Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to the manufacturing transformed podcast, where we dive deep into the world of manufacturing and uncover the transformational journeys of companies that are powered by ProShop. Get ready to explore the stories behind the machines, the people, and the innovation shaping the future of this industry. Welcome to manufacturing transformed real shops, real stories.
Paul Van Metre: Hello, my friends and welcome to another episode of the Manufacturing Transformed podcast. I just had a super fun, quite honestly, and a heartwarming conversation with Brannon from Faircloth machine shop in North Carolina. They were our client number nine for ProShop. They joined in I think I read March 3rd of 2017. So top 10 customers of all time. And this story that Brannon tells of them starting out is basically a repair shop for heavy industry, mostly conventional machines, a couple of C. N. C. S. You [00:01:00] know, really just doing repair work, not regulated, no traceability.
None of that stuff mattered. And David, the owner of the business, had developed his own little repair shop. ERP ish sort of shop management program. Uh, he’s definitely a sharp guy, uh, and had learned how to use Python and had coded something together. But to go from that business, you know, just not that many years ago to today, AS9100 certified doing complex assemblies for aerospace and other industries.
It’s just an incredible transformation. And most of that, of course, is their own hard work and determination and go get it ness on the sales side. But it’s clear through the story of what Brannon tells that ProShop has been a critical part of that journey and that transformation, and there’s no way they could be where they are today without ProShop.
And I sound like a broken record when I say it, but it’s a huge honor to help these essential family businesses to thrive. Elevate themselves to do better, to hire more people. You know, they’re up to 34, 33 people. I think he said incredible growth. It’s a [00:02:00] heartwarming story. Definitely. We root for these guys.
You know, as I said at the beginning of the recording, you know, I remember being on the phone with David and that during the sales process and he saying, you know, you guys are a tiny little company and if we go with you, you gotta be there for us. And it’s turned out that way, you know, now we’re, uh, we’re a significantly larger company.
Eight years later, seven years later, and so are they. So it’s been a, it’s been a fun ride. Let’s go, uh, listen to the story. Brannon, good morning. Welcome to the show.
Brannon McKinney: Good morning.
Paul Van Metre: It’s good to have you here. So you and I have known each other for quite a while. I’d say we, we’ve developed a good friendship and we were at EBITDA Growth Systems Summit recently and just were chatting and I’m like, you should come on the show and we should talk about Faircloth Machine Shop.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: So, but most people don’t know is Faircloth was a super early adopter of ProShop. I believe you were client number nine. So sub 10, which is a pretty cool spot to be, you know, of course that means I was the one that sold it to you guys. And I actually quite honestly remember being on the phone with David, the, you know, the [00:03:00] founder and owner of the shop early one morning.
I was actually sitting in the lobby at my gym and he was talking to me and. Saying like, you know, if we pull the trigger with you, like you got to be there for us, right? You know, you’re a tiny little company and I, there’s the big guys that are more well established. And so he put a lot of trust in us and said, I appreciate that.
And boy, that guy cracks me up with some of his sayings, but he’s a character for sure. But let’s start by introducing, uh, Faircloth machine shop, just sort of what the company looks like today, what you guys specialize in doing the size, and then we’ll get into you and your background and the ProShop journey.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah. So today we are actually, as of yesterday, 34 people, uh, heavy equipment and aerospace working on. Possibly some medical and defense that’s hopefully in our future. Very cool. Obviously milling turning a little bit of Swiss.
Paul Van Metre: Okay, and Certifications ?
Brannon McKinney: AS9100.
Paul Van Metre: Nice. We’ll talk a little bit about that. And then what about you? How long have you been there? [00:04:00] What’s your role? What’s your journey in the machining world?
Brannon McKinney: I’ve been at Faircloth for 16 years. So I started in september of 2008.
Paul Van Metre: Okay. That’s funny timing. I don’t know what 2008, nine was like for Faircloth, but, uh, it was rough for many companies.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah. You know, so kind of what got me into machining, I got married in 2008, August of 2008 before I could legally drink. I was 20 years old.
Paul Van Metre: Oh, wow.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah. I was working construction. So right out of high school, I got into construction. I did, uh, framing finish work, you know, trim. Cabinet building, you know, then 2008 happened and it’s like, Oh no, I just got married. What am I going to do? So I went to, uh, the local community college and I wanted to be a welder.
Okay. Not many people know that. So I went to school and talked to an advisor and wanted to do, get a welding certificate and they were full. So they were like, why don’t you try machining? I’m like, all right, sure. I’ll, I’ll give it a shot. And I would say like first week I was hooked. I mean, I thought it was like [00:05:00] the coolest thing.
Paul Van Metre: I’m glad the welding class was full.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, I remember grinding a high speed tool bit, and we had to turn a hammer, like a hand, the handle of a hammer, and I just, I was hooked. So that was in August, and a friend of mine told me about Faircloth. And so I went down after work one day, I was still working construction, walked in the shop, asked for an application and met David and they gave me this test that was awful because, you know, Faircloth was, was founded on, in the repair industry so that it was all conventional equipment.
I guess, At the time they had two cnc’s okay, so they really didn’t do a lot of cnc Um, it was all conventional So I walked in the shop and I was clueless right and they sat me down with this test and i’m scratching my head And i’m stressing out about it and I did the best I could and I turned it in and I told david I said look You know, I I’m new to this.
Like, please consider me. And then the next day I went to class and I learned some stuff and I think it was, it was about saw blades and like, you [00:06:00] know, a quarter inch piece of material. How many teeth on a blade and something like that. And I went to school and asked my teacher and I, you know, just kind of dug into it.
And I called David up the next day and said, Hey, you know, can I come back and retake the test? And he’s like, yeah, sure. You know, yeah. Why not? And I showed up and he was like, you know, just cause you called me and you showed up, I’d like to offer you a job. That is awesome. That’s kind of where it started.
Started out doing the lowest man on that totem pole. And I think at the time we were just doing CNC, we were me and one other gentleman that was part time. So we were very small.
Paul Van Metre: Okay. So how many people work there at that time?
Brannon McKinney: Then, I want to say maybe, maybe eight, maybe. And that included David that included his, his dad is that actually retired. I want to say in November, December in 2008. So. Yeah, it was a small shop.
Paul Van Metre: So you started just doing whatever sweeping floors and cutting sock and doing a little bit of conventional machining?
Brannon McKinney: Oh yeah. It was 2008 and early 2009. There was times where it was really slow and we had [00:07:00] absolutely nothing to do and, uh, I painted walls, I blew up a light switch. I was watching the wall that, you know, yeah, that’s David about that story. One time he, he thought it was hilarious, but a lot of, a lot of conventional machining, you know, learned how to machine on bridge ports and engine lathes and surface grinders. And, and we had a, uh, 2000 SL 20.
Paul Van Metre: Okay.
Brannon McKinney: I learned how to, you know, Do turning on and and then we had a, um, two, I think it was a 2007 VF three. Okay. Those are our CNCs, right? And then we had some bridge ports that were converted, you know, retrofitted with easy track prototrack.
Paul Van Metre: That’s a good foundation. And then how did the company grow and how did you kind of, you know, get promoted into different roles over, over the next couple of years?
Brannon McKinney: Yeah. So I’d say from probably 2008, 2010, I, I mostly just kind of bounced around and made parts. And at the time we were a repair shop more so, and anything that we did make, it was going into [00:08:00] equipment. So it was supporting other production facilities in our area. So, you know, we would make fixtures or tooling and stuff like that.
And around 2010, I went to David and said, Hey, like, I want more responsibility and we actually went out to dinner and he was like, well, that’s great, you know, but who’s going to work for you? It was me and a half a guy. So I was like, true. You know, well, we’re going to have to grow this thing. What are we going to do?
So we sat down, we came up with a plan with, so 2000, Okay. I started quoting and doing more programming and running half a guy for a 2010 timeframe. 2012, we, we took on our first big customer in the heavy equipment industry that was making parts, not repair type work, correct? Okay. Yeah. So that was making parts going in a product that was being sold to the consumer base.
So it was a cool experience started out with that and I remember making the very first part is a threaded nut [00:09:00] 36 by three threads, three inches deep and we were single point cutting. It’s a big thread. Yeah. Okay. And I, and I did it. You know, David told me he was like, he’s like, I don’t know. He’s like, I don’t know.
I don’t know if we should. Do this. I’m like, no, it’ll be fine. We got to grow. Come on. Let’s, let’s just go for it. And, uh, and I was like, I’m going to go make one just to prove, you know, prove that we can do it. And he was like, all right, fine. So I, I went and made one, you know, it cut, I mean, it was like butter.
Like it was like the easiest cutting part I’ve ever made in my life. And I put it on his desk and I’m like, all right, let’s do it. Let’s give him a quote. And so we did, and we got an order. And at the time it was, this was like huge. We got an order for like, 20, 000 and we were like, high five in and jumping for joy.
Like, this is the coolest thing ever. You know, yes, I remember orders like that. And the next six months was, uh, it was crazy. They, they ordered way too much. That one piece was the best cutting piece that we had ever made in the history of making this [00:10:00] product. We had we had chatter issues as you can imagine we had I mean David and I were working 16 hour days just Dying to try to get it and we figured it out You know, we dove in and David and I worked really well together.
We, we, we saw the problem. We started hiring people. We started growing. I would say that was 2012. So 2014, 15, we added an aerospace customer. We actually started out doing tooling and fixturing for them. And then we moved. It was a new product design, so we were helping them build their assembly line, and then we moved into making components that were going in the product. So 2015 to 2017, obviously we’re doing aerospace, we’re growing and I’m losing my mind.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. In what way were you losing your mind?
Brannon McKinney: Just trying to keep up with the workload, the paperwork, the traceability that that was, that was tough to, to keep up with. David had wrote his own software to keep up with our job tickets.
He called it job boss, but you know, it’s kind of his thing. He taught himself Python code and it worked [00:11:00] and he actually, he, he went from just writing a ticket to where he could, we could drag and drop and kind of build a schedule so we could put it in the order that I wanted to run it. So it, you know, it worked.
We used a file storage system to keep up with traceability. I think we used M files at the time. It just wasn’t working. I mean, trying to take prints and. And material certs. And as you know, in the aerospace industry, they use a lot of helicals and, and fasteners like that. So you’re trying to keep up a certification for that.
And helical certification can be 20 pages long. So trying to keep all that in a little binder was just a pain. Right. So. So David, you got to do something. We got, we got to figure this out. So he went to IMTS in 2016 and that’s where he met you guys.
Paul Van Metre: Earlier in 2016, we did a small aerospace show here in Seattle, PNA, which you have come out for.
And I met a guy from Mastercam there, Stosh, great [00:12:00] guy. And you know, we had a small integration with Mastercam and he thought that was pretty cool. And he, I think he liked our story and she’s like, you know, why don’t you come to IMTS and you can have one of our. Computer kiosks in the Mastercam booth for ProShop, and we’re like, holy cow, like, you know, being associated with a name like that.
So yeah, David must have been visiting the Mastercam booth and like saw us or something and, uh, yeah, started the conversation. And so I was just looking it up here. You guys signed up on March 3rd of 2017. So a few months after IMTS. Yeah, so it was really out of necessity of trying to just keep track of the certs and the schedule and the everything that really drove the need for something stronger than what he had built from scratch, sounds like.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah , we just, we needed a place to, to put it all. I mean, we needed a place to just to manage it and better data collection. I mean, you know, it’s really hard. I mean, we’re writing, you know, we’re printing out Job [00:13:00] travelers and the way we’re keeping up, we were keeping up with our, our time for those jobs is, is by hand written on the face of the job traveler, you know, when we first started in airspace industry, like we didn’t know what a CFC was.
Like, you know, customer, we’ve made a product for somebody when we first started and was like, we need to see a C with this and we had already shipped and we’re like, well, what is that? You know, so it was just, uh, we, we really needed to, to, to get to that next portion of it. And we were hanging on and I was hanging on and I was, it’s pretty interesting, honestly.
You know, David came back from IMTS. He was like, okay, I’ve got three options for you. Like, let’s, you know, we’re going to do some demos and I don’t know, I want you to let me know what you think. And I know it was obviously you guys, I want to say it was E2, maybe, and then job boss. That makes sense. And all three had, you know, similarities.
And I know David’s told you this before and he, he likes to brag about it, but we did the demo with with you [00:14:00] guys. And, you know, you had the feature where you click one button to print out all your first article and the whole FAI package, you know, with all, you know, everything. And I, and, and I just remember like, you know, trying to hide the camera and be like, all right, this is it.
I’m sold. I don’t even need to look at anything else. It was like, no, you gotta, you gotta sit in. How much is it? And he was like, he was like, just be quiet. I got to negotiate.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, it’s like don’t show all your cards. You gotta play with your poker face, right?
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, absolutely. That’s where it started. That’s how we got there.
Significant growth, obviously, very quickly. I mean, especially 2014 to 2017. It wasn’t even a staircase. It was like a cliff that we were trying to climb up. And, uh, we needed to do something for sure.
Paul Van Metre: Those kind of periods of fast growth are really hard. We went through a few years like that at ProCNC and yeah, it’s just like, you’re hanging on for dear life trying to get things out the door.
And there’s so many balls in the air and plate spinning or whatever, [00:15:00] you know, an analogy you want to use that, uh, feel like they’re going to fall at any time. Yeah, and the tools make a big difference, but there’s that learning curve. I mean, I remember going through it every time you bring on a new customer, even if it’s in a similar industry that you’ve already done or the same industry, there’s, there’s nuances to what those customers need and want that are different than other customers.
And so there’s a learning curve there and there’s a learning curve with different materials. There’s a learning curve with different geometries. There’s a learning curve with different. Flowdowns and specs and yeah, getting into an entirely new industry. Like you probably had no idea what an AS 9102 report was at the beginning.
We had to learn all that from scratch ourselves. We’re like, what’s this thing you’re asking for? So you got to research it. And, but, uh, I mean, those are growth opportunities to, to learn more, to stretch what you do and that becomes your new normal and then you can do it again. Right. And, and I know that you guys are doing some much bigger assemblies now and some pretty cool projects that probably would have been completely out of the [00:16:00] question years ago.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, absolutely. Zero chance, right? You talk about the differences in new customers. I mean, they all have their own ways of doing things. You know, even from a reporting standpoint, some use net inspect, some use You know, they want their own format that, you know, some use others and someone at printed, someone at digitally uploaded to their ERP software, or, you know, their MRP, or, you know, these aerospace customers, you know, instead of using MilSpec or AMS standards and, you know, they, they write their own. And so how do you keep up with all that? Um, you know, it’s, it’s wild.
Paul Van Metre: Sure. Yeah. So, I love the story about the, the demo and, and, uh, the, the document package creation. Once you really got into ProShop, So I must have been, Kelsey came out to do the training with you guys, right?
Brannon McKinney: Yep. It’s a great time.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Very few people, very few people got trained by Kelsey. In the grand scheme of things. So do you remember like another important feature that this is going to make a big difference to us?
Brannon McKinney: I think that was, you know, by [00:17:00] far the thing that stood out the most is, you know, the best way I can explain it when people ask the best thing that we see about ProShop is that it’s there.
Like it’s everything is really accessible, right? It’s when did we check this feature? When did, you know, When did the material come in? When was the cert loaded? When was, you know, when was it ordered? When, you know, all of these things, it’s all so accessible. And I mean, for me, that’s, that’s what I love about ProShop the most is just that, you know, the ability to schedule, the ability to, to adjust that schedule and, and drag it instead of having to like do some complicated thing to move it into a place that you want it.
Obviously the importance, which we know now we didn’t know at the time was. Building, I guess we can talk about the AS9100 a little bit, but saying what we’re going to do and then doing it and following through and, and having the routing is huge. Step by step, this is how it’s going to flow through our shop.
Really. You think back eight years ago, something like that. Mhm. I couldn’t imagine doing [00:18:00] what we’re doing today without it.
Paul Van Metre: Whether it just be too much chaos or not as much throughput or just being unable to keep track of all the myriad details?
Brannon McKinney: Really before, I don’t know how anybody was able to do it.
Like, it’s hard. It’s, it’s just hard. It’s one of those things. It’s hard to wrap your head around how. Companies and I know it was done, you know, big companies, how were they processing all of that work without a system like this? I guess you have lots of people.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, throw bodies at it.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, there’s no way that, you know, being a small family owned business and, you know, me and David, like we couldn’t keep up with it, not by ourselves. We’d have to hire a lot of people to do it.
Paul Van Metre: Does it feel accurate to say that, uh, you would have to have a bigger admin team if you were still doing things the old way to do the same amount of revenue or volume of parts or whatever?
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, I would imagine at least two times. It would be double the amount of admin to handle it.
Paul Van Metre: It’s a big difference. That probably, I don’t know what that translates to in, you [00:19:00] know, margin at the end of the year. But, uh, I imagine it, it helps with margin , right?
Brannon McKinney: Absolutely. And, you know, and it, and it helps our customers. I mean, there’s value to that, like to our prices aren’t ridiculous. Like we can, you and I have talked about this before, you know, we can compete with China, not down to the penny and, and, you know, but, but we, we put ourselves in, in, in at least a conversation to, to being able to, to compete with other countries and compete. Because we have tools that help us keep our costs low.
Paul Van Metre: So maybe four years ago, remember David telling me the story and we actually did a case study on it about the tooling module. And i’m guessing that you were intimately involved in that story But I don’t remember the details but at the time and I don’t remember if it was him or you or there’s the general team But the way he tells it was like most of ProShop’s great.
We’re gonna use it but this tooling module thing, that’s just overkill. We don’t need that. We’re not going to do it. Just, we don’t need to catalog and, you know, inventory our tools and put them on jobs and stuff. And then in [00:20:00] the way, I remember the story that like one day he had to go help out in the shop and it was just chaos, like, you know, setups, like what tool am I supposed to use in?
And I’m looking at people are, you know, he’s looking for things and trying to find stuff. And he’s like, holy cow. And I think maybe even it was you, you know, said something like, just kind of like dying here. You know, trying to keep on top of all this stuff, we need to do the tooling module. So can you tell the real story?
Brannon McKinney: David was working, he was helping me out and he was actually working late. You know, Dave is not afraid to jump in and get dirty and run machines, set up machines, you know, do whatever he needs to help out. And, uh, one evening he stayed late. And he was trying to help one of the night shift guys do a set up.
He was just trying to gather tools for him. He calls me and he’s like, I don’t know how you do this. I mean, he, and he was upset. He was like, this is crazy. What are we doing? You know, we used to try to keep, because we didn’t have a good system for it. We kept everything in Vidmars, right? All, all of our, Consumable [00:21:00] tooling and when we would go to set up a job, we would pull the tools out and put them in a bag or, or in the box.
So, you know, we, there just wasn’t, there was, where is that tool? It was tribal knowledge. It was, you know, the day shift machinists, like the, the, our senior setup guy probably knew where the tool was, but the night shift guy didn’t. And so, so David, I just remembered, you know, I’m on the phone with David and I hear drawers slamming and you know, he’s, he’s digging through the vid Mars and he was just, I mean, you know, he got upset about it and it totally understood it. I knew where the stuff was because it was my area. So that’s kind of what started that, you know, obviously it was daunting. We jumped into ProShop, we were going a hundred miles an hour.
And I would say maybe a small regret is not slowing down enough to really implement ProShop in the beginning, the way we should have, you know, it’s, it’s just one of those things, but we were going so fast. We were just like, let’s just start doing it. Let’s just start making work orders. Let’s start making parts.
Let’s just, let’s just start. I can’t [00:22:00] actually remember how long it was to where we decided, you know, we’re going to do the tooling because at first we just were like, we don’t have time to do that. We’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. And then that conversation, it, it sparked it. And so we, we jumped in and another thing, you know, we wouldn’t look back because, you know, now it’s every tool has a location. It’s searchable. You know, nobody has to guess they’re attached to every part, you know, so the work orders come through and whoever setting up the job, they, they know the tools that they need and they know where to find them. And that’s a huge benefit.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, I was just actually remembering he actually wrote a blog for us in December of 2019. So it was about two little over two years later that and I don’t know how much later maybe it was a year later that he wrote it after you guys decided to do the tooling module and then we even did a webinar on it and I got pictures of your tool area and but it’s funny because.
That sentiment is really common, you know, across new customers, not universally at all. In fact, [00:23:00] there’s some that like jump in with both feet and they’re like, the first thing we’re doing is cataloging all of our cutting tools. You know, it’s like day one there. They want to tear into it. And others, many others, most others are like, “yeah, you know, we’re going to hold off on that one for a little while.”
Right? It’s such the heartbeat of a machine shop, like you can’t machine anything unless you have the right tools and the right holders working well, right?
Brannon McKinney: You know, it’s a daunting task. You know, when you look at it, you’re like, how am I going to do this? We have so many cutting tools. When you think of all the drills that you use, all the center drills, the end mills, you know, the index hole tooling, like it just, it really adds up.
And you’re like, I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. But I would tell anybody that was questioning whether or not they. Should do that from the beginning. I would I would advise to just do it.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, you know at this point I think probably the common practice if it’s not catalogued at all is they just have someone there a couple people on the team Just start basically building a spreadsheet right like going through the tools like, [00:24:00] alright ” This is a half inch end mill with a one inch length of cut and it’s double ended or it’s single ended and it has a 30 degree helix or whatever.” And just like, you know, build the columns and we have templates for those things, spreadsheet templates, and then just basically build a huge spreadsheet.
And then import that into ProShop and it can build a thousand records all at once. But yeah, I mean, we had probably close to 5, 000 cutting tool ID numbers, you know, at pro CNC. It was vast. You know, it was vast. So, but we built it up one at a time and every time you, you know, get a new tool that’s that you have to get, because whatever you have isn’t sufficient, you just issue a new number and, you know, and it takes a couple of minutes every time, but yeah, doing it all at once is definitely a task for sure.
There’s no getting around it. And then deciding how to organize it. So did you go to randomize? Sort of just tool storage or did you try to keep like tools with each other?
Brannon McKinney: Random. We had a matrix. Our first trial to fixing the problem before we implemented the tooling module in, in ProShop was a [00:25:00] matrix.
That’s a, again, it still isn’t great. You know, the, wasn’t a great system, but it was random. We don’t have a specific location. We don’t have a drawer for end mills. We just have locations. So we have, you know, drawer one, just by the number. Yep. And we just do them sequentially and as they come up and we just start adding when we need it.
And we actually did a revamp about a year ago and did better coding for, for how we, we store them so that, or at least in their names. So the searchability is better. So, you know, now at first we started out, we didn’t put the size. I mean, we, we had it in the description, but we didn’t really have it, all the features filled out.
And now we have it. So if I want a half inch in mill, I, you know, I go and I just search half inch and it boom, there’s all my half inch in mills, all of my different links, my number of flutes and super easy. Sure.
Paul Van Metre: I love it. Tell me about what your employees, obviously it sounded like, you know, you and David were convinced and, but how did your employees respond?
You know, [00:26:00] the other machinists and other folks on the team to getting rid of travelers and, That kind of thing.
Brannon McKinney: You know, like I said, when we started, we were strictly conventional shop for the most part repair. So you imagine the, the crowd that we had, the employees that we had, they’re old school, you know, older guys that I remember a lot of them still kept flip phones, you know, technology wasn’t their thing.
So initially it was tough, it was tough transitioning into the digital world and putting everything on a computer. And we still, we have a guy, Mike Teague, he’s been there a long time and he’s still like, We make fun of him because he peck types, you know, the one finger typewriter style. Like I would say after, you know, a few months of it and, and they, they saw how quick it was and it was how easy it was to see what jobs they worked on and, and, and, and the hours that they worked and for the week and everybody caught on really quickly.
And it’d be interesting to ask them that, you know, I guess we haven’t really. specifically asked, but I mean, I would imagine they [00:27:00] were like, I don’t know, this is just the way we do it. Right. Took a little bit of time, but they jumped in and I think they enjoy it.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah. I have a couple of pictures of me standing next to, you know, arm around like a super old crotchety machinist that people thought would be the most stick in the mud.
Like I’m not doing this. And sometimes that’s the case. And other times. Once they realize like how it’ll actually help them do their job better and like take away all these little Annoyances that keep them from making chips more often. They’re like hell. Yeah, I love it Yeah, it’s fun to to see even that super older generation just dig it in and and loving it, but it’s not universal That’s for sure so let’s talk about a s 9100 and you get into the Certification journey of you guys deciding to get into that and and how ProShop has helped with that
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, so 2018, 19 ish, we had a customer come in and do an audit, you know, a strategic sourcing manager of some sort came in and did an audit. And this is when we were at our old facility, which was a retrofitted car wash.
Paul Van Metre: I [00:28:00] remember visiting that.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, like 8, 000 square feet. I mean, it was, and it was really oddly shaped, but it wasn’t the prettiest place in the world. You know, when we had our meetings with customers, we would actually go outside.
To a covered awning instead of because we didn’t have a, like an office space for people to sit in. And but we had a customer come in and he did an audit and thankfully I think he would have like pumped the brakes, you know, and just said, absolutely not. You’re not, we’re not doing any work with you ever again, but we did have a ProShop and he picked up a piece of plastic that was at a job.
And. And he was like, where did this material come from? What’s it, you know, show me the search for it. And the machinist like pulled up the computer right there and was like, Oh, there it is. And click on the cert. Here you go. And he was like, Oh, okay. You know, like it’s a confidence builder. Yeah. You know, it really helped us out, but it still wasn’t good enough.
Just being compliant. Wasn’t going to cut it anymore. And so he actually recommended, and this was at the time, this is our biggest customer recommended them to [00:29:00] exit us. Oh, really? Yep. So I called him and I said, Hey, what can we do? And he’s like, you have to become certified. And I want it by the first of the year.
So it was 2019, September- ish.
Paul Van Metre: So you had like three or four months to get certified or else they were leaving.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah. So we jumped in and we hired you guys to help us out and be working michael and get prepared and, and it was a breeze
Paul Van Metre: And you went straight for AS. You didn’t have ISO first? You went straight for both?
Brannon McKinney: Yep. That’s all there. I mean, that’s, that’s really all I can say about it is if you’re using ProShop, it’s, it’s there. There’s really not a lot of preparation. I mean, you know, obviously you need to understand the standard and you need to understand, you need to set the business processes the way that you want to do business.
But other than that, If you’re using ProShop, if you’re doing it right, you can’t really mess it up. So it was super easy. We ended up being certified in 2020. And obviously COVID and those kind of things slowed some stuff down as well. And Auditor came in and he had never seen [00:30:00] ProShop. Great guy. Went through our system and he’s asking his questions and like, we’re like, yep, it’s there.
And pull it up. It’s really quick. And, you know, all of our records and all of the travelers and then our training records and customer surveys and, and vendor surveys and, you know, all of our approvals there. And I think I want to say in our first audit, we had one finding.
Paul Van Metre: Okay. Like a minor or something?
Brannon McKinney: Yeah. You know, it was something important, but really silly because an operator didn’t have the proper material tag. You know, he had material at a workstation that wasn’t identified. Yeah. Yeah. Like it should have been got it sure. Other than that, it was, it was, I hate to use the word easy, but it was easy.
And it’s something that for years, I mean, when we first started getting an airspace, David and I kind of went back and forth. Like, there’s no way we can do this. You know, there, there’s no way we started reading the standard. 2017 2018 and they’re like, we can’t, there’s no way that, you know, we’re not ready for this.
And it was a breeze. I mean, it was, it was great.
Paul Van Metre: I love that story. [00:31:00] That is awesome. So do you think that quality auditor wanted you to get certified and stay a vendor or was he actually looking for you to get kicked out of the vendor base?
Brannon McKinney: I mean, I think that it came up, but I do think he liked us. I mean, we are our thing at Faircloth is that we, you know, we really pride ourselves on being a partner with our customers more than just selling them product at times to a fault.
At times we bend over backwards and, but that just kind of our thing, you know, we’re super loyal people and we try to do everything that we can to take care of our customers. So I think. We had a good standing with them and I don’t think he necessarily 100 percent wanted to leave us, but I think there was a big push for them to only use certified vendors.
Paul Van Metre: And is that the same customer that you’re doing all these big assembly projects for now?
Brannon McKinney: Yep. Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: So that’s huge. You’ve really grown. I’m sure those opportunities you have, uh, wouldn’t have come without that loyalty and that partnership. And that’s why they feel like you’re a company that they want to send really substantial, complex assemblies to, right?
That’s, you don’t take that lightly. [00:32:00] That’s cool. What impact has ProShop had on you or David just personally?
Brannon McKinney: For me, you know, obviously the ease of work and being able to, like I said, having access to that information from my phone, from an airplane, from the car, from wherever I need it. That makes my job so much easier.
I don’t have to spend hours hunting to find an answer to, you know, something simple. And if a customer calls me and says, Hey, like what’s the status of an order? You know, I can give him an answer like right then I can be forgetful. I think a lot of us can, especially in this world when you stay so busy.
And if a customer were to call me and say, Hey, can you check on an order? And yeah, let me I’ll call you back and then I get busy and I forget, but you know, now we can, I just, I can look on my phone. Hey, I’ll put you on speaker and look it up. Yeah. I can give you the information right now. You know, that’s a big thing.
Another thing is, is more of a personal thing is just the networking and, uh, and, uh, the relationships that I’ve built with other ProShop [00:33:00] customers and you guys and yeah. Just the networking. I mean, that’s, that’s huge. I’ve said it before, but I think, you know, it seems like a lot of the, the ProShop family is it’s a tight knit group and they all kind of help each other out.
You have other clients that I can call and say, Hey, help me out with this module or help me out with, you know, this, this query or I’m trying to, you know, You know, do some type of, you know, metrics or, you know, what do you think? And a lot of these guys would bend over backwards to help us. Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Thank you for sharing that. I love that aspect about our customers. I’m not quite sure how it all happened that way, but I got a message on LinkedIn from a newer customer who said the same thing he said, it’s just amazing to him. That these supposedly competitors are just there helping each other out and contributing. And he says, it’s just feels good to be a part of it.
So it certainly feels good to help be the catalyst for that kind of cooperation. That old adage of, you know, rising tide lifts all ships, I think is just so true, especially in this industry, it’s such a hard business, such a crucial [00:34:00] business that, uh, shops like yours thrive and grow and learn new things and take on bigger challenges.
To be a part of that is, uh, is a special thing. I imagine the culture of the shop has changed over the years as you become a regulated shop and, but there’s other elements that just probably don’t change, right? How do you feel like the culture of Faircloth has changed over the years?
Brannon McKinney: Obviously we continue to grow and we continue to adapt new technology and different strategies to keep in engagement and machinists are notoriously known, or at least in my experience, from the ones that I’ve met, like, especially the older generation is keep your cards close to your chest and don’t share and don’t do that. You know, like they might steal our work and you know, we’re transitioning away from that that mentality. And we we work well together. You know, we work well with our people in our company. We work well with outsiders.
You know, we have a couple local shops that. We all kind of share some work and, you know, even our project managers are programmers. I mean, they’ll call them and say, Hey, like, you know, we just got [00:35:00] into Swiss machining two years ago and we have no clue. It’s so different, right? I mean, you know, a turret laid versus a Swiss machine is just like a whole new world.
And there’s a local guy that that’s all he does is Swiss work. And you would think that. If I called him up, he would say, you know, why would I help you guys? Like you’re trying to compete with me, but we’ve created a great relationship to where, you know, our programmers, we had a problem with a part and he’ll call them and “yeah, you should do this.”
He knows the answer. You know, for a culture, I mean, I think we’ve gotten more open and more trusting as a company and there’s growing pains, of course, as with, I think any company it’s. Especially when you’re growing quickly, but, you know, 2020 was rough, I think for everybody. And, but we were fortunate enough, the way that David had managed the business to be in a position to, even with the turndown, we didn’t lay anybody off and we use the time to move into our new building before COVID.
We were like, there’s no way we have time to shut down and move. We can’t do it. Right. [00:36:00] So what we were doing is we were just buying equipment. And putting it there instead of, and we were just managing two, two company, I mean, two shops basically. And then 2020, we moved it all over. And so it was, it was good.
Paul Van Metre: There’s obviously a component of ProShop, particularly around work instructions and process development and things where people have to contribute. They’ve got to put in their ideas, their notes, their pictures, their, you know, since you don’t have it on paper anymore, do you think that mindset helps contribute or the requirements of doing that help contribute to the older generation that for the better of the company I do need to like put this stuff in? You know, and there’s this whole silver tsunami thing where tons of people are leaving the industry with so much knowledge in their head. That’s not getting passed down to younger generations. Yeah. Has that been a conduit for helping that in your company?
Brannon McKinney: Oh, absolutely. Being able to, to, to put that information, you know, obviously the same, the tribal knowledge, not, not having that. I mean, that, that is a tough thing to do in general. And I think ProShop does a good job for us helping that whether you, you want [00:37:00] to do a written description or you want to do.
Okay. Do a run description and there’s a couple of different formats you can do and you can add photos, you can add videos, you can add so many different things to get that knowledge out of your head and available to other people. Whereas pre Broshop it was a know how business. It was you either knew how or you didn’t.
And when I would hand out jobs, I would have to be specific on who I’m giving those jobs to because of what they know how to do this job. You know, this other person doesn’t. But now we’ve transitioned into being able to, to have entry level guys run complex parts.
Paul Van Metre: That’s huge. Yeah. Cause there’s fewer and fewer of those really experienced guys that, you know, that are the journeyman level can do anything.
Oh, for sure. I guess as we, uh, get close to wrapping up here, I wanted to ask, uh, we’ve already kind of alluded to this, but if you could imagine if you hadn’t chosen ProShop and you were still working on David’s system, what would the company look like right on the cusp of 2025 here?
Brannon McKinney: Well, as I [00:38:00] told David in 2016, when I asked for it, it would be 20 years before you’re going to have that done. So we still wouldn’t have his own program all finished.
Like I said, we just couldn’t do it. I’m not going to say we couldn’t do it, but it would be so difficult. We would be a completely different company. So it’s definitely made things so much better for us.
Paul Van Metre: Maybe I’ll ask this question. You don’t need to answer it necessarily, but are you the future owner of Faircloth or is there a transition plan that you’re going to take over the business someday?
Brannon McKinney: Hopefully. Yeah.
Paul Van Metre: Hopefully.
Brannon McKinney: You know, David and I are really close and we work really, really well together. We already consider ourselves partners. So who knows? We’ll see where it goes.
Paul Van Metre: Yeah, I know he thinks about you that way. Well, Brannon, thank you so much for sharing everything today. You guys definitely have a really cool company.
It’s an honor and a pleasure to be a partner of yours again. Appreciate your wisdom. And then David’s trust to pull the trigger with us so many years ago when we were a tiny company. I mean, you were eight people or so, maybe 12. You said at the time you were probably bigger than us. [00:39:00] We didn’t have that many employees way back then.
So if people want to learn more about Faircloth , get a quote from you, send you an order, where would you suggest they reach out?
Brannon McKinney: Uh, the best place is our website. It’s Fairclothmachine.com bearclothmachine. com.
Paul Van Metre: Okay. Pretty easy. Awesome, Brannon. Well, thank you so much for this again. Uh, it’s always fun to catch up and talk about old stories and I definitely learned some things that I didn’t know. So that’s fun for me too. And we’ll see you around, I’m sure.
Brannon McKinney: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Paul Van Metre: Alight , Brannon. Bye bye.
