hello everyone I’m Nate Fields associate editor for modern machine shop and I’ll be your mod your moderator for today’s
webinar five ways digal digital transformation can grow sales and increase throughput brought to you by
Pro Shop Erp today’s presentation will’ll discuss how eliminating paper based processes can have a huge positive
impact on efficiency cost reduction throughput and ultimately the profitability of your shop our
presenters today are Paul vanmeer and Chad vanderbeek Paul is the president of Pro Shop Erp which develops Pro Shop or
a sorry a web-based and paperless Erp Mees qms system specifically designed
for the metal working industry they partner with shops who seek to push the the edge of Technology by going
completely paperless strengthening their ISO or as9100 systems combining all their shop software into one system and
building robust business business processes to achieve High rates of growth profitability and performance
Chad is the president of hipman Screw Machine Products a family-owned and operated shop serving the needs of their
customers for over 55 years Chad is a Hands-On leader with over two decades of experience in the Production Machining
environment and as a second generation leader in the company Chad has focused extensively on Business Development and
strategic planning since taking over the day-to-day operations hipman has doubled in size with the addition of many new
customers and pieces of CNC equipment as part of his long-term vision and growth strategy hipsman became a paperless
manufacturing facility in 2022 before we get started just a couple of housekeeping notes first I want to
direct your attention to the panel that’s probably on the right side of your screen you’ll see a tab that says Q&A and if you have questions at any
time during the presentation submit them there and we’ll answer as many as we can at the end we’ll also have a poll that
will pop up on the center of your screen that you can answer once it pops up and also note that this webinar is is being
recorded So if you’re not able to stay for the whole thing or if you want to refer back to it or share share it with
a colleague you will get a link to that recording via email usually within a few hours and with that I’ll hand it over to
you Paul and Chad all right thanks Nate appreciate it um welcome everyone H it’s
nice to be here love doing these pod these webinars with modern machine shop it’s such a fantastic community and
network of people that are just so focused on the manufacturing industry um
it’s just great place to be and Chad thank you very much for joining me I really appreciate it and I’d love to
I’ll start just share a little bit more about myself and then Chad I’d love to have you share a little bit more about hibsman um so I started a machine shop
with my partners right out of college back in 1997 time flies and uh we funded
that with a second mortgage had a Hos vf4 and started knocking on doors looking for work um over the course of
17 years as we grew to about a 75 five person shop um primarily doing Aerospace
and defense and medical device work we uh we built the software product to run
our own company with the in not never having the intentions of selling it to anyone else but lo and behold other
companies started asking us about it and we ultimately decided to uh launch a software company and and sell the
machine shop so we’ve been selling Pro Shop now on the public market for about six years and uh it’s a heck of a lot of
fun and we’re incredibly blessed and grateful to have people like Chad as our clients and partners and friends um so
that’s that’s a little bit about me so Chad tell us a little bit more about hipman please yeah so uh a little bit
about us is um you know like uh like Nate said we’ve been around for I think we’re entering our 56th year um and uh
it was uh in 1981 my my dad and Mike hipsman um bought out a a small screw
machine shop um and uh grew it up over the years um and uh so I’ve been I’ve
been working at uh hipman since I was about two feet tall um and uh I started working uh at hipman
uh 17 years ago full-time um and uh I started off in sales there um and work
my way up I am now president uh of the company and have been for the last uh three or four years
fantastic all right very good and as we get into the slides here I’d love for
people in the audience to share in the public chat where you are joining from uh it’s always fun to see where where
people what states and countries and areas of the of the world they are coming from so um if you wouldn’t mind
go ahead and throw that in there and let’s get into our con conversation here
so Chad you just recently went through this transformation process where you uh
went from a very sort of manual paper based process into a pretty much paperless digital process um and my my
belief about this is that this process this transformation is inevitable for
all shops out there right um we were preparing for this I said you know 20
years from now there’s not going to be a single shop it’s on paper you said probably more like 10 which uh which I
love um but the fact remains is it’s such a huge strategic advantage that any
shop that does not decide to to sort of move out of the paper base stages um
we’ll just not be competitive any thoughts on that Chad yeah I agree 100% And you know um
you know yeah like like you said when uh when I was researching you know Erp
systems and looking to for digital transformation for ourselves um you know
that was that was one of the things you know to to me it’s uh at the time I felt we needed to uh as a company you know
you you get to a certain level and you need to rebuild your foundation um and for us that that what that happened in
the last year um I felt we got to a to a point um uh you know from a company
perspective where we needed to tear down that Foundation that was that was really successful for us you know over the last
15 years um but you know it was something that that I foresaw that that
we needed to do and to stay competitive uh we we needed to to make a make a leap
towards towards digital transformation yeah so we’ve been doing this now you know again publicly for seven but did it
with our own shop more more than 20 years ago so it’s it’s too late to be one of the early one of the first
adopters but it’s not too late to be an ear early mover and I I do believe that uh companies that follow this process
whether it’s with Pro Shop or any other system um are are definitely going to be the leaders in the industry moving
forward um and there’s never a great time right it’s it’s a huge complex
process we’ll talk about that in a little bit later but um just like it’s there’s never good time to you you know
have a kid to have your life perfectly everything ready to go or um other big
changes in in your life in your company’s history um but one thing I wanted to pull up here was a quote from
Hernan another client of ours who said I’m kicking myself for not pulling the trigger two years ago you know Hernan
and I started talking whatever it was 2018 or 19 and took him a couple years to make the decision to pull the trigger
um but he’s he realized after having done so that he’d be that much further ahead so um it can really be uh an
important game-changing thing and uh and I love the other adage it’s the best
time to plant a tree was 20 years ago the second best time is right now right
so we’re gonna launch a poll right now where are you at with digital transformation just uh answer it at your
leisure we’ll share the results at the end um but you’ll start seeing that uh come out
now I think it’s in the right hand column if that’s I’m not correct and thank you thank you for all of you that uh posted where you are Montana New
Hampshire Wisconsin another Wisconsin Frasier Valley Mexico Mexico
fantastic Ohio California to in California fantastic so I appreciate
that all right first of all I want to we’re going to get into the uh the the meat and potatoes of the the the results
that Chad has gotten and other companies that we see go through this have gotten but before we get into that I really
want to talk about the process of making the decision to go through a transformation process because it is
scary um humans don’t like change they like things to kind of stay even status
uh more or less and uh and the results that we see industrywide um are really
pretty terrible right um fortunately we have vastly different results than this
but uh the the reality is that a lot of digital Transformations don’t actually work out the way they hoped they would
work out so it’s normal to be afraid it’s not something to uh to not be
willing to admit um and uh Chad I know that your team um and possibly you
yourself had some concerns about doing this right absolutely yeah yeah uh that
that was that was one of the things that cross my mind you know are we ready to make this make this leap you know for
for us I felt like it was a huge leap right um but you know yeah it’s something that that crossed my mind um
you know but I also knew you know we’ve been I’ve been planning for this day for you know a couple years right I I knew
this this day was going to come you know where we had to make make the transformation um sure but yeah yeah
absolutely so these are some of the common fears um if you’re a leader in your shop maybe you have some of these
fears or had them as you went through your transformation um all of these are totally valid and really worth talking
about um one thing that we’ve seen that companies generally are not very good at
is change management you know getting alignment of all the employees the whole team moving in the same direction rowing
together um towards a common goal so really leaning into change management
that’s something that we have put a lot of emphasis into helping our clients with um so that that handles that one um
time is is uh you know going back to the Erp or or transformation failures you
know some Transformations take years and years and still never get the results they want um so making sure that you
dedicate the right amount of time and have a realistic time budget um that uh
that gives you the opportunity to do it right and not not skimp on on the training not skimp on the uh you know
the processes that need to go in place to make sure it’s done well and then thorough vetting and Cost Containment
are both important things um we you know about half of our clients come from
another system where they thought it was going to be a good fit it they tried it out and either re fairly immediately
found it wasn’t going to be the right fit or you know years later decided it just is still not working right so uh
vetting is really in in really important for that um and and I’d say one of the
most important things for that is getting all the voices in the company to talk about what their needs are don’t
let you know just a few people including like the CFO you know Drive the decision of a manufacturing ARP system um and
because it’s it’s it it ties the entire company in together right so making sure that’s in line is important and then
employee buyin that’s one of the ones you’re you know concerned about and Chad I’d I’d love this story um about just
the incredible amount of buyin that this one employee had um and can you share that story with us
please um which one are you talking about if you don’t mind me oh what we have up on the slide oh yeah yeah Daniel
Daniel So Daniel is my uh Acme supervisor um he’s uh you know he’s been Acme
Gridley guy for 15 years um has worked his way up through our in our company
and um you know Daniel was one of the the champions of in our shop um of of of
pushing this and and really G gave me the confidence to to make this leap um
but I remember one day you know we were going through training process and uh he
came in on a on a Monday and he was working on his on his trainings that he
had to do and he was actually uh in the weekend you know going deer hunting and
while he was in the while he was in the stand he was actually doing his his trainings just waiting for a deer to
come by um amazing one of the best stories and checking off those trainings
that he needed to get done um so yeah uh Daniel definitely has giving me uh a lot
of confidence um to to make this move you know and that’s something that you know as an owner you need that support
right um yeah you know because you can’t yeah absolutely and these are some of the types of questions that uh employees
will share um they want they want to understand why this is important like like you said things are working fairly
well right now um why do we need to do this um or this is going to be too complicated I really understand how I do
things today I I’m not sure that I’m going to understand how to do it in the future right it’s a steep learning curve
or you know I’m way too busy like we’re working our tails off every day trying to get jobs out the door when am I
possibly going to have time to learn a whole new system and then the who move my cheese just like again people just
don’t like things to change out from underneath them so some of the things we can do um is to really Inspire them
about why this is important do you have anything you can share about what you told your team Chad about why this was
an important move for you guys um yeah besides what we already hit on with um
you know we we you know my my my belief is that you know either you change you’re forced to change or you die um
you know so that was kind of my U Mantra heading into it um you know I know uh
inspirational stories you know I’ve got one guy that’s out in our shop that uh you know he just went to part-time um
but you know he’s got his son is uh uh worked under him um and you know I know
he was one of the guys that came to me and you know wanted to know why we’re doing this um you know and and he was my
lead machinist right he’s been a machinist for 40 years um knows knows those brown and sharp screw machines
inside and out um you know and having having a heart-to- heart with him about
you know um you know the the capturing his tribal
knowledge right he’s got so much knowledge 40 Years of knowledge you know how do we get that out of his mind and
into his son’s lap right um sure you know so you know getting that through
documentation through pictures through videos um and uh so that was one of the
one of the inspirational one of many inspirational stories that that come to top of my mind fantastic yeah and I know
because you guys did so well that you you made sure you you taught them what uh what they needed to learn and
supported them to make room for their training as they’re still getting their regular day jobs done right yeah yeah we
still actually do that today yeah fantastic so important all right let’s quickly kind of go through your timeline and then we’ll dig
into the actual results that you got so um kind of walk us through this so last
August is when you decided to really um start is that when you started your research or when you decided to actually
make the change uh so prior to that you know I’ve been researching for quite a few months maybe almost up to a year I
can’t remember um but uh yeah I remember August is when I actually pulled the trigger um you know I I was I I had the
opportunity to to be outside of our of our production meetings for for a while and I came back to them you know kind of
gave me different insight as to um why we needed to make the change
um and uh but but I remember coming out of one of those production meetings I’m like this this I I can’t do this for
another 20 years you know were those meetings somewhat frustrating at times yeah yeah and uh
you know so I remember making a call to to to Pro Shop um and signing up and
that that happened in August um like you said mid mid-september we we started the implementation process uh
which required uh we we went the route of training two times a week for an hour
and a half at a time uh through Zoom calls uh and you did it with Robert this
guy this is Robert up in the corner mad mad snowboarder guy Y and and
Robert was amazing he uh he actually worked with a couple other uh screw machine shops um so so he knew knew what
he was getting himself into when he when he started uh talking to us um and guided us through that whole process
yeah and Robert came from from my old shop um so he worked with us there for several years and really learned the
shop business and of course Pro Shop as well yeah um and then uh you were kind
of done with training by the end of December right yeah I think it was just before Christmas we finished up the training process uh and uh we started
building out our our database in uh in in Pro Shop you know more than what we had previously but really started diving
into it with the daily or sorry weekly check-ins Y which I think those lasted about an hour hour a week um and we did
that through February yeah um and you so previously you’re using QuickBooks and
then just paper paper sheets and various other things right and so you ran in parallel for a for a month or so we did
yeah uh you know I I think we had a it was you know one I didn’t know what we
were getting ourselves into with an Erp system uh which was probably the best thing for me I guess
um it was really nice uh but uh yeah everything that we had was QuickBooks based and Excel spreadsheets got it yeah
not not uncommon at all that’s a very common combination yeah so I’m sure a lot of shops can relate to you and then
here’s a couple pictures you sent us so I’d love to have you talk about what you did on the shop floor with computers and making sure people had access to things
yeah so for us you know me it was I’ve seen pictures of other shops
that have you know real beautiful setups and yeah I’d like to get there someday
right but for me it was just getting our ourselves up and off the ground running yeah um so we went ahead and we just
went with laptops I remember it was a wonderful Labor Day Sale U where we
purchased about 25 laptops are these uh PCS or Chromebooks or what are they
they’re PCS yeah they PCS okay yeah yep um so every person on our shop floor has
their own their own PC nice um and some of them have as you can see in the picture on the le- hand side some of
them have uh really spice things up a little bit put a little kaisen foam in there for their for their laptops and
this one in particular is uh he actually took some Engle Iron and um attached it
to his toolbox so he he operates anywhere from two to five machines per
day uh so he’s constantly moving uh so he’ll just move his toolbox wherever he’s working on for the day uh which
makes it really convenient you know for for us we have we have more machines than we do people so I knew I knew
hooking a MCH a computer up to every machine wasn’t the most practical thing to do to get up and going so that’s why
we elected to go with the with the laptops yeah and a lot of clients that have that same situation do just what
you did or some hybrid of of of each where some Mach have a dedicated station
and others just more mobile you know you bring your toolbox or your little setup wherever you’re going to be working for
the next few hours and that’s where you’re you’re working from so and then going forward going forward I think my
you know my plan is to every year get you know whe I don’t know what that number is five computers a year seven
computers a year and continuously rotate those in and out y um you know and
upgrade our our our computers that way yeah I know some clients have also used
this kind of mobile setup but then occasion and then in some spots they just have a plugin to go to an extra
monitor or two um and especially with USBC these days it’s so easy to you know
power and and uh send up a you know multiple monitors with just a single
plugin so that can help to get more more real estate y all right let’s talk about
what’s on the other side of transformation there’s no doubt about it like I said it is a hard process um and
uh you need to put in the work you need to make sure you have a good plan you need to have a good partner to do that but um
it uh it it eventually does pay off and things get a lot easier and and Chad you
said you’ve really started to start seeing things really clicking and kind of moving in the last you know couple of
months here you want to share a little bit about um about that process yeah I
feel every day every month can you know always has gotten a little bit easier uh
start painting a a bigger picture but um you know we’ve been going live now since
February mid-February uh even still we had uh I’m
I’m a big proponent of of training right you can never stop learning on this stuff um so we had uh one of the things
we did was especially for a training perspective you know you only get to train once you know you can’t go back and redo it um so we we invested uh
quite a bit of of of time and resources in in making sure that we did it right the first time uh and one of those
things that we did is we had uh Pro Shop come out to our facility for I think I
got five days so they um and they broke it up into two sessions so they just came out about a month ago um for three
days um and I feel like that’s when it for me like it really started to click
and I really started to see the power behind the data right um and sort of had
that aha moment yeah that’s a great way to put it data is so essential in a
manufacturing business because without that data you can’t make the right decisions and I’m that’s been easier for
you and and then it’s also transformed some of these five ways that we want to get to here now so let’s get into these
we’re going to talk about reducing setup times so you’re not spending as much time with your machines not running
we’re going to talk about about reducing scrap which obviously is a good thing um you don’t have to remake parts or or
have your customers upset with you um boosting production getting just more spindle hours uh in a day and some of
the things that feed into that um and then creating demand and winning new business um to make sure that you’re
back filling with that new capacity that you have with with new work so we’re first let’s we’re going to
share um some stuff about setup times and there is a handout if you click on
the handout section there is there’s two things there there’s our lane setup process and it describes in great detail
what I’m going to talk about very briefly here so make sure you grab that and download it and um it it’s it’s a
totally Universal concept whether you’re using Pro Shop or not so um yeah hopefully it adds some value to you so
first thing is doing a much more careful job documenting your setups and doing your planning up front a lot of shops I
think are guilty of rushing that process and trying to just throw things across
the wall out to the shop floor and having them figure it out at that point but I can assure you that is not the
most effective way to make sure that that setup times those those things are going to go smoothly you’re going to hit
targets you’re going to stay on schedule um so the second step is is really just kidding and you know many shops have a
good practice of this but I still go into many many of them where they they wheel over the cart to the to the
machine and they say all right what do I need right what do I need for my material what do I need for you know my traveler
what about my my inspection gauges or cutting tools and then they go to the tool crib or they go start grabbing
things while the machine is sitting idle um and that is absolutely not the time to do that um it takes some effort to
get ahead of that curve so you’re preparing things a day or two or more in advance of when a job is supposed to be
set up but once you do that process and we’ll show a little bit more even specifically on this it’s remarkable how
much time can be cut out of a of a machine setup um it is my firm belief
that that a setup machinist when they walk up to a machine with a fully kitted job they should within the targeted time
have a finished good part in their hand without ever having to leave that machine um if you’re having to leave
that means something wasn’t prepared well enough in advance and Chad um you
have seen some pretty huge improvements in brand new jobs so I’d love to have you talk about that a little bit
yeah so you we’re still in the beginning stages of this right so for me it’s kind of rolling it out a little bit at a time
uh you know when when you say setup times you know I think front office uh
issues um you know how many times I don’t have a number to put on it but how many times are you laate on a job just
because you know you forgot to order something on the front end right um yeah so that’s really what we’ve been di
diving into uh I want to make sure that from the front office side that were that were got our ducks in a row before
I take you know these setup times of what you’re saying you know kiding these parts out to the shop floor but even
what we’ve been doing so far just from the front office side has been uh a great reduction in in in lead times um
and in setups and making just making sure that the guys have what they need um whether it’s it’s you know especially
for new parts like you said do we have the guide bushings do we have the collets you know do we have the that
special you know uh uh piece of tooling that that step drill um you know those
types of things because I can tell you over the last 17 years I’ve been doing this a long time and how many times I’ve
gotten to the shop floor and oh we don’t have a pair of Chasers okay well let’s go order some you know lead time for
those is three weeks right and you’re like so so that’s what we’re doing on our end for for cutting setup times is
strictly on the on the office side and it’s just that alone has has proven um
profitable for us yeah and you mentioned the the lead time um which is it’s not
directly related but it’s tangentially related to this it used to take you seven to 10 days when you first received
an order from a client before the shop floor would actually see it out on the floor right because you’re doing your
paper based stuff and and now what now what’s the lead time and how does that work yeah so so just to back up right
yeah I I believe it would take about seven to 10 days because you know we would put all all our orders in for the
week at the end of the week we would go and we create our our Travelers or routing cards or work orders whatever
you want to call them um we would order our material we would take that stack
that packet and go put it in a man manila envelope out on the shop floor and you know that that piece of paper
would go on the bottom right so um you know the guys would come in on Monday but who knows it might be two or three
days before they actually see that piece of paper right um now we are I’ll put an
order in you know today this this evening um and I’ll come in tomorrow
morning and I can’t I can count you know 10 to 20 times already this year in in
four months where I’ve done that the next morning it’s already set up and running that’s amazing that’s amazing
yeah yeah and that gets us to some other topic about freeing up capacity right
and increasing velocity through your shop um but let’s before we touch in on that point let’s final finish this out
um on setups so this is what we call our pre-processing checklist it’s a very
configurable list um even by the type of job like a new job or versus a repeat
job or a prototype job where it walks you through the requirements that you want to make sure you’re handling right
so here we have things for you know queueing bomb items and material and tooling and verifying the revisions and
you know making sure your program is done and and then the physical prepping and kitting and these color codes feed
through into all different areas of Pro Shop to give employees visibility of
what’s ready what’s not ready what still needs to be done um and you know individual people can come in and sign
off um and go follow these links to go actually do that work in a very quick
and efficient manner do you have any anecdotes to share about how you guys are using this
Chad um for for me personally I can’t necessarily speak to the guys on the shop floor but for me personally I’m
always I’m surrounding myself in the pink stuff up top yeah yeah that those
are all my checks that I’m doing daily yeah yep yeah there you know we we got
this concept from the from the book checklist Manifesto where doctors uh
some researchers decided to put pre-surgery checklists in when doctors were prepping for surgery and they got
the idea from from Pilots right Pilots always do their pre-light pre-flight checklist and when they when they
instilled this uh this process for doctors I think the the the statistic is
like deaths caused by an accident or a mistake in surgery dropped by
40% just by having a checklist and I was completely blown blown away by that you
know surgeons are some of the most highly trained skilled people in the world at their professions how can we
and I would argue that setting up a machine um is just as complex as brain surgery and so how can we expect our
machinists and our people on the shop floor to do a Flawless fantastic job if they don’t have a checklist to make sure
everything is going to go smoothly so anyway that was maybe it’s tangent but
uh there you go and here’s just an example uh of the types of information
that you can share um you know you can have pictures or videos or Rich text about exactly what someone is supposed
to be doing so maybe in your case Chad you know that gentleman that had been a machinist for 40 years and is going to part-time he can work with his son or
another employee to start documenting all right what how do we do the setup let’s get some pictures of it let’s
write some notes and uh the next time when he’s not here because he’s part-time now those other people can set
up that job successfully without having to scramble through pieces of paper or not even have anything to reference at
all right yeah so we’ve done it that way um we’ve also been in situations where
you know the way that we as machinist check Parts isn’t necessarily the way that our customers think we should check
Parts oh yes um so we’ve had we’ve had several uh I should should say several we’ve had two instances where you know
customer checks apart just differently than what how we would right and so uh
we’ll get the information from them of how they want us to check it and we’ll make a video and we’ll slap that right there on the um yeah in that written
description right there yeah and there’s even a spot for each inspection requirement to have it its own uh media
a picture a video of this for this Dimension this is how you need to check it so yep yeah well that’s a perfect
segue into reducing scrap and doing inspection um so so remind me Chad uh
before going for putting Pro Shop in you were not really doing much uh recorded
at least or tell us a little about your inspection practices yeah you know being a small business uh you know you can only wear
so many hats during the day um and you know for for us tracking scrap wasn’t
you know it was one of those areas where we just lagged on right it’s not that we weren’t didn’t want to do it um we just
had to focus on other other things throughout the day um yeah so for for us our way of tracking scrap was through
customer returns um and that’s just you know we knew we had to get a number and and that’s that’s what we did and that
was your isometric is that right yeah yeah that was our isometric uh I think it was a dollar value that we that we
had to you know that that was our objective um and uh so that’s honestly
how how we track scrap um today that’s a little different um you know every
operator out there is tracking their own scrap um and uh it’s it’s great just
just having that information right um and letting the guys know that it’s not
it’s not a bad thing right we’re not tracking it to uh you know harp on anybody like we just we
need we need we need to know that information right um and uh yeah so so
now we’re we’re we’re tracking scrap uh in fact we we were just talking about it today um in our in our Ops Ops meeting
that we had yeah and many client many companies do check you know do impr
process inspections um but if they’re doing it on paper I’ve certainly heard the story
where someone was running Parts entering ing a result of what they thought was a
good value but they were misunderstanding the tolerance range and they were actually writing down
something that was totally out of Tolerance and thinking it was fine and making you know hundreds of parts so
that is a that is a situation you really want to avoid if you sure can um and of
course as you track scrap and as you add cause codes and NCR codes uh you can
then measure where are we having the most scrap and without a measurement and without knowing where your you know your
your big hitters are it’s really hard to make Improvement processes and actually start reducing scrap you know so you’re
making less of it and not having to spend that material spend that machine time um having to hopefully not have it
go to a customer yeah so so that’s what we started doing today right like what are our top three cause codes um that that
keep on reappearing now that we start having four months of data right we our top three and and diving into those to
to try to you know if if you if you can focus just on a couple um you know just
from a percentage wise that’s a that’s a good chunk yeah absolutely and of course no customer
wants to get bad parts it causes a lot of friction you know with the customer to return them to you and and uh have to
remake them or ship some more um so it’s always a win when uh you can really
minimize that um and uh yeah and and of course if you’re
not remaking Parts um then you’re you’re able to open that capacity for doing new
new jobs right y yep and so one of the things that uh we talked about as we
were prepping for this is just how much more um emphasis and focus there now is
on keeping those spindles turning and running machines at a you know higher at
a higher rate so um you had mentioned that in your Acme department and this
was so this was even at the beginning the 70% number it was right when you first implemented Pro Shop and people
started tracking time but you keep a tell us about the dashboard out on the on the shop floor and what what’s
happened there yeah so um maybe a month and a half ago we started uh beta
testing dashboards out on the shop floor that update you know we’ve got them
updating every 15 minutes um so we’ve got we’ve got two TVs monitors out out
there one’s in shipping receiving um that one is is pretty straightforward uh right so we’re tracking uh you know
depending on what we’re doing ontime delivery just for the month if we have um you know nothing going on but if we
if we are shipping right he’s got his dashboards up of uh you know what’s due for the day uh what’s late so he can
focus on you know if we are running late he knows that job needs to go out the door um but then in our acne Department
we’ve got two dashboards going right now that we’re just getting ready to roll out to the other departments um and one
is the uh oh you’ll have to help me with the the collated the value added numbers
yated value added yep and so that is tracking
their we have a picture of that there you go so we’ve we’ve taken off the names but this is data right out of Chad
system um and this percent time against work orders is something you can set as
a target for every employee and I think yours is set at 80% is that right yeah
probably folks could be bumped up to 90 plus yep um but right here this person
at the top you know uh not running more than 80% of of their time against a work
order so that turns into a red number um and so people can everyone can see this
in that department yes okay little little friendly competition yep and you
know just you know I’m a firm believer in visual management right um we rolled
this out like I said about a month and a half ago when we first started uh that number in yellow where it’s currently
90.5 was hovering around 70ish percent okay um and so you can see in a month
and a half we’ve gone from from 70 to 90% um yeah you know dedicated towards
work orders right um so think of the impact that that can do you know I know what it’s done in my
shop think what it could do in your shop yeah yeah just even and you know and I
and I know you well enough that you’re not out there you know beating people up over those numbers you’re just presenting the information and letting
them make the right decisions about that what they see there right yeah it’s it’s
all about uh you know gamifying work right how can everybody wants to win um
but they need to know how to win right right so putting putting some Metric up there that they can focus on um you know
not only helps them right but it helps the company yeah
absolutely and let’s uh talk about this one this is also another snapshot out of your system with the sensitive data
blurred out um yeah tell us about this dashboard and how you use this yeah so
this is just a simple dashboard again that we’re using in our Acme Department getting ready to roll out to the other
departments um and it’s just uh based on it’s filtered by must leave datee um and
so you can see at the top where we were laate on that job um and but it gives
the everybody in that department priority they they know they know the hot job that needs to
go so you know whether if if somebody if somebody’s out for the day right and that machine needs to run there’s no
there’s no guesswork of of what needs to happen some somebody knows that that machine needs to run yeah but we can we
also see here and by the way must leave date is um that is when the operation
needs to be done off of that work center in order to make sure the job is on time for whatever else is happening next um
so if it’s coming straight to the customer after this machine which on a you know on an Acme is probably the case
um then uh it’s the last thing that happens so that includes some lead time to get to the client so very often you
could be a day lateer on this but still get to the client on time because you’ve put in that shipping buffer but this
also tells us you guys have already shipped over 4600 Parts on the so yeah
so is already delivered and then you also have 2500 or so in stock as well
correct uh so yeah my this is what my guys like to see on on that side of it is you know what we’ve shipped what we
have in stock um but then they also like to see those clipboards there uh from a
materials perspective uh knowing right away whether or not we have material in stock to run that job yeah again helps
them very Vis and I love you’re using this as a big dashboard it makes it very Visual and lets them again make proper
choices about what to do out on the shop floor and priorities to attend to all
right so we have um we’re seeing jobs you know be set up faster spending less
time in the office um keeping your spindles turning people are more focused on production you’re not making as much
scrap so you’re having to remake parts so you’re freeing up capacity and bandwidth out in your shop floor
sure and uh so many shops and I’ve talked about
this at length for anyone that follows my blogs or videos that um for many
shops it’s it’s and this actually the pirate ship analogy came from a customer who said this is the way I used to run
my company it was just a crazy pirate ship environment people are just like you know doing whatever they thought
they could do um but there wasn’t a lot of orchestration and uh it was really
chaotic and uh a good friend of ours a guy named Rod who was a senior supply
chain professional for many many years in Aerospace he said I can walk into a shop and just smell the disorganization
in five minutes like there’s no way they can hide it from me and uh and um
actually there was just a conversation on LinkedIn yesterday and this morning um from a client was saying I think I’m
gonna start giving a tour for all new clients about how my shop Works how how
we do what we do and I think that was just an incredibly insightful comment that
um company customers want want people in supply chain their basic job is to
reduce risk right they want to make sure that their production R their production lines can keep running they’re getting
parts when they need them uh on time with good quality and good paperwork so it all flows seamlessly and having the
latest and greatest machinery on the shop floor is not the most important thing to make sure that you have good
reliable business processes that you can show an auditor and show those buyers like this is why you should work work
with me right and uh I know Chad you um you have started to do this yourself
right uh you’ve been showing customers and Prospects uh how how you do
things yeah it’s uh especially on Zoom calls right I’m always finding a way to
incorporate my Erp system now uh into a zoom
call um and that always every time leads to deeper discussions what what is that
you know what do what’s this screen showing you know and right um that’s uh
that’s been one of the the the great sales points that that we’ve had and like you said it comes down more to
trust right they they start seeing that they start asking questions they start learning your process a little bit more in detail um that builds
trust absolutely and gets you more business and then you started getting
comments about your box labels right we did yeah um the uh the the pictures on
the right-and side uh got a lot of compliments on those over uh the last month or so um guys guys like to see um
the the pictures that you know they don’t have to read a label they can just see a picture right yeah and going back to every you know humans are such visual
creatures um you know someone at the receiving Bay or in the inventory you know at your client’s site can just look
right on the box say oh I know the picture of that part I know exactly what that is I don’t need to read through all the the text to know what part number
that is yep they love seeing our boxes now it makes it easy for them fantastic love
it um all right so and this this kind of to kind of bring this full circle um you
are also using this to uh using prosop to accur to to estimate more accurately
and more quickly and then um having again that thorough process that you can show your customers this is when we when
we receive one of your orders this is how we make sure we’re setting it on a great path and it’s going to get to you
with everything everything properly done right yep um and can you talk a little bit
about your estimating I think you you’re sharing with in the preparation um just
about the amount of lead time you’ve cut out of that estimating process and how much faster you can turn around
opportunities to them yeah this is probably the the one area I mean I’m excited about all the areas but um
recently this is been my my big aha moment um is the estimating side of it
um you know and be before um it just took a while to get a
quote out the door you know it just took uh time and and effort to to get
something out the door we we used to have uh our prior to Pro Shop we used something that had to be um done off of
Windows 95 so I literally open a computer inside a
computer um but you know we have half of our business is our own product line um
and it requires an assembly and so before it was you know every I had to go
through and manually get an updated price every time I quoted something uh for each of those items uh each of those
bomb items um and and now you know somebody asked well let me back up that
that used to take probably anywhere from I don’t know 15 to 30 minutes to do that whole cycle y uh now it takes about two
minutes if that um you know everything is if if you’re if you’re doing it right
all your costs are constantly updated um and so all you’re doing is you’re just
changing the quantities on on what um customers are looking for um sure and uh
it’s it’s made it it’s made it really easy for for that’s on that’s on our product line on our on our job shop side
of things um and contract manufacturing side of things uh it’s
been we we’ve taken that from using the estimate carts um you know because
before we would get a piece of paper right we would print it out take it down to program in have them take a look at
it you know they do their what they needed to do uh with cycle times tooling
machines all that stuff um and then you know it would come back to us eventually
but we had no way of tracking it now um back then now everything is loaded up
onto an estimate you know it’s it’s the estimate itself um it’s the print and
we’re putting that in into what we call an estimate cart um and and we’re able to track it
right so so between myself sales um and uh my my supervisors out there we we
know where a quote is at all times and whether it’s been completed or not uh so that that’s reduced um our time to get
get quotes out the door um as well yeah and as we as I’m sure
most folks on this call know that very often the client is gonna take if if you
they’re gonna take that first quote if it comes in and is reasonably within the ballpark but they just they’re so
slammed they’re so busy they need they got 20 more rfqs behind that they’re going to very often just place the order
with the company that gets them back the fastest so yeah if you can fit something
in in two three minutes and get it right back to them as opposed to having it take maybe 30 elapse minutes but that
might actually be the next day or two because it’s waiting on a piece of paper in someone’s desk at the you know at at
your Machining supervisor to get a cycle time you know that opportunity may be gone before they even put their numbers
down right for sure yeah and then at the end again um making sure that all the
documentation is really solid and Flawless and exactly what that customer wants to see is just going to improve
the the impression and the reputation that that you’re you have with with those customers right no one wants to
receive some parts and have you know the CFC missing or uh whatever paperwork they require and making sure that’s
dialed in and people can’t forget to include the right things um again can be
a trust Builder uh an efficiency improver and just reducing friction with
clients so um yeah and yeah this was we’ve kind of already
covered this but uh you can get answers back to your clients a lot faster than uh you ever could before
and probably also quote ship dates and and due dates a lot more accurately that
that also part of it yeah before it was just kind of shooting from the hip um depending on how I was feeling that day
right sure um now at least I’m able to give it uh you know again it’s it’s
still um an estimate right for for ship dates but at least there there’s some
some math behind it there’s some objective reasoning behind it uh and and so that’s helped out quite a bit Yeah
and here’s um here’s some I should have moved the slides ahead sooner but here’s
a couple of uh of uh screenshots so this this is the
estimate cart that you were talking about so basically you’re um you have an RFQ that you that you enter in here um
and whether it’s one part number or many you can throw a bunch of different estimates into that cart and make it
Global and then share it with other people so they can easily go see all right I’m I’m the one that supposed to
go get the morw material so I can get that and put that in or I’m doing the cycle time so I can get that and put that in you know people can parallel
process those things at the same time so they’re not again waiting on someone’s desk and uh um losing very likely losing
the opportunity to even win that work awesome um okay so how let just
kind of summarizing these things here um so we’re increasing throughput right what used to take seven to 10 days
you’re that’s happening immediately so jobs are starting sooner shipping sooner getting out the door sooner that’s
increasing throughput um track and time on jobs more often that’s again just
putting that emphasis showing the data of how people are doing is GNA steer that behavior to what you want so
they’re making those jobs more more often um obviously using some of those dashboards making sure you know um and
this is the thing about paper based processes right you might have a job traveler that has you know the customer
due date but the date might have changed even right as soon as something is printed it’s static it’s old information
um so even knowing the right uh decisions to make based on real-time data is just very hard when when it’s a
paper based process yeah just had that happened to me last week they uh customer called and they placed an order
you know two or three days earlier made the workorder for it and uh they called they increased the quantity and instead
of having to reprint all new paperwork it was three or four clicks um just
updating that number and and down the road you go yep pushes instantly
throughout everything yep fantastic all right and then so on the sales side
again I will um say time and time again using your your digital processes as a
sales tool is a really effective way to stand out from the crowd um you know and
there’s actually a uh we don’t have it to share should have thought about that but um there was an article in modern
machine shop um several years ago about one of our customers who was in a dual bidding situation um with another with
another supplier and uh and the vendor the CL the client came out and visited
both companies uh and they saw our client with their fully digital process
they watched from the conference room as they were putting in inspection results and then they went out and saw them
running their parts and then they went to this other shop that was all paper based and you know Antiquated and they
couldn’t show them anything like that and you better believe which client uh which vendor got the uh you know got all
that business um so you know very effective in that case and then as you you know have that
increased throughput and you can uh open up uh more capacity and positive sales
pressure is a really important aspect of this if you open up capacity but you don’t have more jobs to to backfill
you’re just going to have spindles sitting empty right so really important to to get those quotes out quickly have
them priced accurately uh and then of course always be focused on sales and marketing was another drum that I beat
all the time um but that can create that positive sales pressure and basically Chad you’re at
this point you uh so you got those out faster more time tracking much more
visual awareness tracking your scrap reducing customer returns your ontime delivery’s gone up almost 20 points and
uh you’re doing that today with 10% less staff from from some retirements and things like that correct that’s correct
with the same throughput so you know that is uh a fantastic result and it’s
not a it’s not an unrealistic uh result at all um and uh especially you know In
This Moment In Time where at that one time there’s many many shops are super
busy um other shops they in industries that aren’t as you know thriving at the moment and it’s important to be as
efficient as it possible to serve your customers better to be their first choice when they’re making decisions
about where to place work and uh and kudos to you Chad for just how well you did all that and uh it’s fantastic to
see the results you’ve been getting so thank you all right we’re going to get into some Q&A here um so uh we have a
question from for you Chad what prompted you to start this process in your shop you already alluded to a little bit but
um maybe any a little more Nuance to that uh yeah again I I remember it goes
back to me from I I I had an opportunity to to be outside of those daily
production meetings for for a while um and and when I when I came back to those
you know when you’re in it when you’re in those daily production meetings um you know you’re just going
with the flow and uh having an opportunity to step away from from that and then and then return um was really
eye openening to me of you know I felt like I was the only one that can make
make a decision or understood where a job was at any given time sure and and
that was a process issue for us right like I realized that at that you know it it took me a
while um but that was that was when I realized this this isn’t you know this isn’t a people issue this is a process
issue and how can we fix the process um and so so that’s when I really started
uh going down this path uh with with with Pro Shop and digital
transformation yeah and I love that perspective of you were you got outside
of the process for a little while and could really see it from a different angle or different lens and that comes
back to the the Mantra I say all the time it’s so important for leaders to work on their business not just in their
business right and uh the book The emth from uh Michael Gerber is a fantastic
book um to talk about working on your business and working on the processes of your business um it’s a really easy read
so jot that down and go go get that uh the emth uh actually it’s called the emth Revisited at this
point and then next question um how long does it take to fully Implement um so
this is a really variable question uh or answer uh you know for Chad you know
Chad’s company was about you know three or four months or so um we have clients that do it even faster than that because
they um either are just super focused or they can spend more than twice a week doing training or whatever it might be
sometimes it takes longer for bigger companies that have you know a hundred or more people it’s it’s likely going to
take a long time although we just had a situation just last week where um
actually it was an 800 person shop and our trainer came on site first before
doing any virtual training and by the end of that week they were running jobs on the shop floor in four days doing
work instructions full in process gauge calibration everything was dialed in for
just a handful of jobs but it was amazing to see how quickly that actually can go when it’s really focused um so
anyway uh so I think we are running out of We Are we’re at the top of the hour so we’re going to um we’ll take any
other questions we’ll try to get get to those people uh directly afterwards um so thank you for sending those in sorry
we couldn’t get to them and uh just the last thank you slide so obviously if
you’re looking for Screw Machine Products hipsman is the place to to to call there’s our website email and phone
number and uh and then if you want to reach out to Pro Shop of course I’m sure it’s easy to um oh there’s a bunch more
questions all of a sudden um sorry we’re gonna have to be able to um get to those uh except we will follow
up with you directly after the webinar so anyway Chad thank you so much I appreciate um you uh being with us yeah
thank you Paul it’s always a pleasure all right thanks everyone um I
just want to thank Pro Shop for making this webinar po possible and uh thanks to everyone for listening in and just ah
heads up that you should receive an email with a link to the recording within the next few hours so thanks for joining us and everyone enjoy the rest
of your [Music]
day
