here and there.
00:55:13:01 – 00:55:46:01
Unknown
We’ve, we get pretty creative. We’ve got a kind of an engineering support, department here that we’ll, you know, we’ll pull a whole bunch of automation equipment, make our own little fixtures and machines, and try to to automate processes where we can, but as it comes back to, to workforce, instead of just hiring, you know, somebody who’s come through a machining program, you know, I’m not opposed to hiring, you know, people I actually really like people that have gone through fast food or restaurants.
00:55:46:02 – 00:56:03:20
Unknown
you know, employment before. They’re used to like a fast paced environment. They’re used to. It’s got to be right. You know, it’s it’s not right. Customers not going to be happy. they can juggle certain, you know, a handful of things at the same time. So I always tell people and again, some of this is just, you know, we couldn’t do this without pro shop.
00:56:03:22 – 00:56:31:13
Unknown
you know, you’ve got to be willing to learn. Do you got to be reliable? you’ve got to be inquisitive and we’ll we’ll teach the rest. You do not need to know, anything about machining. it’s great if you’ve, you know, seen a controller before, but, it’s not it’s not a requirement anymore. and we’ve had, we’ve had kind of good success with that, people coming in without bias or opinion or, hey, I know what I’m doing kind of thing there if they’re willing to learn.
00:56:31:13 – 00:57:03:04
Unknown
And and we’ve seen some of those people kind of graduate up and get promoted within the country. company. Yeah.
00:57:03:05 – 00:57:13:00
Unknown
Sure.
00:57:13:02 – 00:57:23:04
Unknown
Well.
00:57:23:06 – 00:57:51:11
Unknown
That’s crazy. But slinging chicken to setting up five access parts.
00:57:51:13 – 00:58:18:05
Unknown
If we were still around and alive, I think it would be just scraping by. I mean, I can’t say it’s a great question because I can’t imagine, what it would operate like in the old way anymore. I mean, again, we wouldn’t be in the aerospace industry. We just we we could not be able to handle that just on a paper system, workbooks, you know, all over the place.
00:58:18:07 – 00:58:38:19
Unknown
the lack of traceability, the lack of, attention to detail. we just couldn’t do it. So we would be we’d be your, kind of standard job shop doing, you know, hoping for knocks on the doors, hoping for, you know, phone calls and trying like crazy to get on bid lists and, you know, quote and stuff where we can, you know.
00:58:39:02 – 00:58:59:00
Unknown
Yeah, I think we’d, we would, survive with existing, you know, the existing customer base at the time. But I just, I mean, we’ve got, we’ve got some fairly ambitious growth plans here and we can’t do it without Pro Shop. I mean, there’s just no way around it. So. Yeah. Now you’re going to you’re going to leave me with that idea.
00:58:59:00 – 00:59:14:13
Unknown
That thought in my head, if we weren’t on what, what would my life be looking like today? So I’m glad I don’t have to think about that.
00:59:14:15 – 00:59:33:14
Unknown
It has. Yeah, it’s it’s, Yeah, it’s been great. you know, your team’s been been phenomenal to work with, and, you know, honestly, just the, the, you know, the thing that, that we really like to is just, you know, from, from pro shop standpoint, the continuous improvement, you know, it’s not just buy an off the shelf package and it’s there and it doesn’t grow with you.
00:59:33:14 – 00:59:52:05
Unknown
I mean, the, you know, one of the latest features is just, you know, having that 3D model in the, in the estimate, I mean, that’s, you know, simple. But, you know, just being able to spend apart around when you’re, when you’re quoting it, you know, looking at dimensions and complicated features on that. So I mean, just, you know, new versions, new iterations coming out.
00:59:52:07 – 01:00:24:07
Unknown
whether it’s a user interface or something a little bit more techie, kind of behind the scenes. so that. Yeah, you know, growing busy growing with the industry is, has been pretty cool to see, you know, from our standpoint.
01:00:24:09 – 01:00:51:07
Unknown
Totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love I don’t think I’ve worn a tie in six years, which is nice. I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to get on an airplane or wake up to my hotel room and remember what city I’m in anymore, so that’s been nice. You can’t take the CNC machines with you, but, I, I think I’ve heard you say it before where machining is the hardest business in the world and, you know.
01:00:51:09 – 01:01:11:11
Unknown
Absolutely. Like if you said that to me ten years ago, I’d be like, now, come on, there’s plenty of other ones, you know, more difficult than that, but I I’m with you, man. It is, it is challenging. Like, I, you know, I love the fast paced nature. I love, troubleshooting and problem solving, but it’s, you know, every day is different.
01:01:11:11 – 01:01:32:14
Unknown
You come in and we always joke about this. You come in Monday morning with the, hey, here’s what I’m going to do today, and here’s my plan for the week. And we’re going to do this. And by about 11:00 that morning you’re doing something different, you know? So it’s, Yeah, it’s it’s challenging, but it’s good. I, you know, I think you got to you got to, you know, stay up with technology.
01:01:32:14 – 01:01:59:11
Unknown
You’ve got to stay up with with manufacturing trends, which, again, super cool things happen in manufacturing these days. you know, kind of back to your your previous question. I mean, we’re looking at, I think it’s called cloud and C, just like the AI programing, you know, I don’t know if it’s been fully rolled out now, but there’s some demos in beta versions, but things like that where, you know, three years ago that that wasn’t even a concept.
01:01:59:11 – 01:02:15:15
Unknown
And now it’s kind of like, wow, that’s, you know, that could be a game changer. so staying on top of the some of the trends, but yeah, it’s it’s definitely, you know, it’s a challenging industry.
01:02:15:16 – 01:02:35:07
Unknown
Now, not boring.
01:02:35:09 – 01:02:39:05
Unknown
Yeah.
01:02:39:07 – 01:03:10:10
Unknown
No, it’s it’s been my pleasure. you know, it’s been great, to be honest. And again, you know, kudos to you and your team for all you do. I mean, like I said, starting out, you know, I’m glad there’s a resource for, either new shop owners or people looking to improve. So podcasts and just, you know, the knowledge that is out there right now from you and your group and just other, you know, other people in the industry, I wouldn’t be here, you know, if not for podcasts like that.
01:03:10:12 – 01:03:19:12
Unknown
so, yeah, again, appreciate everything you do for the industry.
01:03:19:14 – 01:03:25:14
Unknown
Totally.
01:03:25:15 – 01:03:55:01
Unknown
And, yeah, probably easiest place is auto pilot design.com. you can find our website, email addresses are on there. Info at auto pilot design. you know, you can hit a, quote button on there and then our, our social media sites are link to there as well.
01:03:55:03 – 01:03:56:19
Unknown
Paul, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
01:03:56:19 – 01:04:26:15
Unknown
Good afternoon buddy. How’s it going? Oh. I’m good. Yeah. How about you? Oh, well, I am riding a hike because I just talked to Matt Lindsey from autopilot, and just had a really fun, really fun conversation. so first of all, he reminded me that he he met us at the. Well, first he heard about us on making chips in the podcast, which was sort of we were in his, his memory.
01:04:26:17 – 01:04:50:17
Unknown
and then he walked by our booth at the I-90 conference in eastern Washington, right on that Idaho border and Coeur d’Alene. Spokane. And, I was giving a demo to somebody, and he just, like, whipped his head and started watching. And he knew, like, right away. Oh, it’s like this is made for people like me. So, and he wasn’t always people like us because he was more in, like, the investment side.
01:04:50:17 – 01:05:10:09
Unknown
And then he lives in Bozeman, Montana, and he’s a fly fisherman, and he, like, found he just like, maybe he just, like, looked up or ran across this local company that makes fly fishing reels. And he just asked the guy, hey, can I come down and learn about your process? And the guy’s like, sure, bring a six pack of beer.
01:05:10:09 – 01:05:29:09
Unknown
That’ll be the cost of entry. So you liked that guy immediately? his name is Matt. Also, ironically. But, so he went down and ended up spending a long time and then kind of disconnected, but then several months later, reconnected with him and decided to buy into the business and became one of the owners. Wow. That’s awesome.
01:05:29:09 – 01:05:50:10
Unknown
And they had a job shop side and then the then the product side for the for the rails. But, yeah, they saw, you know, just really powerful, improvements. And, you know, when they bought pro shop in, they, he said they saw an increase in just their general shop floor throughput of around 50%. We have just said, wow, amazing.
01:05:50:10 – 01:06:13:15
Unknown
50%. Just from efficiencies and setups, not, you know, walking around looking for tools, you know, better quality, not having to do as much scrap or rework, just so many different things. better planning up front. This is a theme across so many clients, right? You know, which I know is a foundation that you espouse and have for for a long, long time.
01:06:13:17 – 01:06:43:16
Unknown
Yes. So. Very much so. Well that’s great. That sounds amazing. I mean, that’s just like epic. quantity 50% is huge, right? Yeah. That’s. Yeah, that’s. Yeah, it’s been good. And then, you know, they went and got a certified, with pro shop. So, they were not certified prior, and, they’re now doing the work for, you know, the, for many, sort of big, big primes, you know, big primes in the aerospace and defense market.
01:06:43:16 – 01:07:10:19
Unknown
And, you know, we’ve just kind of opened the, the world to them with, you know, with the tools a pro shop has for certification. And, and, you know, of course, having bought into this business just a few years before, you know, are a lot of learning curve from him, you know, for him and he he kind of manages the business side, the finance side and his, his partner, you know, runs the shop floor and is more technical, kind of like you were, you know, back in micro CNC days.
01:07:10:21 – 01:07:31:18
Unknown
yeah. And, you know, they, they they, you know, are using so many tools, they’re using eyepieces and showing customers and, you know, just it’s been a sales tool for them. And, it’s just, just made a big difference in their world. So it just feels really good. You know, these are just the most gratifying conversations to have.
01:07:31:19 – 01:07:57:02
Unknown
Yeah, that that’s serve and sharing with you. So and to hear about them going, you know, we started in a fishing real niche and then decided that, you know, we could do a lot of a lot of things. And there were, you know, big markets to be had. And it’s funny that you say the fishing real piece, because I know we have at least a couple other clients who have fishing reel lines as like a subset of their, you know, aerospace and precision manufacturing business.
01:07:57:02 – 01:08:15:10
Unknown
So that’s interesting. I wonder what it is that like, fishing, real businesses end up getting into it? Well, I think they’re high value, high complexity, high engineering parts. I mean, we have a sea. Did a bunch of fly fishing stuff ourselves back in the processing days. Those are some of the most challenging parts we made, right? Right.
01:08:15:12 – 01:08:32:20
Unknown
So high tolerance, so high cosmetics and, Yeah. So, they’re machining heavy. So. Yeah. Why not that that idea of having your own product, obviously, I feel like every shop, the grass is always greener. They’re like, oh, if we had our own product and then product, people are like, oh, if we were more like a job shop.
01:08:32:22 – 01:08:50:10
Unknown
Yeah, right. And then there’s clients that do both, you know, which is, I think a great business model. You know, you have some bread and butter work to fill in when your job shop’s not busy and and just opportunities to grow if your market really takes off. And I mean, even someone like Roush Yates is an example not fly fishing reels.
01:08:50:10 – 01:09:20:22
Unknown
But you know, they they had all this capacity to make NASCAR engine parts and then they branched into, into aerospace, defense, medical, the whole gamut. You know, in a big way. And now, you know, I don’t know how their revenue is compared to engine parts versus the other stuff, but it’s substantial, right? Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised if companies like that and on that journey, you know, end up with a good but smaller portion of their own product because the market is so big on the other side of it.
01:09:21:01 – 01:09:40:19
Unknown
and especially really, you know, captive markets like, like NASCAR engines, there’s only so many NASCAR engines you need to build. Right? It’s not like, next year NASCAR is 25% bigger. So yeah. That’s true. Yeah. And yeah, the other ones are at least right now, booming. So yeah. Awesome. Well, good for them. And, autopilot.
01:09:40:20 – 01:09:46:00
Unknown
How fantastic. Yeah. All right. Thanks, buddy. Catch you on the next one. We’ll talk soon. Bye
