Paul Van Metre: Hello my friends and welcome to another episode of the manufacturing transform podcast. I’m your host Paul Van Meter And today we have an interview with Adam Zimmer of Zimmer design and manufacturing in Austin, Texas They are an ITAR registered AS9100 contract manufacturer machine shop They have been a ProShop customer since before they opened their doors To speak to some of Adam’s wisdom, I believe Adam’s a really cool guy.
I have a huge respect for him and the way he’s building his business growing at 70 percent per year for the last few years. And on track to do that again in 2025. Although they’ve only been in business for, I think, a little over three to four years, the way that Adam has decided to build this business and basically build it with ProShop as the foundation of their operations and their business processes, how easy he felt like it was to get AS9100 certified, and Just many of the things that he talks about and reveals, you know, really underscores, I think the wisdom in starting [00:01:00] and focusing on great systems.
He says, there’s no way they could have grown that quickly without ProShop. And quite honestly, without being systems focused, I’m sure if he had a different ERP, but still had the same mentality about building really strong systems, he probably would still be doing just fine as well, but we are lucky that we’re the ones that he has hitched his wagon to.
And It’s cool to see his growth and have him share that story with us all. So without further ado, let’s go talk to Adam. Adam, good morning and welcome to the Manufacturing Transformed podcast. Good to have you here.
Hey, good morning, Paul. Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor.
Oh, yes. It’s an honor for me as well. And happy new year. It is, what is it? The ninth. So it’s not quite the new year, but first time we’ve got to connect. So hope your, hope your 20 24 was good and 25 sounds like it’s already starting out strong.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. Yeah. We’re growing about 70%, I think year over year. So.
Paul Van Metre: Whoa.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: 70%. Okay. Crazy. We need to, we need to talk about that.
Adam Zimmer: We’ll dig into [00:02:00] that.
Paul Van Metre: We’ll get into that. So let’s start by, yeah, once you introduce yourself and and the company and then we’ll get into this 70 percent growth story.
Adam Zimmer: Sure. Yeah. I’m Adam Zimmer. I own and operate Zimmer design manufacturing here in Austin, Texas. Mainly semiconductor and we’re growing in the airspace and data center has been pretty big lately.
It’s been going around town, so yeah, kind of the bigger areas of the business started in my garage in 2020, kind of as a hobby project, making cigar stands and ashtrays, but
Paul Van Metre: Oh yeah , that’s right. That’s right.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: And was that pre, was that pre COVID or post COVID?
Adam Zimmer: I guess that’s right when COVID started. So I was working as a head programmer at a large shop and picked up a manual lathe and mill and started tinkering with it. That was one of the items to make kind of like the heavy mug you were talking about.
Paul Van Metre: For those watching on video, I have both the five pound version of the heavy mug, which is actually realistic for me to [00:03:00] use and I have the 22 pound heavy mug on my shelf, which I can pick it up, but I can’t really drink, you know, coffee from it. So without, without either busting my teeth or spilling coffee all over myself. So, was your decision to start tinkering on the side? Was that a decision triggered because of COVID or had you already had that in mind prior to April?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, a family member was selling some used manual equipment, you know, out of the garage, out of the Husky. So I, so I picked it up for a good deal. That’s kind of what started everything. So thank you very much for that. And then shortly after, I guess, six months later a shop owner, my, my good buddy of mine, he was selling his business, selling his machines.
And he lived, the shop was like two minutes from my house. So there’s actually videos and pictures of me driving the forklift from my house to the shop, back and forth. I Dunno if that’s legal.
Paul Van Metre: As long as the cops didn’t pull you over it was.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, it worked. But yeah, he offered, you know, a fair [00:04:00] price for the machines and then basically gave all the customers over.
I kind of got into the snow and I was gonna grow it, mm-hmm . So I, yeah. Started with one employee, I guess in 2021. Now we’re up to, I’d say 11, I think, on payroll.
Paul Van Metre: 11. Wow. That’s fast growth. Good for you. Mm-hmm . Well, I guess you gotta have bodies when you’re growing. 70% right?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It’s not stressful at all.
I’m sure. Yeah. So what do you think you know, one of my questions is what’s makes, what makes your shop unique? Like tell us, like, that’s, that’s an uncommon story to grow that quick.
And yeah, I think, I guess we’re unique in the fact that we kind of started, you know, recently. So we, I kind of got to see other shops, but you’re typically three generations or 30 years old, you know, been around for a while, but we were starting at a time when AI is coming out, a lot of paperless systems coming out.
You know, the workforce is hard to find and [00:05:00] expensive, so he kind of, kind of came into the, all these problems already in front of me. So we’re kind of able to handle those problems before we even got into business. We’re also a pretty young shop, so, you know, a lot of our programmers had no previous programming experience, you know, great machinists.
They’re younger, kind of tapped out at their current jobs. Sure. So, so yeah, we brought them in and taught them Mastercam and kind of developing processes there. Cool. Definitely a higher attitude over, you know, experience type of shop.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. I think that’s a smart way to go all day long. So and so you were a machinist and programmer in some sounds like a few different shops prior.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I’ve been doing it, I guess since I was 14 or 15. So I was getting dropped off at my cousin’s shop in Missouri. That’s where I was born and raised in Missouri. Okay. Sweeping floors and been doing that ever since. So I knew I wanted to own a shop one day, just a little bit [00:06:00] sooner than I thought. And then let’s see, yeah, we do a lot of diverse work and we’re pretty diversified like I talked about.
We’re doing some gun manufacturing to being in Texas. We’re still, we still open for job shop work, but we’re trying to pursue aerospace, DOD, things like that.
Paul Van Metre: Cool. Sounds like the world is your oyster. Can you mind asking me asking how old you actually are?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I’m 31, I think.
Paul Van Metre: Okay. So you started your shop when you were like 27 or something
Adam Zimmer: 28. Yeah, I guess I started in 2020 or incorporated in 2020, but I didn’t really own a large CNC shop until 2021. Got it. Yeah, definitely a few years earlier than I thought.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. I’m curious with the, with the gentleman that was selling the machines and handing over the customers, how did you, how did you finance that?
Did you get loans? Did he carry back, you know, bill out some, some [00:07:00] terms with him on the machines or? Yeah, he was open.
Adam Zimmer: He was open to owner financing, but I got some private financing on the side. Okay. So I asked kind of, I don’t really have a bank credit history yet. So a lot of it’s got it privately financed by someone, but
Paul Van Metre: got it. That’s nice that they have someone that believes in you and obviously it’s working.
Adam Zimmer: It’s working. Well, I had lots of support from the wife and the families and everybody’s been great. Even local shop owners. Very helpful.
Paul Van Metre: That’s fantastic. Yeah, I just love this community, right? It’s so supportive. It’s so collaborative.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I’ve been thinking on that. I feel like everybody says it’s a, you know, small town they work in manufacturing. Yeah, but I know, I know Austin is, I don’t know about. Yeah. Other larger cities, but it is truly, you know, everybody knows everybody it could be a good thing or a bad thing, but sure. Lots of support.
Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. I think that’s pretty universal across the country and the industry, you know, even up in Canada and other places [00:08:00] where we have clients too. So all right. So one of the unique things about you guys I will say is that you decided you needed an ERP Basically from day one. So can you talk about your decision there and why you thought that was worth the investment?
And it’s, it’s not that common. Most people wait a few years. So,
Adam Zimmer: yes, that was definitely in a unique situation. We had the shop purchase planned out a couple months ahead of time. So I actually came on to work for the shop. I bought for like a month or two, try to get familiar with the one employee, the customers, things like that.
Yeah. So right then and there, you know, the deal is pretty much final. So I knew I needed, you know, me, myself, I’m pretty organized guy. So I needed some type of software, no matter what it was to help me out. So I did a little bit of research. I’ve worked with a few other ERPs and my previous employers.
I already knew that was, you know, a mess.
Paul Van Metre: The other [00:09:00] days were a mess.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s nobody, I guess the shop floor employees never really got on the ERP too much. Right. That’s common. Honestly, the biggest selling point was just the paperless aspect, you know, pretty being very naive three years ago, just the paperless thing alone was good enough.
And really the pricing kind of, you can get into ProShop at a good price and it easily scales with you. Right. So you have every tool available to you right off the bat, but it’s a good entry price. And then, yeah, you can go as big as you want with it. And I was wanting to get an ERP before, you know, I had to enter in all the customer contacts and part numbers and things like that.
Mm-hmm . So, mm-hmm . Mm-hmm .
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. I guess,
Adam Zimmer: well, I’m sorry, go ahead.
Paul Van Metre: Oh, it just says, you know, I think there’s a ton of wisdom in that and right before we hit record, we were talking about, you know, we had a, a gentleman. Just announce last night on LinkedIn, just completely out of the blue. He said, [00:10:00] Hey, Paul van meter, we took an important step today.
I’m excited to announce our transition to ProShop. That’s Troy from TK machining specialties. And he, in the comments below, he said, it’s interesting to observe that when people are drawn to flashy new machines or sweet cutting tools. But after starting and running a business for 13 years, it’s truly these foundational elements like an excellent ERP that are make or break for a business.
And you know, I, I think what you described, you know, wanting, you know, being an organized person, realizing that you want something right from the get go is basically what, you know, Troy is talking about now. But for many companies, that’s not something they decide. Is a priority or, or possible or whatever you know, in the first many years of running their shops.
So yeah, I think kudos to you for making that decision and I’m glad it’s one that you were happy you made. So
Adam Zimmer: definitely I got it knowing, you know, I was wanting to scale,
Getting larger. So I think. I’ve talked to a lot of several, you know, [00:11:00] small shops, one, two man shops that are back and forth on the ERP system, which you may not need one if you’re one or two people, but you know, it, it helps a lot just for outside processing, quoting, keeping everything organized.
I really, really start to see the benefits when you’re like three or four employees personally that way I can, I think that’s when we hired a part time office manager and she was actually in Houston at the time and we’re in Austin. So she was three hours away and doing, doing billing and making work orders and things like that.
So that’s a huge benefit right there. All of our office staff is, you know, half remote, half in shop. So that’s a good hiring benefit as well.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, something that they like that attracts them to work for you rather than somewhere else. Absolutely.
Adam Zimmer: Every, every employee we add, we see a new tool we can use and just, we keep finding surprises in ProShop.
That’s like, that’s a great tool. So we can just keep growing and learning with ProShop.
Paul Van Metre: [00:12:00] Right. So did besides just staying organized as you talked about, you know, from the beginning, does that dovetail in with this idea of like building a foundation, right? You know, the analogy that I’ve heard people use is, you know, if you’re going to build a house, you don’t just build it straight on the dirt.
Put a foundation in place first and then you start building on top of that.
Because if you you know, don’t have a foundation, your house isn’t going to be stable. And then if you decide you need a foundation later, it’s really hard to dig out underneath it and start putting it in place, you know?
And so it is,
Adam Zimmer: It’s, it’s almost like a back and forth thing. I’ve noticed I’ve been working with the business coach for about a year now. Going through action coach. And it’s not manufacturing specific, but they really just get you in the mindset on how to run a business. You know, I’m a, I’m a technician as they would call it trying to be a business owner.
So it’s definitely a different mindset. Okay. But yeah, as we, you know, we got our foundation, I bought ProShop one or two employees. That’s [00:13:00] great. We kept hiring and then the foundation kind of starts cracking, you know, kind of see your weaknesses and your processes. So it’s constantly just revisiting the basics and seeing where the cracks are.
Every, every hire really. So
Paul Van Metre: interesting. Can you elaborate on maybe an example of where. Where something was working well, and then a crack formed when you hired someone new.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I think a lot of it, first thing that comes to mind would be shipping and receiving. Kind of, we kind of have our shipping and receiving guy make packing slips, right?
Yep. So there’ll be a differentiation between outside processing packing slip and you know, direct to customer packing slip. And everybody here is like, that’s kind of second nature. But you start hiring people in and you realize it’s like, oh, we need to. Like nobody knows what an outside process is sometimes.
So you really need to document the training on all this and double check and this and that. So, right. I get into the building.
Paul Van Metre: I’m [00:14:00] sorry. Oh, just, just training them in the foundation and the basic principles of how, how your business runs and the difference between those things. Yeah.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. I think getting into the business, you know, being a programmer and machinist, I wanted to streamline, you know, the programming and manufacturing side of things.
So try to automate master cam, make setup sheets, all that seamless. But now after three years, I’m realizing I need to. Try to do that with every single aspect of the company, which is a lot to chew off for sure. It’s down to accounting and quoting and shipping and trying to automate and document every process in a machine shop.
That’s
Paul Van Metre: it’s a big feat. Yeah, is it that automation of all those processes that allows you to scale at 70 percent a year? Oh for sure, yeah.
Adam Zimmer: We do a lot of training. Kind of, we got a ProShop culture almost going almost to a fault [00:15:00] because everybody is always on a ProShop, you know, tweaking processes, finding new ways to do things, shortcuts, everybody’s always talking to each other, sharing info, and then, you know, sometimes I’m like, all right, guys, that’s.
Good enough. Let’s keep the spindles turning. Let’s get the parts out the door. It’s it’s great. It’s a great culture. But yeah Still finding that balance of manpower verse trying to stay organized and trying to do big shop things with a small team So
Paul Van Metre: right, what are some of those big shop things you have aspirations to do?
Or arguing.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, we just got our, a big rack full of all our fixtures. You know, all our fixtures are laser engraved and recorded in ProShop and then linked to that part number. Nice. So that’s that’s a pain point from other shops I’ve worked at is, oh yeah, you know, here’s a, here’s a print and you kind of use the outline of the part on the print to find the fixture in like a huge room of a thousand fixtures.
So now [00:16:00] I just use it the other day and, you know, we’re using this part number is fixture 24. It’s this location and it was just, you know, it took 60 seconds instead of an hour to find that fixture. That’s kind of why I go to shop early is to start introducing those things early. So I keep hearing it’s easier to do it on a small scale and grow it than it is to train 50 people on how to do that.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Plus you’ve had all those years of 50 people trying to search for an hour for a fixture and all the measurable waste of that. Crazy. And what happens when you, when you actually can’t find the fixture and you end up making a new one? Yeah. And then you find as soon as you’re done making the new one, you find it.
Yes.
Adam Zimmer: Oh, yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Have you just as an aside, have you run across the feature yet where, if you haven’t used a fixture in like six months or a year, it, it sends you a system message and it says, here’s a list of fixtures. You might consider archiving.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I, I’ve seen it. We haven’t, I don’t think we’ve used it [00:17:00] for six months yet, but, but no, I’ve seen it.
There’s like a, a, B or C. I think the recommendation on ProShop was, you know, all your C fixtures keep moving up kind of average. Right. So pretty much everything on the top shelf after a year or so is, you know, do you want to keep this or not?
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Yeah. And then in our shop. Yeah. And I can’t remember. We built that feature years ago because we had the issue with, you know, we had a limited amount of actual shelf space, you know, in the main fixture area and fixtures keep coming in every day.
Right. Yeah. And so we eventually had to move them to more in an archive area in a different, you know, different part of the building. And it’s like, how do you even know if you’ve used a fixture in months without, you know, manually looking through all the work orders? And we’re like, oh, it’d be easy to make a query or make a system that says, Hey, you haven’t used this in six months.
Do you still and some of the. Actually benefit of [00:18:00] the little side benefit of that is, you know, before we would archive it or certainly before we would ever throw it out, we would call that customer and say, Hey, we have this fixture you haven’t used in a while and we need to make space. And sometimes they’re like, Oh, thanks for calling.
I need to order some of those. You’re like, great. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Happy to bring it back into the active fixture area. So
Adam Zimmer: we started speaking of queries. We started digging into that more kind of for me on the financial side. So we can do no monthly reports on how much we ship that month. They’re the sales that month.
Yeah. And they get into the background of ProShop. It’s a lot more customizable than I realized, even on the training side, I just found that the checkbox for, you know, does this attribute or attribute required training or not. Yeah, so we’re, we’re starting to do all the trainings and you can’t click that button unless you’re trained on
Paul Van Metre: approved training access control.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. [00:19:00]
Adam Zimmer: That is a whole nother rabbit hole to go down. That’s great. We’re trying to, you know, long term build a curriculum almost for through the training. So kind of have our internal school on how to machine. Using the trainings.
Paul Van Metre: got it. And are those like machining fundamentals or specific things specific to Zimmer?
Adam Zimmer: I think it would be specific to our equipment. I would think but yeah, mainly in the machining side Just got how to how to train my device You know how to set up tools all the way to our pallet pool how to find center rotation and make pallet changes and things Like that.
Paul Van Metre: That’s a cool idea. Yeah,
Adam Zimmer: And if you sit down and think of every process in a machine shop, it’s No, there’s thousands. Infinite. Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Infinite. You’re right. More than thousands. Yeah. And they’re always changing with new equipment and new things.
Yeah. You know, you made a funny comment. Before we hit record, you’re like running machine shop is easy. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that. [00:20:00] Can you elaborate a little bit more?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I think, well, first of all, I get made fun of by how much I talk about ProShop. So I’m kind of, all my buddies are like, yeah, yeah, ProShop’s great. It’s kind of, kind of more or less my secret to success. That’s why I started seeing a lot more people getting ProShop. And I’m kind of getting worried that my, my secrets out now. I, I sarcastically said that, but it’s, you know, there’s some truth to it. I guess two aspects of it is one is everything is organized and documented.
You can go back on the history of any part quickly. Actually just this morning, we got a, got a PO for seven part numbers for those part numbers got up revved. And within, well, what it got up revved is a cleaning process. They wanted a different cleaning process. So within 10 minutes, our office manager up revved all the prints, didn’t have to go on the shop floor and change anything, updated the estimate for outside processing and estimated that process in the work order.
And send a confirmation back, you know, within 10 minutes. So we got up revs, the whole PO very quickly. Wow. That’s just one example of all the, you know, everything’s linked together. So it just helps a ton. The other, the other side would just be might be jumping the gun, but getting AS 9, 100 certified, basically ProShop laid out everything we need to know and trained us on how to use [00:22:00] it.
It’s almost, I almost felt like I cheated getting certified. It was incredibly easy and really just a training course on how to run a shop correctly. Right. Very little, you know, headaches or input and how to get that going. And then, so we’ve had it for two years now, I believe. So we just got our satellite just got recertified surveillance audit.
Adam Zimmer: So I didn’t even do anything that day. We had our office manager and quality manager handle it all. No, I think I posted like, yeah, that was the easiest, easiest day of the shop so far.
Paul Van Metre: I do remember that LinkedIn post.
Adam Zimmer: So yeah, there’s a little, there’s a little guilt in there. Just getting certified after I’ve seen and heard so many people struggle with it.
Paul Van Metre: Right.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Well, I would also venture to guess that it’s also easy for you. And even just the fact that you said that on your recertification audit, you didn’t even do anything. You know, your team handled it that you must [00:23:00] be maybe better at delegation than than many any shop owners.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I mean, I gotta give credit where it’s due. We got great employees here. You know, they, they just take it and run with it, which is kind of what I was looking for. And then Yeah, I think it’s funny you bring that up. Cause I think about that this morning, I think having, I started the family at the same time as a machine shop. So real quick, I wouldn’t recommend that, but who needs sleep, right?
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. You got two babies. One’s one’s an actual infant and the other is an infant business.
Adam Zimmer: I think, you know, being a father helps being a better leader at work. And then because I’m a father, I can’t work 60, 70, 80 hours a week. So I pinned against the wall that I have to delegate things. And having a good team to follow through with all that really helps.
Paul Van Metre: There’s some important stuff right in there, what you just said. Because a lot of people are [00:24:00] still a parent and still work 60, 70, 80 hours a week. Yeah, I don’t know. I know people that, you know, have done that and wish they hadn’t. You know, wish they could go back. To when they had little kids and be there more often.
Adam Zimmer: I keep hearing that. So I’m trying not to make that regret.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Well, good for you for keeping that a priority. That’s, that’s the reason why we do what we do, right. To provide for our families.
Adam Zimmer: Going back to ProShop, you know, it makes it, you know, save an hour or two every day, just repetitive tasks. And then you can work remote very easily. I think that’s one of the big things I didn’t realize at the time was getting on the GovCloud. We, I basically have a VPN, you know, without doing any it work at all, just a network drive. Yeah, that was a lot. And the team can do it to take a laptop home, connect to that network drive and access [00:25:00] everything on the system.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Yeah. Without and this is the unique part that, you know, I’m still wrapping my head around because I’m not the savviest person, but, you know, without having to download your files to each local computer that you are working from, right? Because you can You can work from the remote drive, which like most ERPs don’t, you know, I’m again, I’m, I’ve learned this in the last few years, but most ERPs don’t work that way, right?
You can upload files, but then you have to literally download them to the local computer that you’re working on in order to say, programmed, you know, program with a, with a CAD model, you know and now you have multiple copies of that file. And that’s not really compatible with CMMC. Right.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, that’s a mess.
Paul Van Metre: Right.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. Took us a while to get there too. It’s we did a lot of things off our local network drive, then I realized, you know, there’s a spot for CAD CAM, a spot for [00:26:00] G code. know, from the work order that we all use. So it’s, it was a dumb moment. Like let’s put everything in the cloud and
Paul Van Metre: Sure.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Access it anywhere. So did we not do a good enough job like training on that feature and like really letting it sink in? Like this is, this is how you can do it.
Adam Zimmer: I don’t think that’s fair to you. Cause I mean, I was, when I was getting trained, I just learned like the bare bone basics, you know, implying that all you’re going to be a one, two man shop for a while but no, we, we really scaled with the output ProShop.
We would definitely, you know, be half the size right now. I worked for a ProShop. No, really? I mean, for my capacity of, you know, quoting, keeping things organized, all the outside processes, because what you can only keep track of a [00:27:00] handful of jobs without an ERP system. Right, we’ll probably have, you know, 50 outstanding work orders at once.
Paul Van Metre: Mm hmm.
Adam Zimmer: And I have something to track all that.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah Yeah, that’s too much to keep in your head for sure. Yeah, I mean we have We have a fair number of, you know, one and two person shops and sometimes they’re, you know, they’re like, yeah, by the time, you know, we had 10 work orders, we were starting to have things slip through the cracks and miss things and get customers upset with us and, you know, make, make the wrong rev or, you know, it’s just all, so many things that can go wrong.
Yeah. So I guess if I had to if I had to sort of tweak my statement that it’s the hardest business in the world, it’s certainly the hardest business doing it the old way. I think it’s a lot easier if you do it a smarter way.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s there’s ways to do things better.
Paul Van Metre: So you know, again, before we hit record, I was asking you about different aspects of the system and you said [00:28:00] you’re just sort of getting your feet wet with cutting tools.
Can you share a little bit about your journey deciding to use the mod, use that, you know, to explain how you’re using it, how it works.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, my attitude is if we have a tool at our disposal, I want to use it, which Proshop has a lot of tools to use, but the tooling module specifically it’s pretty overwhelming at first, you know, we’re gonna look into CSV import.
We do have a Mastercam tool library of the standard tools. So on all my free time, we’re going to CSV that into ProShop. But for now we just use, we use the equipment module a lot for thread gauges, inspection tools, but for the tooling side, we’re just using specialty tools, no special, special form drills or dovetails special port tools, things like that. And we can link that to the part number.
Paul Van Metre: So, so, so if you have a custom [00:29:00] tool, you make a unique tool ID and then put it in the sequence detail that the tool list for each each part number based on the operation where you, where you need that tool.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, we don’t even use the tool number at the machine, we just have a list, especially tools for that job.
And that really makes, you know. Getting the job together easier and then purchasing for that job because that’s linked to the pricing and the vendors and all that as well. Yeah,
Paul Van Metre: Sure.
Do you find that it helps you know, one thing I’ve always said about the way that we do that, especially compared to like vending machines, you know, vending machines are, are awesome for just making sure you keep a minimum level, but they can’t predict spikes in demand. So if you have a. Big job that maybe is a tough material and you’re all of a sudden going to go through a whole bunch of one type of tool, even with a vending machine, you could easily find yourself empty and having to scramble to, you know, get more in right away or [00:30:00] put that job on hold or, you know, change tack.
Whereas we can predict because we know all the work orders coming up and how many of them use that tool and how many you’re expecting to need. And so a week in advance, you can buy a whole bunch of tools. So you make sure you’re getting ahead of that. Keep your spindles turning.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, that’s what I was I forgot to say is we do have a vending machine.
That’s kind of, I think that’s kind of the halfway point between tracking all the tools ourselves. We’re just lacking the manpower for a tool room right now, but a vending machine is great. But like you said, we have a production parts that need, you know, 10 end mills for this one job. Right. And we only stock like three, I think.
Sure. So all the, all the repeat production parts we’ll have, you know, that tool list in there ready to go buy all the tools up front. Right. That’s been a huge help. Yeah, that’s good.
Paul Van Metre: That’s good. Yeah, the, I’m not surprised that you say, you know, that it’s, it’s kind of overwhelming. It, you know, it’s, if you have, I don’t know how many tools you [00:31:00] have in our shop.
We probably had, by the time we sold it, we probably had 5, 000 plus tools, right? Each with their own bin location and inventory and vendor and everything and pictures. Yeah. And yeah, that’s a ton of work. You know, you can, you can shave off a bunch of it through that CSV import where you can propagate all the most important attributes.
You know, cutting length and diameter and helix and, you know, all those kinds of things. But still, and I suppose you could, and I’m curious. So with, with, you know, exporting the standard library from Mastercam into a spreadsheet first, I Would you then go ahead and start adding in columns for like vendor and EDP number and lead time and price and then just import all of that so you don’t have to enter those things a lot of time?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I probably should do that. That’s a good point. Get all the pricing. Yeah,
Paul Van Metre: thank you. It’s way easier to do it in a spreadsheet than it is one at a time.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, yeah. And maybe get all the tools in there first, yeah, and then go back and do the same thing [00:32:00] with pricing.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, you can do that incremental update to you know, fill out some fields and leave other fields alone, you know, with the CSV tool.
Okay. Well, that’s helpful. Yeah, there’s some gosh, some funny stories even that you know, both funny and, and hard, but you know, I remember one of our customers and they were probably you know, 10 person shop, maybe, maybe a little less when they got ProShop. And the guy swore up and down.
He’s like, I don’t need that tooling module. That’s, that’s ridiculous. You know, why would you need to do that? And and then he shared with me that at one point they were, I don’t know, shorthanded or this is about it, maybe a year later into their implementation. And so he said you know, they were short staff.
So he went out to send a help with a setup and he’s like, this is a fricking disaster. It’s like, what, what tools am I supposed to be using? Where are they? You know, and he’s like men in there. He’s like. That’s it. We’re doing the tooling module and then we’re going all in and then all of a sudden the setups got easier and smoother and faster and sure [00:33:00] less chaos.
And yeah, anything that contribute to less chaos in a shop is worth, I think, worth doing because it can be a chaotic place at times. Yeah,
Adam Zimmer: that’ll be, that’ll be your next big move is to was that G code parsing? Yeah, we want to get, we want to get that working. So after we get our library and ProShop, we’ll import.
Yeah. Our G code. And then, yeah, the whole tool list is in ProShop right there as a setup sheet. Yeah. Without having to do much work at all. And we’re using, just started using all the work instructions for pictures and, you know, tribal knowledge for setups. Okay. G codes on the drive now, the network drive.
Right. Cause we just started a night shift and a weekend shift. I was
Paul Van Metre: just about to ask. Yeah. Wow. You’re, you’re running three shifts now.
Adam Zimmer: Yeah. It wasn’t. You know, I’ve heard horror stories about that, too. It’s not easy, but it’s, you know, we got some good people in place and learn the process really quickly.
So so that’s when we started using more of the setup sheets and posting [00:34:00] out G code. It’s not everybody can have access to Mastercam now.
Paul Van Metre: Of course.
Adam Zimmer: So that’s been another, you know, big learning curve.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Did you add both of those shifts at the same time? Or did you add a night shift and then a month or two later?
Yeah,
Adam Zimmer: more or less the same time. Wow, it is. It is a bit easier when you have the right work for it. I mean, if you’re running production all week long, it’s pretty easy. I know we got some good machinists set up machinists nights and weekends so they can take limited information and make a good part out of it.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, that’s a nice situation to be in. So I have two questions around that. One is you know, having that kind of steady production work is sort of, you know, that’s what many shops really want. And, you know, not all of them are able to get that. How did you find yourself in the position where you have that kind of work?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re still fighting for it too. We’re still very much a prototype job shop, but we got a, got a couple of good [00:35:00] contracts. I think one is a defense job and the other one is in data center industry. But yeah, it’s really just, you know, be there, you know, lots of visits, customer relationships, just.
You know, kind of be a annoyance to them almost keep building that relationship. Right. And we, I think I just did a newsletter over the holidays to all of our big customers, you know, this is how we did in 2024, here’s some big stats. And then here’s our plan for 2025. And I think I stupidly did that to all of my customers.
So now all of my customers are contacting me at once. So I would recommend only doing it to your A customers and then work your way down the list.
Paul Van Metre: So, so people were impressed by this newsletter and now wanting to reach out for RFQs and And, and it’s, it’s a little too much right now, like there’s too many RFQs for sure.
Adam Zimmer: And it’s the new year, I guess, you know, all the new budgets [00:36:00] around,
Paul Van Metre: but right, that’s a good problem to have, as people say. Okay, well, that’s an interesting tip. What did you, so you just, did you share like your growth statistics or quality or what, what did you share on that newsletter?
Adam Zimmer: I did. I kind of went over, you know, we increased floor space employees went back and forth on sharing our growth percentage, the revenue percentage growth But I did tell everybody, you know, we’re, we’re growing and we’re here to grow with you guys.
But I think that’s all I told them, you know, some major milestones we did new machines coming in. Right. And then, yeah, just kind of the outlook for 2025 and kind of pretty much tell your customers we have a growth plan. So let us know when you’re ready to help, help us grow.
Paul Van Metre: That’s very wise. Very cool.
Yeah. That makes so much sense and I can see why people would respond well to that, but it’s not something I’ve heard. People shop owners do. That’s really cool. [00:37:00]
Adam Zimmer: A lot of us. I mean, I got to shop it up to luck to, you know, I acquired a bunch of customers right off the bat. I’d probably recommend buying.
Over building a machine shop, especially today. A lot of a lot of shops, you know, selling closing down Yes, buying a book of customers. It could save you 10 years of time. Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. No, absolutely Yeah, and we’ve had a number of folks Well on the on the machine shop mastery podcast that have done the that very thing and I’d say pretty much all the stories I’ve heard from those clients have been really positive, you know, so yeah, I guess the challenge there is trying to match make between, you know, the shops, maybe the silver tsunami, you know, the baby boomers that built their shops and have had them and now we’re ready to retire and making sure they can get [00:38:00] connected with people that want to buy a machine shop because not everyone wants to buy a machine shop.
Right. And maybe that’s just the work we’re all doing here is elevating the importance of the industry and there’s significant opportunity here and the, you know, the economy needs more shops and it’s a great solid part of being, you know, part of that economy and, and there’s strong demand for, for years to come.
Adam Zimmer: So, yeah, it’s hard for me to speak on that being a owner for three years, but it seems, I don’t know if my eyes just opened or if it’s. You know, just booming all around us, especially in Austin area. Just so many, you know, big players and different industries moving to Austin. I’m kind of curious on, you know, people that have been in the game for a while, how, how much has it grown?
How, how’s the outlook looking? Right. So it’s, it’s looking significantly better since when I started in three years.
Paul Van Metre: Oh, it’s improved over the three year period from yours. Yeah. [00:39:00] Perspective. Yeah. I mean, I think I hear, I hear that, you know, for many, for many shops there are some that aren’t feeling that.
And I. I gotta chalk that up to either, you know, the industries they’re serving, the approach they’re taking or not taking to, you know, be a, being sales and marketing driven. Maybe some, some luck here and there. But you know, there are some, there’s a lot of things within the control of a shop owner to try to it.
Make sure they’re in a position to, you know, to thrive. But it doesn’t come firsthand, you know firsthand nature for, you know, for, for anyone really. Right. You talked about being a technician. And I’m curious to know if the coaching program you’re doing is influenced in any way by the book, the E myth.
Which was instrumental. Oh, yeah. There it is. I see it. Is it, was that part of the coaching program? Was it, or is it just similar, but unrelated?
Adam Zimmer: I feel like my, my coach is very sales and marketing driven, which I, [00:40:00] I kind of went back and forth with them. So I’m like, you know, I’m, I’m a machine shop. We don’t need to.
Advertise. We don’t need a market. You know, I’ve kind of changed my views on that now. And that’s really, it’s really just changing your mindset on how to run a business and market your business and get more sales, kind of tracking your numbers. So it’s a lot, a lot different than what I intended to do.
Just being a programmer in my own shop, trying to learn quickly how to run a business.
Paul Van Metre: Do you feel like ProShop has helped you not just have the tools to do that, but kind of as in some people call it sort of like a template or a blueprint for how to run a shop effectively with all the tools that we offer?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, absolutely is. It really does teach you how to. Run a machine shop specifically we’ve been digging into the accounting side and job profitability lately and that new update is really nice for profitability for each work order. And then you can [00:41:00] compare that to your estimate. Oh, that part. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s nice. And then, yeah, I can kind of track monthly. Points as far as sales, what we shipped, kind of our backlog when things are due. Sure.
Paul Van Metre: Are you using the sales dashboard for most of that? Yep. Okay. Yeah. You mentioned earlier running some queries for looking at revenue, but I’m thinking to myself, most of that is right on that sales dashboard.
So maybe there’s some nuanced ones with. Segments of customers or whatever. That would be a separate, separate report. Well, very cool. , let me come back to my list of questions. Is there a, you said you keep discovering tools that you didn’t even or maybe features that you didn’t even realize were there.
Is there, would you can you think of a feature that you just or a tool that you just could not or would not live without anymore?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, I looked at this one. I wrote down All of the features that answers your question, but [00:42:00] starting out, you know, starting out, I was using Google docs, I think out of my garage, just for trying to look, look professional, just making packing slips and quotes and things.
Got it. So I found a ProShop it’s paperless. It can make work orders and clock in and out of it. So I was like. We, we recently started, like I said, the financial side of things actually tracking profitability. Another, another big one we jumped into is the scheduling side. Oh yeah. So each right now it’s kind of more of a priority list at each machine.
But but even our, your managers can look at the schedule and respond to customers, you know, we’re, we’re this far out on this job. I can look at it while I’m estimating, you know, we got a month backlog in this machine, so I can help me with lead times. Mm hmm. Yeah. It’s kinda like your, you know, every employee is an important part of the chain in your company.
It’s kind of the same thing with every ProShop module. It’s you know, you need every step of the process to have a good company. [00:43:00]
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I you know, sometimes people, you know, we, as you know, when we sell ProShop, you get every module, right? And we don’t sell them separate, you know, a lot of ERPs are like, Oh, you need to spend more money to get the advanced scheduling package or the advanced planning package or whatever.
We’re like, no, you need them all. And. Right. Just for the like, for the reason you just said, they’re all interrelated. They’re kind of like links in a chain. If you don’t have one, and that breaks, you’re missing a huge gap in the functionality of how everything should flow and be interconnected. So we kind of feel like they need to.
Be all there at once. You know, you don’t need to use them. Like you’re describing, you’re kind of picking them up as you grow and get comfortable and familiar. But ultimately, if you were missing scheduling or missing advanced planning, that would just be a huge gap missing and you know what you need to run your shop effectively.
So yeah, for sure. Yeah. It’s [00:44:00] just a little bit of an art philosophy around that. You’ve already, you’ve already proactively shared so many things like that you’d be much smaller, you know, cause one of my questions is, can you imagine what your shop would look like today if you didn’t use ProShop? Yeah, I mean,
Adam Zimmer: you’d be half the size and probably a lot more stressed.
Paul Van Metre: And your wife might not be as happy and you wouldn’t see your kid as often?
Adam Zimmer: Yeah, she would not be happy.
Paul Van Metre: Well, for the sake of your wife and kid, it’s I’m glad that you’re Prioritizing that and helping ProShop as a tool to let you be more present with your family. That’s that’s amazing. So in just the bigger picture of your business maybe it’s just sort of the last question here.
What do you, would you say is some of the best strategic moves you’ve made in the, in the history and the growth of your company?
Adam Zimmer: I mean, definitely ProShop would be the first one just getting ahead of [00:45:00] Being organized and kind of starting from the ground up. I never, I guess we’ve made some pretty big machine purchases lately.
You know, it’s always nerve wracking. But every single machine we’re getting a lot of, you know, automation with Akuma going every time we’ve made that purchase, it’s. You know, it’s overbooked within a month or two, right? So it’s kind of just taking that leap and seems to be working out. So we’re going to keep leaping.
So yeah, automation of pallet pools have been very great for us. We can do prototype during the day and production at night and weekends. So it’s been great. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s huge. And then Yeah. Starting the night and we can shift that’s been huge for us. And the addition of a quality manager, full time quality manager has been big.
So we’ve been throwing a lot of money in the QA lab customers. You know, we, we sell that aspect the most, I [00:46:00] think. With our company is all the, we have a lot of Kients equipment, so it’s easy to use, checks it quick, makes great reports, and we’ll, we’ll send out pictures here and there. And the customer is always, you know, blown away.
And typically within an hour, they’ll send another RFQ. So just selling the quality side of things is, is the way to go.
Paul Van Metre: That’s very cool. That’s very cool. Yeah, I applaud you on on because that in itself is just that’s a strategic move, right? To really focus on that, prioritize that, sell that to your customers.
And clearly they’re responding in a positive way because that resonates with them. So very cool. Anything that I have not, I know we, there was a lot of questions we didn’t cover, but anything that you’d like to make sure we cover before we wrap up today?
Adam Zimmer: I think that kind of does it. Let’s see. Yeah.
I’ll just say, no, I’ve been had a lot [00:47:00] of support and I think I’d gotten some lucky streaks here and there, so I’m definitely. New to the business and, you know, constantly learning thing that kind of reflects to my team to, you know, everybody leaves their egos outside. Everybody’s open to hear criticism and learn new things.
So. You know, a great scene here and I tell everybody, everybody’s learning and so am I. So let’s get in there and figure it out. So,
Paul Van Metre: yeah, well, even just hearing you say that you know, is there’s a, there’s a lot of wisdom in, in, I mean, the fact that you, you know, talk about being new and inexperienced and humble and learning, you know, and you mentioned earlier that you have great people, you know, you have great people because you attracted them there.
Right. And you. Retain them because of, you know, the leader that you are. So you know, good job on all of that. And it’s, it’s not that way in, in many shops as I’m sure you probably know from your own history. So even though if you’re representing that as just like an, you know, new and [00:48:00] inexperienced in the business, at the same time, there’s a lot of maybe wisdom beyond your years, that’s really helping you succeed there.
So and I know that’s, that’s a takeaway for, for the listeners as well. So awesome, Adam. Well, couldn’t be more proud of you. Thank you for the trust to be a partner to you on your journey. And thank you for sharing your story here today.
Adam Zimmer: Absolutely. Thanks so much.
Paul Van Metre: All right. Talk to you again soon.
Cheers.
