00;00;00;00 – 00;00;39;37
Unknown
All right. Hello, everybody, and welcome. I am Elizabeth Bernard. I have the pleasure of serving as the executive director of the Manufacturing Growth Alliance, or MGA. MGA is a statewide Michigan based trade association campaigning, serving and advocating for Michigan’s small to medium five manufacturers. And I’m really excited to have you join us for this conversation featuring Pro Shop, ERP and pitchman screw, and that our event is called Passing the Torch.

00;00;39;42 – 00;01;07;46
Unknown
Building a business your kids won’t want to run from. We are going to be talking about the journey of Pitchmen through highlighting their strategy for long term growth and how they’ve leveraged pro shop ERP to streamline their operations and set the stage for the next generation. While we’re going through the presentation, if you are a Michigan based manufacturer, there is a grand opportunity that you may not have heard about.

00;01;07;46 – 00;01;35;24
Unknown
It is called the industry 4.0 Grant initiative. It is a statewide, Michigan based grant providing manufacturers with up to $25,000 in funding for industry 4.0 hardware and software costs, and if you have not received this grant before in Michigan, the funds were just replenished by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Pro Shop ERP would be an eligible technology for this grant.

00;01;35;29 – 00;01;52;43
Unknown
So if you are a Michigan manufacturer and you have not taken advantage of this grant, please follow up with me so I can give you some more information. And we will also enter this into the chat. So you can directly go to our web page to learn about this grant. With that, I would like to introduce my colleague.

00;01;52;43 – 00;01;57;26
Unknown
Jen demurred.

00;01;57;31 – 00;02;23;56
Unknown
From so that. Hi there. And Jen served as our chief operating officer at connect, this group. A few housekeeping item. This session is being recorded and we will be sharing this out on social media after the event. In addition to all of those who registered for the event, we will be sending you a copy of the recording as well as the slide deck from today’s presentation.

00;02;24;01 – 00;02;50;20
Unknown
Near the end of the presentation. Like with most webinars, we have time scheduled for Q&A while we are going through the event. If you have questions, please put them into the Q&A so we can get to them during that time. In addition, during the Q&A portion, if you would like to personally allow to ask the question yourself, simply raise your hand and Jen will unmute you so you can ask the question personally.

00;02;50;25 – 00;03;24;00
Unknown
With that, I’m happy to introduce you to my two panelist, Paul Van Meter, co-founder of Pro Shop ERP. Pro shop dramatically improved efficiency because it focuses on improving the execution of manufacturing processes which yield dramatic labor and cost savings, with including total labor savings of 25% or more. And Chad Vanderbeek is the president of Pitchman Through Machine Products, located in Union, Michigan, near the Michigan Indiana border.

00;03;24;05 – 00;03;50;29
Unknown
Peptamen is a major through machine product manufacturer in supplier in the Midwest area, supporting numerous industries including automotive, recreational, vehicle, marine, military, industrial, and more. With that to add, and Paul, I welcome you. Thanks, Lizabeth. Thanks, Jen. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. Yeah. Thanks for inviting us to come do this with your audience. Looking forward to it.

00;03;50;34 – 00;04;12;33
Unknown
Happy to have you. All right. Well, fantastic. Well, let’s dig in, folks. So as, Elizabeth said, I’m, Paul, one of the co-founders of Pro Shop. Just delighted to be joined by Chad, a great customer and friend of, for sure. So, Chad, are you ready to dig in and talk about passing the torch?

00;04;12;38 – 00;04;33;30
Unknown
I sure am so excited. You know, I’ll start by sharing with people that the the idea about this actually came from a podcast that you and I did together, where it kind of clicked that, you had said that, you know, hitman was kind of on a path that you were not, as happy about. So we’ll get into that in a minute here.

00;04;33;30 – 00;04;52;46
Unknown
But, we’ll start with just a little bit of background and a little bit about Pro Shop. This is mostly going to be about hitman, but, I always like to start our webinars with our mission statement. And I, we’ve, we’ve got this picture of you, volunteering at our IMT booth. Just, last month. It was such a good time.

00;04;52;59 – 00;05;12;03
Unknown
So our mission is this we deliver powerful manufacturing software by deeply understanding our clients challenges in order to meaningfully improve their businesses and, in turn, their communities. And I really think we’ve hit the mark, you know, with improvement here on this one. I know I was talking to one of your teammates, Daniel, at in TMA last month, last week.

00;05;12;08 – 00;05;35;16
Unknown
And, just hearing the impact of just the growth and success of Pitchmen, which thankfully, Pro Shop has been a part of, has been really an amazing thing to hear. So, just a little bit about Pro Shop. So, Pro Shop was originally conceived as a product to help run a company that I started back in the year 1997, with my partners.

00;05;35;16 – 00;05;56;49
Unknown
That’s that’s that’s the group of us right here, straight out of college. We, we just started working on spreadsheets and, you know, started with a single CNC machine. And, about three years in, we had grown quite a bit to about about 12 employees, and those spreadsheets were just not working for us. So we decided to to write, a software program.

00;05;56;49 – 00;06;18;01
Unknown
After going out on the market and not finding anything we thought was worth buying. So in the year 2000, we started writing Pro Shop, and then we just kept running our business for many years to come. And it really would not, not ever intending to sell pro shop, but, about 16 years later, we, we did sell the manufacturing company and started pro shop.

00;06;18;06 – 00;06;36;40
Unknown
And and these are the things that we try to solve. For our customers. And, I know we’ll get into some of these things today with Chad. So let’s get into our agenda. We’re going to talk about the background of, of why Chad didn’t think his business was was worthy to pass down to his kids, perhaps.

00;06;36;45 – 00;06;58;13
Unknown
We’re going to talk about, some of the other great things that Chad’s been doing in business coaching. Obviously the pro shop side, new equipment, investing in, memberships and really digging, you know, leaning into that, and, just the whole of the whole thing that the Chad’s done to sort of really transform this business.

00;06;58;18 – 00;07;28;08
Unknown
So, Chad, let’s start by talking a little bit about the background. What? Yeah. What was. Yeah. Just share maybe as you, a bit of the background of the whole company. And then when you took it over and sort of from there on. Yeah. So, the, the company itself has been around for 57 years. We, we started over in Elkhart, Indiana, and then, my dad and my husband bought the company, back in 1981.

00;07;28;13 – 00;07;49;32
Unknown
And, my kitchen was, was a big farmer. I don’t know how many acres he owns around here in Michigan, but quite a few. And, they bought the company and relocated, to Union, Michigan. You know, my dad was was always the sales guy. He was, his background was, he was a steel salesman for, am Castle and LaSalle steel.

00;07;49;37 – 00;08;16;07
Unknown
And then Mike was, was the machinist. And, that worked out really well for them. They did, I think at their height, they probably had about 50 machines, which is what I inherited when I, when I came on board here. All Acme. Gridley. So everything was turning, acme really multi spindles and then, brown and sharp single spindles, and, I came on board.

00;08;16;07 – 00;08;43;13
Unknown
Well, I’ve been here since I’ve been about foot and a half tall. Sweeping floors. But I’ve officially been collecting a paycheck here for the last, I think I just turned 19 years. So, for myself, you know, obviously, I’m, first and foremost, I’ve got a beautiful wife and, four beautiful kids. And, that’s that’s what guides me.

00;08;43;18 – 00;09;12;57
Unknown
And running the shop and, but, you know, I’ve been here for for 19 years, starting sales, and then worked my way up. So in, 2020, I became president. And, since that point, it’s, it’s it’s been quite the journey, especially in the last two years. And you so the, can you just maybe describe a little bit besides the 50 machines I see there’s no here, no preventative maintenance program.

00;09;13;02 – 00;09;31;14
Unknown
Yeah, a lot of secondary operations. Yeah, yeah, I know you said the place was not particularly clean, so. Yeah, just maybe paint the picture of a little bit more of what it was like when you took it over. Yeah. So when I took over, it was, you know, those, those threads, right? The dark, dirty and dangerous.

00;09;31;19 – 00;09;52;59
Unknown
I had to wear special shoes in here to, So you want to either slip or trip or, and, like I said, yeah, at one point, we had our height, we had 50 machines, and then we had an entire secondary operation. So that was that was before our Swiss machines came on board. So for our secondary operations.

00;09;52;59 – 00;10;16;39
Unknown
Right, if there was any crossovers, we were drilling those out by hand. You know, any cross threading? We were joining up by hand back tampering. Right. Things that you could that we take for granted now that we can just drop the part complete in a Swiss machine, you know, you couldn’t you couldn’t do that. And so a lot of labor, a lot of blood, sweat and, you know, blood.

00;10;16;48 – 00;10;47;48
Unknown
Right? But last year. We went into, to getting those those parts out, and, you know, I think in 2018, we invested in our first CNC machine, which was a CMC mill. And we were, you know, for our secondary department, we were doing a lot of work that just when it when I look at it now, especially with Pro Shop, I’m like, there’s no way we were profitable on those items, right.

00;10;47;53 – 00;11;11;18
Unknown
But I think that kind of proves my point now. But back in the day, back in 2018, I had a hunch, right? Like we were we weren’t making money on this stuff. And, we bought our first CNC mill. So we were still doing the secondary operations, but we put it in a mill. And so a lot of those operations that took us two weeks to do by hand, right on a on a manual mill.

00;11;11;23 – 00;11;40;19
Unknown
Or a drill press, was take now we were getting done from two weeks down to two days. I’m like, okay, now we’re now we’re moving in the right direction. This is a this is the way to go. So that that really started our, our movement into our, our growth. Yeah. Very good. And as we said in the, at the agenda, you know, you’ve invested in doing a lot of different things, including, are really good friends.

00;11;40;24 – 00;12;12;07
Unknown
Mike and Dave and EBITDA growth systems. I’d love to have you just touch a little bit of on on what this has meant, to you. Yeah. So, like I said, our our real journey started about two years ago, where the growth really started to take off. And, Mike and Dave were the first, first ones that I, contacted, and, so, so there are our, our consultants that we use, Mike or.

00;12;12;07 – 00;12;36;58
Unknown
Sorry, Dave, himself was a machinist. So he has a background in machining, specifically Swiss machining. And then, he worked for some, some big manufacturing companies, throughout the United States. And so he, a couple of years ago, he decided he didn’t want to do that anymore. And, he, teamed up with with Mike.

00;12;37;03 – 00;13;01;59
Unknown
Doing, coaching, and what they do, they focus specifically on, machine shops. And so I think I heard heard them talk about you and, I think on like, Making Chips podcast, maybe, and, got went down a rabbit hole. Listen to these guys. They have their own podcast as well. And I’m like, you know, these these guys are my cup of tea, right?

00;13;01;59 – 00;13;29;52
Unknown
Like, these are these are my people. And, you know, I, I took, at the time what I thought was a big risk. And, man, did it pay in spades for these guys. Yeah. And, no, they do as it says here by monthly coaching calls, one on operations, one on sort of finance. And, and, you know, we’ve created a bunch of dashboards and other things within Pro Shop specifically for eggs clients like yourself.

00;13;29;54 – 00;13;50;26
Unknown
We have many shared clients. So you can really just sort of refine, you know, what you’re doing, to make your business, you know, more, more high performing or profitable. Yeah. I think when it really took off with these guys, when we ended up getting pro shop, before it was it was difficult to us for us to speak to the business.

00;13;50;31 – 00;14;14;01
Unknown
Just because, you know, the questions that they were asking, I couldn’t answer. You know, I could assume, but I kind of couldn’t really answer. But once we dove in with Pro shop, I, it made things a lot easier and architected a lot, you know, more vertical. Got it. Okay. Very good. And they’re, their growth summit is coming up next week, which I’m heading off to.

00;14;14;01 – 00;14;45;53
Unknown
Yes. Yeah. All right. And then, and then pro shop. So let’s dig into that a little bit. So just. Yeah. Tell us maybe starting at the beginning, of deciding to choose pro shop, and sort of what, what that journey has been like, what the impact been like. Yeah. So to start off with Pro Shop, you know, again, it was maybe, two months after we, brought, over the grow systems up alongside us.

00;14;45;58 – 00;15;14;41
Unknown
And it was, you know, right around that Covid time frame, right. And, I went back to school to get my machine tool technology degree. And so I had those were always like in the morning, and, there was so there was about eight week timeframe where I wasn’t part of the production meetings. And, you know, it’s sort of like when you’re when you’re in it, you don’t see it, right?

00;15;14;46 – 00;15;28;26
Unknown
Right. Yeah. You know, like, like you walk around, you know, I mean, how many times that somebody walked around the shop, you know, and you see that, you know, I don’t know about like, that’s out, but you don’t even think about it until somebody else comes along and you’re like, you’re you to change that light bulb, you know?

00;15;28;26 – 00;15;56;40
Unknown
And it’s sort of the same, same principle, right? Like I was in these meetings every day. And, they, they made sense at the time, but allowing me to step away from those production daily production meetings for, for an eight weeks and then come back into it, I just realized how much chaos there was. Right? There was, people that we just weren’t able to make decisions, no fault of anybody in particular.

00;15;56;40 – 00;16;17;46
Unknown
It was just we didn’t have the data, in the, in the the more particular the, the live tracking information, on all of our routings to, to know what it needed to go to the operation. Right. Or it would be finished with an operation, but then it would just sit there for a couple days, before I would go off to to plating.

00;16;17;46 – 00;16;43;19
Unknown
Right. And so those, those days of those days mounted. Right. So if you went from like an up 50 to, you know, and then it would sit for two days and then to go to up 60, that would get complete. And that’s it for two days. And that time in between just adds up. And so, you know, I think our biggest thing was we went from on on time delivery of about 75% to today.

00;16;43;19 – 00;17;12;11
Unknown
Our 12 month average is 94.4%. Amazing. And that happened extremely fast. That was my first moment. I think with Pro Shop for sure. Versus this year. Right. You got on there that increased our bottom line to X. Right. So that’s, that’s the stuff that, me and my leadership team here has, has really dove into this year of killing the losers.

00;17;12;11 – 00;17;39;15
Unknown
You know, we love to play play the game of kill the losers. You know everybody, every shop’s got those those jobs where you’re losing money on it. And so we, my, my teams would have done an excellent, excellent job of going through and identifying those and then figuring out what to do with them. Right. Are we either going to figure out a way to increase our, our efficiency, our throughput, our cycle time?

00;17;39;20 – 00;18;09;40
Unknown
Yeah. If we can’t do that, then, okay, we need to have a conversation with the customer. Yeah. And, you know, speaking of the cut, right. We use pro shop as a, as a sales tool for us as well. But you know, our, our, our shop floor team absolutely loves pro shop. I think when we, when we started, I was, you know, if you asked me at the beginning, you know, who was going to be more difficult, you know, the office or the shop people.

00;18;09;40 – 00;18;35;08
Unknown
I would have said the shop people and, that was absolutely not true. Our shop people were more, in tune with it than our office people were. And that made it super simple to, to implement the ERP system. Yeah. And, it says here you even have had maybe a little bit of attrition in the office, but you are doing dealing with quite a bit more volume of work and still handling it all.

00;18;35;08 – 00;18;58;19
Unknown
Okay. Yes. Yep. Haven’t lost a bit. And in fact, we become more efficient and in the office as well. Right. Even you know, that’s coming down the lead time of things that the office typically does. So the shop actually has more time to do the manufacturing process. Yeah. I think for, for me personally because I’m, I’m in it every day.

00;18;58;24 – 00;19;18;40
Unknown
But I think one of the biggest things for us is that we’re able to get responses to our customers faster. You know, these days people want a response and two hours or less. Right? And yeah, we’re not perfect. I’m not saying that happens all the time, but, it is quite noticeable. Our difference in our response time to the customer.

00;19;18;45 – 00;19;44;09
Unknown
Yeah. You know, we’re not waiting days. Well, sure, sure, we’re they’re waiting hours. Yeah. And, I think you would when we did our podcast, you had mentioned, or maybe this is a conversation we had, I can’t remember, but you were talking about, one of these part numbers that you realize you were kind of underwater on and couldn’t improve the process enough to make it profitable.

00;19;44;14 – 00;20;02;35
Unknown
So you had to raise the price, and you were concerned that if you raised it as much as you needed to, they were just going to take the work and go somewhere else. But, because you showed them pro shop and showed them all the costs and were very transparent with real data, what happened in that scenario?

00;20;02;40 – 00;20;24;13
Unknown
Yeah. So I brought in pro shop, I put it up on his, you know, logged in my computer to his TV, and we just broke it down. I, I pulled up one of the dashboard was a very transparent of, you know, we were losing, you know, on on the one job it was $15,000. And, you know, he wanted a price reduction, of course.

00;20;24;13 – 00;20;46;47
Unknown
And I was like, I can’t do it right. And so I in pro shop, I’m like, this is this is why I can’t do it right. And, but yeah, we use that as a, as a sales tool. And long story short, a, they came back a month later and have reordered. So they’re, they’re still ordering from at the new higher price at the new at the new price.

00;20;46;47 – 00;21;09;47
Unknown
Yeah. It’s such a win. That’s awesome. And it sounds like you’re using Pro Shop for some other things, including training employees, which we’ll talk about a little bit later because we have a screenshot of your onboarding work order. But, yeah. Very cool. Thank you for sharing all that. Yeah. If, if anything Chad talk about is spurring any questions, please go ahead and drop those in the Q&A.

00;21;09;52 – 00;21;33;00
Unknown
And we’ll get to those at the end. So yeah. Tell us about this Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center audit. Yeah. So Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center came out last summer. I heard I heard of them through, University of Notre Dame, actually. And so, you know, I’m a, I’m a guy that’s always curious. And so I have I wonder what these guys do.

00;21;33;00 – 00;22;14;11
Unknown
And so I called them up and, Mark Goodell came out and he, he spent half a day in our shop, just looking for things for us to upgrade on from an industry 4.0 standpoint. And, he spent of that time, he probably spent half of his time looking at pro shop. He was absolutely in all with with pro shop and the, the data that was able to provide us the in the power that, it gave us to operate, and but anyways he, you know, didn’t say it other than, than the pro shop stuff, you know, he didn’t say a whole lot.

00;22;14;13 – 00;22;44;39
Unknown
He was with another, another guy that said, you know, he he had done about 85, I think, assessments. And this was a specifically an industry 4.0 assessment to see where you were. Yep. Yep. Okay. And so, Mark and the other, other gentleman came back and, you know, the other gentleman said, you know, I’ve done 85 of these assessments and I can hand down, say that you are within like the top five, 5% of, of all assessments I’ve done.

00;22;44;43 – 00;23;07;07
Unknown
And yeah, I mean, what do you think about it? Right. Like we went from. Yeah, in a matter of less than ten years, this dark, dirty, dangerous place to this guy is telling me, you know, doing everything right. That’s amazing. Said, Oh, cool. So yeah, it was, Mark said, you know, was like, I got good news and I got bad news.

00;23;07;14 – 00;23;31;37
Unknown
He’s like, good news is that you already doing everything that I recommended or that I would normally recommend, he said the bad news is, that, you know, I don’t have any new recommendations for you, and, he’s like, the only thing that I can recommend is, you know, maybe do a little fives and, but he’s like, you have all the things in place that that we recommend in our assessment.

00;23;31;41 – 00;23;55;24
Unknown
And, you know, I think 90% of that was was with pro shop just because of what we were able to do with Pro Shop. Sure. That’s cool. And what’s so funny when I think about that, you know, the tools you’re using and the features that you’re using to, you know, probably get that high assessment are things that pro CNC designed in the early 2000s.

00;23;55;29 – 00;24;24;58
Unknown
Like, you know, our shop was basically, you know, besides we weren’t a Swiss, you know, Swiss and multi spindle shop. You know, we we’re using all the same functions that, you know, no job travelers and all the dashboards and all the things, and like 2002 or 3, you know, ones, once we really started building out all those modules in pro shop, so it just looks a little prettier now, probably at this point, you know, even getting prettier yet in the next version.

00;24;25;01 – 00;24;49;38
Unknown
So, awesome. And let’s talk about your equipment. You know, obviously you, you were using, some really solid, amazing older equipment, but then you brought a bunch of new pieces. Yeah. So, as I mentioned. Right. And our high on equipment wise, we were we had 50 pieces of equipment in our shop. Since then, we’ve gotten rid of 14.

00;24;49;43 – 00;25;22;16
Unknown
I just went through an encounter. We’re down to 36 machines today. And, we’ve so we’ve got we’ve still got our Acme Griddles. We still got our brown sharps. And, so I think we’ve got about 17 Acme Griddles. And those things just spit out parts, right? Every. Yeah, every six seconds. And we’ve got a great young group of, of of talent out there that is, continuing to, to drive the, the efficiencies on those.

00;25;22;21 – 00;25;51;37
Unknown
And then, the new pieces of equipment that we brought in, is Swiss machines. That’s, that’s been our, bread and butter for, for new equipment bringing in, you know, those, those Swiss machines, just the they’re they may not be as fast as the brown and sharps. So we’re doing lower volume production runs on those, equivalent to the work that we be putting on the brown and sharp single spindles.

00;25;51;42 – 00;26;09;56
Unknown
And they may not be as fast, but man, they’re efficient. And the throughput. Right. We’ve got our feeders hooked up to them. We’ve got chip conveyors. Make it easy for the operators to, to do their work. Have them do they have the ability to do more value add stuff than, you know, clean and shift all the machines?

00;26;10;01 – 00;26;35;23
Unknown
Right. And, you know, on top of that, you know, once we do get those, those parts dialed in, we’re running them. Lights out or lights dim is what we call, right. And so our, our throughput is, has gone through the roof on those nights. And obviously that’s where you’d put parts that have, you know, milling or drilling details that are, you know, that would be a secondary operation in, in the past.

00;26;35;27 – 00;27;04;38
Unknown
Yeah. It’s just a straight round part and higher volume. It’s going on the older machines. Correct. Yep. Got it. Yep. Yeah. So all those parts that we were doing in secondary are dropped complete now off of our Swiss machine. Nice. It’s a good, good combination. Awesome. And then you also maybe because of the five s or whatever, you, you really went into a lean journey, as well as well as doing some more structured, training.

00;27;04;38 – 00;27;35;57
Unknown
And, I know we’re going to talk about the memberships a little bit more after this, but yeah, tell us about that. That aspect of the changes you made. Yeah. So I think that kind of, I’m might be jumping a little ahead here. But you know, to me, our success journey coincides strictly with our, the emerging leaders, the leadership development program, the that I put, to of my to my guys through, you know, they’re the ones that that pick the rags up off the floor that were, you know, the low hanging fruit.

00;27;35;57 – 00;28;02;16
Unknown
And they’ve they’ve just ran with it. So right over the last year, year and a half, we’ve we’ve really dove into our success journey. We still got a long ways to go. But, man, if you know, our shop does look completely different than it did even even two years ago. Three years ago. Drums used to be everywhere.

00;28;02;25 – 00;28;29;40
Unknown
We use fiber drums for some of our parts, you know, and those were just be laying everywhere. Those aren’t anywhere anymore, right? Our our, our floors are getting scrubbed twice a week. Our bathrooms are getting cleaned, 3 to 4 times a week. You know, and everybody plays a part. And we’ve done a really good job of, maintaining that, using our, our the equipment module and pro shop.

00;28;29;45 – 00;28;59;18
Unknown
You know, for us in the past, right. Like, everybody has these expectations of. Yeah, we’re going to go clean this. Right. The cleaning part’s the easy part. The sustaining part is the hard part. Yep. That’s where it falls down. Like how, you know, how can you close that loop? And, we’ve done a really good job of of closing that loop by, creating in the equipment module and pro shop everything that needs to be done and the checks that need to be done weekly and making people accountable.

00;28;59;23 – 00;29;18;33
Unknown
And then and then we, we close the loop through that by every I think it’s right now we’ve run every 14 days. We’re during our production meeting, they’re going through and making sure that these things are being done. And if they’re not right, everybody falls off the wagon at some point. Right. If they’re not, it’s getting back on the wagon.

00;29;18;33 – 00;29;38;33
Unknown
Hey, I see we haven’t done this in, you know, 14 days. What what are we got to do to, how can we help? Right. What do we got to do to to get us back. Back on, on the train? And so and so. Pro shop has done a great job of helping us sustain. Yeah. Our our success journey.

00;29;38;37 – 00;29;56;45
Unknown
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. We don’t have any pictures of that. I should have thought about that, but, yeah, we did the same thing. We would take pictures of a of an area, you know, showing what it should look like with everything I’ve asked and put away and then set a schedule and for whatever, whether it’s weekly or two weeks or every day.

00;29;56;45 – 00;30;20;40
Unknown
And. But someone in responsible, they get reminders, show up on their their, you know, inbox and dashboards and just ultimately do that reminder because even the people with the best intentions get busy and forget. So yep. And now we’re taking this to the next level, actually, with our OSHA stuff. Oh, nice. So you want to be doing the same thing with our with our safety, safety procedures as well.

00;30;20;40 – 00;30;42;04
Unknown
Just putting it into okay. You know, fire extinguishers need to get checked every 30 day, 30 days. Right. We’re putting that check in to pro shop making somebody responsible for that check. So he’s going to get a reminder every 30 days. Hey, go check the fire extinguishers and check it. All right. First. Yeah. You want those OSHA audits to go well, yes.

00;30;42;15 – 00;31;09;20
Unknown
Yep, yep. Let’s talk a little bit about employee onboarding. And training. Yeah. So we just started this maybe three months ago. Okay. I think it was, you and I talked about it originally our we did an implementation podcast at one point. Yeah, we talked about this, but I finally got to implement it about three months ago.

00;31;09;25 – 00;31;36;05
Unknown
And so, you know, it’s great. You know, when we hire a new person, there’s always certain things that you need to go through. Every time when they, when they start, and before we, we never had a documented process. You know, we’ve got, a great, office manager here in, in Leslie. And she’s been here for 30 years, and does a fabulous job.

00;31;36;05 – 00;32;04;36
Unknown
And she knows this stuff on the back of her head. But we’ve taken that and and broken it down into a work order. Right. And so, you know, all of our eligibility forms that they need to sign, we’ve got those all in there now. The shop tours, you know, we can click on the shop tours and then it gives a breakdown like a written description of, hey, these are the things we need to hit on the shop tour, right where the first aid kit is.

00;32;04;41 – 00;32;30;33
Unknown
You know, where the bathrooms are, right? Like, they’re, all the way down to, you know, our safety trainings. Certainly our pro shop trainings. And then, you know, quality, quality training. Lean training. Right. Like it just simplifies it so much. So we don’t oversee anything, and not only on top of that, but a lot of this stuff, you know, we’re we would have to maybe sit down with them.

00;32;30;38 – 00;32;54;46
Unknown
They can do on their own now. So, you know, they’ve got their machines are all running, and they’re looking for something to do. They can log in here, and, and knock out a few trainings on their safety training. Right. So it puts the power back into that in the into the employee. And so that’s been so we’ve done that.

00;32;54;51 – 00;33;16;53
Unknown
But to hire since then, that’s been it’s been a lot smoother, getting them up to speed faster on what what needs to be done. And that’s. Yeah, I love this whole concept. Quite honestly, I don’t think we use work orders to onboard employees or Pro Sync, but we used it for all sorts of other things, like buying new machines and, but, yeah, I’ve seen a lot of clients do this.

00;33;16;53 – 00;33;37;14
Unknown
It’s such a great idea. It’s such a systematized process. And then if they’re signing things off, obviously we can’t see it here. But if you mouse over these checkboxes, it’ll show you the exactly when you know, when they signed it off. And that could be used for. Yeah. Proving your safety training stuff and other things. So yeah, we’ve got videos in here.

00;33;37;18 – 00;33;58;17
Unknown
Whether our own videos or videos that, you know, pro shop videos or, you know, safety training, I think I can’t remember what the safety, but, we’ve got safety training videos in there. Right. And just everybody’s getting the same message every time, right? It’s not varying at all. Which is. Yeah, I think in the long term will be super beneficial.

00;33;58;22 – 00;34;29;19
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. And then you’re also using it. Maybe this is just part of the pro shop training, but, there you go. Yeah. So yeah. So as I mentioned, right, every one of those, has has its own written description. This is, the training for pro shops specifically, and you can see the links there to the trainings that they needed to that we want them to tackle, gives them the proficiency level that we want them to be at.

00;34;29;22 – 00;34;49;00
Unknown
You know, there’s going to be a quiz at the end of it. And then their supervisor, or manager can, can sign off on those. And then at the bottom, what I was talking about, the videos, we’ve got links to videos right. And then we’ve created some of our own. Yeah. So the day in the life of The Machinist.

00;34;49;05 – 00;35;22;56
Unknown
Yeah, I think that’s one of ours. That’s. Yep. That’s one of yours. That was, that’s always one of my favorites because that was, every time I see it, that was our implementation specialist that that ran that video. So it always plays, to like the how to complete an NCR. We, created scribe scribe tutorials on those and it kind of gives a click by click process of of how to, you know, create an entity, you know, if you’ve got a bad part, at the machine, how to create an NCR and get that movement.

00;35;23;01 – 00;35;48;16
Unknown
We’ve got how to complete an in process track. Right. How you’re going to go in a pro shop and do that, to how you’re going to manage your bombs. And, you know, you know, planning your time tracking. So. This was our, our first go at it. I’m sure we’ll continue to add as we go, but I think we’ve got a good, solid foundation.

00;35;48;20 – 00;36;08;18
Unknown
I love it so much. Yeah. The, the training and task module that kind of supports a lot of this again, has been a part of Pro shop for a long time and is just, I think, structurally been just such a smart idea that, you know, and I can’t take credit for that one. You know, Kelsey and Matt definitely, you know, we’re the brain children brainchild of those.

00;36;08;18 – 00;36;34;28
Unknown
So. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. Let’s talk about, memberships. You know, you’ve been a part of TMA and PMP for, and obviously through that, some of this specific like, you know, emerging leaders and, but yeah, just talk more in general about joining these associations. So, my, my wife, started working here again, too.

00;36;34;28 – 00;36;57;33
Unknown
You know, I talk about this journey two years ago. My wife started working here two years ago, part time. We finally got all of our kids in school full time. And so she, she came on board and works about 15, 20 hours a week. But when she came on board, you know, I always had this rolling list that I would, you know, on my drive to and from work every day.

00;36;57;38 – 00;37;21;16
Unknown
But I always, you know, the to do action items that weren’t immediate. But, you know, man, if I had some time, this is what I want to do, too, right? And, one of those things was, was joining an association, and so she went ahead and she signed up for not one, but both of them. And, and I, I absolutely love the fact that we belong to to both of them.

00;37;21;16 – 00;37;52;32
Unknown
It’s, each one provides a little bit something different, and unique. And I think it’s what makes us unique. I think, you know, for the both of these organizations, I think there’s so many told me there’s about 14 of us that belong to both. But, the NMA, you know, is more and you can probably correct me if I’m wrong, but more like a middling, guys that a lot of milling operations or lathe a little more heavy.

00;37;52;36 – 00;38;17;26
Unknown
Yeah. Versus the PMP is, which is the Precision Machine Products Association is more, turning. Right. So Swiss machining, multi spindle machining, and you know, I, I know before we joined that we were, you know, for 17 years, I just thought we were kind of like our own little island. I didn’t know I didn’t know any better.

00;38;17;26 – 00;38;37;06
Unknown
Right. Nobody taught me that there was other association out there. And if we did, you know, we didn’t want to do that. You know, we don’t need to talk to anybody, right? So keep it all in house, right? Don’t. Yeah. Don’t want to share your secrets. And what I learned is that that’s the farthest thing from the truth, right?

00;38;37;11 – 00;39;08;11
Unknown
These guys from both sides, have been so helpful. You know, I’ve learned that they will, you know, everybody wants to help everybody, right? And they will talk about anything except your customer base. Right. But, you know, you’ve got a machine problem. You know, we’ve got I think most of them have listserv now, you know, you type out, you know, your question on on the left serve and somebody is going to give you a response.

00;39;08;16 – 00;39;30;09
Unknown
You know, I know we were a few months back, maybe a year back. We had a question on on threading issues that we were having. Right. And within 15 minutes somebody replied back, oh, this is what you this is how we do it, right? Try this. Right. And so it’s it’s really helped my confidence level not only for me but for my, my management team.

00;39;30;14 – 00;40;01;00
Unknown
There they go to, the management review or management sessions for both the PMP and, and TMA. You know, Matt and Daniel are part of the Emerging Leaders program for the last two years. Now. And it’s it it’s that stuff that’s really, you know, and like I always say, pro shop is the foundation of what we do, but this is this is what has helped us excel.

00;40;01;04 – 00;40;35;50
Unknown
But yeah, just just knowing that we’re not alone is is huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, obviously we’re not a, a machine shop member of these, but, we are members, and. Yeah, it’s it’s so clear how how much the, the membership and the leadership of those just believe in the aphorism that, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats, and we’re just there to help each other and there to share ideas, shop tours and, you know, and learning sessions and, and, you know, that’s at the national level.

00;40;35;50 – 00;40;52;59
Unknown
And, of course, you know, some of the, the local chapters are really active with lots of other great things. So definitely for any of those on the, on the, on the audience, in the audience here that are not members, definitely look into it. They’re just they’re not expensive. You get so much value. For what? For what to get.

00;40;53;04 – 00;41;13;47
Unknown
And yeah, I really wish that back in the day, in the presidency days, we had, we had had the, the wherewithal to to join, because we, I think we would have been that much more successful. And we also felt like, just like you did, you know, we kind of felt like in a bubble, we didn’t really talk to other shop owners, didn’t really know how they did things.

00;41;14;02 – 00;41;41;37
Unknown
Obviously, we started our shop right out of college, so we were even extra naive and ignorant about how things are actually done. So, yeah, I’m just really great. I think for us it’s the, For the most beneficial thing for me with those organizations, is the shop tours that they’ve allowed us to do. And seeing other people’s process.

00;41;41;41 – 00;42;08;44
Unknown
Yeah. Right. And so we’ve been able to pull a little bit from every shop tour that we’ve been on, a little bit of something from somewhere, and bring that back to our shop and implementing it. That’s probably been the most beneficial. Yeah, yeah. We, I think you and I overlapped or didn’t overlap, but the recent and TMA one, yeah, I went to, I got on the tour of horn, you know, the company that makes.

00;42;08;44 – 00;42;30;53
Unknown
Oh, it’s pretty boring bars. Holy cow. That was an amazing tour. What a what an incredible company. Yeah. And just, you know, just seeing something even just small can have a big impact and an idea of kick off something that you can do in your business. Yep. So. Well, as we start to wrap up here, I’d love to have you.

00;42;30;58 – 00;42;47;38
Unknown
You already talked about how when you were going back to school and missing those production meetings and coming back and realizing the chaos, can you just bring it back to your family and your kids and like, like you don’t? You had the thought, I don’t want to. I don’t want my kids to take over the business as it is today.

00;42;47;43 – 00;43;16;03
Unknown
Right. And how is that changed? Yeah. For sure. I think, you know, for me, I’m always thinking long term. Right. And I think, EBITDA growth systems has helped me think long term. Right at the end of the day, my my first choice is certainly going to be, you know, I would I’ve got four kids. Right. So probability is high that one of them, at least one of them is going to want an opportunity to to take over the business.

00;43;16;03 – 00;43;38;32
Unknown
Right. Yeah. And and that’s my, my number one hope. Right. But if that’s not the case. Right. I think we’re setting our business up for some sort of exit, however, that that might look right. And so that’s, you know, whichever route you take, I think that, you know, it’s not something that can happen on a, on a whim.

00;43;38;32 – 00;44;05;42
Unknown
Right? You’re not going to be you shouldn’t be thinking about that. You know, six months down the road. This is, for me, this is a five, ten, 20 year outlook, right? Of how do I want the shop to look when my when my kids are come of age and want an opportunity to, to work here and possibly, possibly take over ownership, right.

00;44;05;47 – 00;44;13;23
Unknown
And so, so that that’s, that’s the way that I, that I, that I operate,

00;44;13;27 – 00;44;41;16
Unknown
I yeah, I absolutely love it. I think that’s, you know, when you shared this idea in our podcast, and maybe I can actually share the link in the, in the chat. I just thought it was such a powerful idea that, that, you obviously like, you know, there’s business. Business is always hard in the machining business in particular, is is is one of the.

00;44;41;21 – 00;45;11;27
Unknown
Yeah. But, there’s still a very big difference in that scale of hard between, you know, a business that’s just chaotic every day. And just super stressful to try to be firefighting all the time, and one that’s really quite data and process driven and pretty, you know, pretty systematized. But yeah, it’s I could I could see why you wouldn’t want to throw your kids into the fire of, like, this crazy chaotic, you know, always stressful business.

00;45;11;32 – 00;45;29;27
Unknown
And, that’s that’s yeah, that that long term thinking that EGS has helped you with is, you know, for I mean, yeah, that’s that’s unfortunately that’s how I came into the business. And I don’t want my kids to have to experience what I experience. And so that’s taken a big cultural shift for us to do that.

00;45;29;27 – 00;45;58;35
Unknown
Right? And it it just doesn’t happen overnight. You know, we’re we’re on especially for our cultural shift. You know, we’re we’re on a eight year journey on that. Right? Right. And so that’s that’s the way I approach it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Excellent. Well, awesome. Well, I have one question for the audience. This is not for you to answer.

00;45;58;35 – 00;46;33;22
Unknown
Live is just to think about, and it’s this one, you know, what are you doing today to make sure, just like Chad has done with so many different things from software and memberships and lean and new equipment and just a culture improvement, what are you doing today to make sure your company is successful in the future? So, you know, I think it’s really imperative that all our small and medium size manufacturing companies kind of rise to the challenge of what our nation needs and what our what our industry and economy needs right now.

00;46;33;27 – 00;47;02;08
Unknown
You know, I think the long term trends for manufacturing in North America are extraordinarily strong. And we don’t want businesses to just be closing their doors and selling off their equipment when the owner retires. And we need them to carry on and keep, you know, keep our economy strong. So, anyway, just something for you to ponder and, if, you know, you think, pro shop could be a part of your success?

00;47;02;08 – 00;47;23;26
Unknown
We would love to chat. Of course. And now we’re going to open up for questions. So, John, can you, start help us here with Q and up some questions? Absolutely, absolutely. Great conversation. Thank you both. So we have had, we do have a few questions that, I’d like to propose to, to both you, Chad and and Paul.

00;47;23;30 – 00;47;55;26
Unknown
First one, looks like Chad. How long does it take to implement a fully paperless system? So for us, we started, our training process with, pro shop, and I think it was end of September. I think by end of by Christmas time, we were we were done, with our training and then we went to.

00;47;55;38 – 00;48;21;21
Unknown
Yeah. And then we went away for Christmas break when we came back and, you know, that first or second week of January, we started training the guys on the shop floor and we were up in live by February. Okay. I don’t know, what’s your Paul, what’s your state? I mean, I, I felt that was about a four month total lead time to be curve’s live system of record chains.

00;48;21;21 – 00;48;36;15
Unknown
That’s that’s right there in the ballpark for a company of your size. Yeah, we’ve had some that have just expedited it super fast and done it quicker and some that take a little longer. But but yeah, 3 to 4 month range is is pretty good. I think it depends too on like the size of your shop too.

00;48;36;15 – 00;48;59;01
Unknown
Right. I would imagine somebody that’s smaller with five employees is going to be a little bit faster than somebody with 25 employees. Right. Yeah. Or 50 or 100. So yep yep yep. Yeah. Great question for Chad. This next one’s next one’s going to go to you. And then Paul give you a heads up. The the third question will go to you.

00;48;59;05 – 00;49;34;23
Unknown
So, Chad, another question, how did you get your team to buy in? Oh, gosh. You know, I kind of break it down into two separate age groups. Really? Right. So you’ve got the the younger generation that that was that was the easy sell, right? The, the the millennials, the Gen Z ers, you know, that that was you, you put, you know, when I told them that everybody gets their own laptop in the shop, they’re like, what?

00;49;34;28 – 00;50;13;31
Unknown
They were they were all on board. Right. The, the older generation, which was, you know, 50, 55 and older. You know, there was mostly, you know, I there was, you know, one story sticks out to me is, you know, we have multigenerational families that that are here. Right? And so our lead machinist and Brandon Sharp, you know, I remember having a conversation with him of, you know, he he was questioning it and, you know, but he had a son working here and it was, you know, having a conversation with him about that tribal knowledge.

00;50;13;31 – 00;50;38;12
Unknown
Right? He has he’s been working on machines for 40 years. Right. And I want to capture that knowledge. Put it in the pro shop, so his son can continue to do the, you know, the legacy that he created. Right. You know, there there were some, you know, I had two individuals that, you know, English wasn’t their first language.

00;50;38;12 – 00;50;58;50
Unknown
Right. And so just getting them comfortable, and they those were the ones that probably struggled the most. You know, there was just, language. I don’t want to say a barrier, but, you know, those guys took a little longer. But I think the thing that helped us with them is, you know, look, we’re going to do this right alongside, right?

00;50;58;50 – 00;51;22;09
Unknown
When you get here in the morning, we’re going to be here with your computer, and we’re going to help you clock in. We’re going to help you time track. And I think them seeing that right, it’s one thing to say it, but then to do it is is a powerful thing. And I think that that really showed our dedication to, to done right.

00;51;22;09 – 00;51;25;36
Unknown
Like you,

00;51;25;41 – 00;51;51;25
Unknown
You know, this isn’t something that, you know, you’re a great machinist. You know, just if you’re struggling with how to turn a computer on, that’s not going to deter you from, you know, from from having a job here. Right. And so it, it just varies. But yeah, the, the, the younger, younger guys were on board and like I said, the, the guys on the shop floor embraced it a whole lot more than the people in the office.

00;51;51;29 – 00;52;16;48
Unknown
Which I thought was going to be completely upset. Thank you for that. There was I’ll just add on, there’s something inherent in what you said there, like time tracking. If you weren’t in the habit of time tracking already in a different system, that’s a whole nother habit that you need to trying to introduce, which, you know, time tracking in and of itself is such, a contentious idea in many shops.

00;52;16;53 – 00;52;44;34
Unknown
Like, why do you want to know what I’m doing all the time, you know? But, so I’m sure that was a part of it as well. Just that an entirely new behavior, regardless of whether it’s on a spreadsheet or a timecard or a software or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Hey, Paul, let’s send this question to you. The pro shop products, they’ve been around for about 24 years, but only on the market for about eight years.

00;52;44;34 – 00;53;08;21
Unknown
What led you to move away from owning and operating a manufacturing enterprise to solely focus in on pro shop ERP? Yeah. So I, I touched on that briefly at that early slide, you know, so we started building pro shop in 2000. Because we couldn’t find any software that we thought was worth, investing in in our company.

00;53;08;26 – 00;53;26;06
Unknown
But, you know, quite honestly, we, we had no intentions of ever selling it to anyone else. It was just the system we were going to run our company with. And we we, you know, we like I was describing in the middle of the webinar, we just kept building modules and just kind of doing our thing, growing our business.

00;53;26;11 – 00;53;50;43
Unknown
And, it wasn’t until about 2009 where our, our biggest manufacturing customer actually saw Pro shop, one of their guys actually came and work for us on the weekends. And they approached us and said, hey, would you sell pro shop to us? Because it’s way better than the system we’re using, you know? And that seemed pretty risky because we weren’t a software company.

00;53;50;43 – 00;54;17;52
Unknown
We didn’t really know anything about doing that. But, but yeah, we just so we did actually sell it to them in 2009. And we brought on 1 or 2 other customers over the course of a few years. But it was through that period of time where we really realized that our ability to have an impact into this industry that we loved so much would be far greater as a software provider than we could making parts.

00;54;17;57 – 00;54;40;04
Unknown
And although quite honestly, when I, when I left the shop in 2016, I guess we sold it in 2014, started our started started the Web Pro Shop website in 26 early 2016. I was a little skeptical that I was going to get super excited about it. To be totally honest, I love the process of making parts and you know, the beautiful things we created.

00;54;40;04 – 00;55;08;17
Unknown
But as I started realizing the personal impact that we would have on our customers like Chad, I just went all in, you know, making parts is nice. And you make the buyers day when you deliver a good parts on time. But having an impact, like on Chad’s family is so incredibly rewarding. So anyway, that’s that that’s maybe the long version of that, of that answer of moving into software full time.

00;55;08;22 – 00;55;45;01
Unknown
Okay. We’re going to have one more question, and then we have some closing comments before we, promptly and close right at four. So, Chad, did you have any false starts and making this leap, what was your final hesitation you had to overcome before going all in? My final hesitation, you know, I always tell Paul my my only regret for, with pro shop is that I didn’t do it sooner.

00;55;45;06 – 00;56;12;42
Unknown
You know, I don’t know. Necessarily. Looking back on it, what my hesitation was, I, you know, I know we we looked at it for a year. Right. Probably, you know, cost, maybe, you know, fear of the unknown. But, yeah, I would say probably those two things. Right. Like, was it was, was the investment going to pay off?

00;56;12;46 – 00;56;35;35
Unknown
I can say without certainty or with certainty that it has. But yeah, I think probably just the fear of the unknown. You know, I think it’s it’s good to be curious. Right. I’m always, you know, in the back of my mind, I want to be. I always want to do the right thing, the right way, at the right time.

00;56;35;42 – 00;56;51;27
Unknown
Right? And, you know, for for me, it’s it’s getting my head wrapped around it. But, yeah, being apart, being away from those production meetings certainly sped things up for me.

00;56;51;31 – 00;57;17;52
Unknown
Well, thank you both, Chad and Paul for the conversation today. I know it was, very insightful for me. As well as the attendees. And also thank you to the attendees today, there will be a recording of this conversation, so that will be sent out, within the next, few days. I want to make sure that our attendees are aware of some MGA opportunities that are coming up pretty quickly.

00;57;18;07 – 00;57;46;23
Unknown
So I’m going to run through a few of those real quick before we formally close out. So one opportunity is a, webinar as well as an in-person event, called sales at a crossroad. This program identifies the threats to your margin and map’s new route to revenue. Attendees will understand market forces that are wrecking, wreaking havoc on your margins.

00;57;46;23 – 00;58;17;19
Unknown
And, how to win now and in the future. Virtual event is November 11th. There’s also an in-person event on November 6th, in person in Troy on November 13th, and then again virtually on November 8th. Another opportunity is called perspectives. It’s a CEO roundtable for emerging second stage companies. These are monthly CEO roundtable sessions. Other fast paced, productive.

00;58;17;24 – 00;59;01;18
Unknown
They give actionable solutions, for your pressing business challenges, including sales, HR, marketing, strategic planning, operational efficiencies, and of course, a lot more than that. The next roundtable will be starting on January 3rd 16, and it’ll run through June. Save the date for one more webinar on December 12th, at 9 a.m.. To learn more about engaged newest program called the Smart Manufacturing Acceleration Program, which is providing, you, the manufacturer, with expertise and guidance to take your industry 4.0 journey to the next level.

00;59;01;22 – 00;59;32;22
Unknown
All of these events can be found on the MGA website at MGA alliance.org/events. And again, thank you to our presenters, Paul and Chad, as well as our attendees for participating today. Thank you both to John and thanks, Elizabeth for having us. Again. Thanks so much for signing. Bye bye.