well welcome everyone uh thanks for joining us uh you’re logged in to just to make sure you’re in the right place
uh streamlining operations and improving efficiency with a digital Tool Set uh this webinar is hosted by the ntma tech
team uh and featuring Pro Shop and uh focused on Machining so thanks for joining uh we’ve got a few people still
streaming in but I think we might go ahead and get started Paul uh you want to go ahead and
uh do a few introductions yeah sure well hi everybody my name is Paul I am one of the co-founders here at Pro Shop and uh
it’s great pleasure to to also have Justin Quinn from focus on Machining here today so uh welcome Justin and
thanks for uh doing this with us yeah absolutely I think uh this is a a good topic and uh many shops you know looking
to approve technology and just efficiencies other than the actual shop
floor so this will be good yeah awesome well I like to start uh the webinars
that we participate in with sharing our mission statement because it’s so important to us um and that is uh we
deliver powerful manufacturing software by deeply understanding our clients challenges in order to meaningfully
improve their businesses and Inter their communities and hopefully we can show how that actually and hear from Justin
the impact uh you know we’ve had on their business and all the technology
stuff that he’s adopted uh and I know Justin’s shop is growing and hiring people so there’s the direct Community
impact so it’s pretty awesome stuff so uh yeah do you want to sort of take it from here Brian and yeah yeah
thank you and I I apologize I forgot to introduce myself I’m Brian Anderson I’m with Pro Shop as well uh nice to meet
everyone today and and uh and hope hopefully we’ll find this really useful we’re going to uh talk about the story
of focus on Machining and and a little bit of Justin’s background uh and then
discuss the uh the benefits of uh Justin moving into paperless kind of what drove
him into uh needing to move into a more digital world and and of course uh you
know how all of that transpired uh we’ll talk about some of the impacts that uh
that he saw and of course the results when uh uh everything is all said and
done and we’re here today where we are now and and uh we get to see some pretty cool data on
that um so let’s go ahead and get started uh Justin you want toh take a few minutes and and talk about a little
bit of your history and focused on Machining yeah so um many of you may already kind of know my background a
little bit but uh I took over focus on Machining in 2016 um before that I was
in the banking industry and and before that I was in the the military as an aircraft mechanic so um I got out of the
Air Force got my degree in finance worked in banking and while I was in banking I really miss the camaraderie of
the military and kind of the the hard work you know blue color type nature um and I really found that in manufacturing
I had a handful of customers in manufacturing and every time I visit them I just it really really reminded me
of of the the kind of people I’ve really enjoyed working with so um I went on a a
journey for about a year and a half trying to find a shop to buy and uh came across focused on Machining uh and like
I said we we took it over in late 2016 um and I’ve been running it ever
since then um uh focus on Machining was a member of ntma before that um I I
obviously continue that membership um and I’ve really gotten involved in ntma both locally and at the national level
um I’m the past president of the local chapter I’m the current vice president as well as trustee
and uh I’m on the ntma tech team as well as the ntma nominating team so I I serve
on multiple boards uh both locally and nationally at uh ntma and then uh the
the one thing that really spurred this this uh podcast was uh we won the technology of Excellence award last year
and um the application for that award was really about how implementing technology has really improved our our
business um which we’ll discuss here throughout the podcast but really implementing a couple softwares uh you
know getting those softwares to work together uh with each other um and then just really streamlining a lot of our
front end processes in the shop uh using technology awesome that’s great for
those congratulations little more about Justin Aubra dropped it into the chat but um I interviewed Justin on my
podcast oh last year I guess now um so you can really hear a deep dive on his story so
check out that congratulations on the award that’s that’s pretty awesome that’s that’s
great yeah so so let’s let’s chat for a few minutes about uh you know really
what sent you down the path uh you know one of the things we talked about before
uh just kind of behind the scenes was your initial intent wasn’t specifically to get into a paperless environment you
had some other sort of motives there you want to kind of talk about that yeah so it wasn’t um you know when I took the
shop over it was it was like a lot of shops where you know it was Excel based
um email driven and that was pretty much the extent of software inside the shop
everything was a created form whether it was PDF or Excel um and those forms were
printed out handwritten on uh as well as the blueprint and and then we would go
from there uh very paper heavy driven um you know where that job packet would
start as a handful of pages and grow to 10 15 20 30 pages by the time the job
was done and then we would scan that on the back end and then that was our historical record was that scan document
um and so you know when I first took over the shop I was it just I I I
quickly hated the process of printing out a form and handwriting who the customer was who the part what the part
number was how many were making material um um you know just that whole
process of printing out those forms and and filling them out manually and so that’s what really got me interested in
systems uh which in turn you know led us to being paperless um today um and and
that started uh with a just a simple Erp system you know back in early
2017 um where we we purchased uh an industry standard kind of simple Erp
system and it it did a lot it got us you know much farther down the road from where we were but there were still a lot
of things lacking um so we operated that system for a while um and then um while
we had that system up and running we implemented paperless Parts um and that’s where we do a lot of our quoting
and estimating um and then um a few years after a couple years after that uh
is when I met Paul and uh really started learning about prosop um I had a desire to you know
further Implement technology into the shop floor um we were ISO certified uh
which I wrote myself wrote the manual again a paper binder you know everything printed out um and I really wanted to
get as9100 certified but I just I I wasn’t willing and ready to stomach
doing that manually and that’s how I honestly came about phoshop uh
discovered them through searching you know as9100 Erp um and and Paul and I
did many sessions back then Paul I don’t know if you remember or not but uh I I was highly skeptical honestly um you
know I was like this just is too good to be true it can’t do all these things and so Paul was kind enough to do many many
training sessions with me uh Dem uh webinars and demos and and finally
pulled the the trigger on Pro Shop um and it’s it’s been fabulous ever since prosop is really what took us to a
complete paperless in environment with integrated quality um you know we were already paperless on the estimate side
with paperless uh but now the two systems actually integrate with one another which is fantastic so we’re
we’re taking our estimates which occur on paperless Parts importing them into prosop um and the entire process is
paperless and digital yeah and I’ll I’ll just chime in
and say you’re you were it was prudent to be to be skeptical uh there’s a lot
of uh claims out there in the Erp World um and oftentimes Unfortunately they
don’t come to fruition uh quite the way that uh some vendors say they will so
yeah we’re always happy to be put through the paces as much as possible
so yeah and it it strikes me that uh uh you didn’t actually reference moving in
this direction due to customer needs I mean it sounds like a lot of this was driven just from from you wanting to be better organized and have more
visibility and you know cut down on errors and all that kind of stuff is that a fair fair statement or did you
also have uh some of your customers coming to you and saying hey we need this we need that and you weren’t able
to provide them with that kind of service no I would definitely say it was much more internally driven um you know
I I had a strong desire to grow the shop and increase customer base increase throughput and when I looked at our
processes and what it took just to process one po or one job you know it
wasn’t a scalable operation I mean I I could have had a whole staff of office people just to create a job packet um at
the size we are today so mostly internal um but I would say as we as we got
integrated um in a little deeper with ISO and now as9100 um yeah customers are
are really pushing the envelope on on what’s required and we’re we’re very
well capable of meeting all those demands today um cmmc coming down the pike is is another one that um is is
putting a lot of demand and pressure on shops and um you know using using um RP
to help manage that process is is really going to help us achieve success with cmmc uh not only on the audit side but
with the customer satisfaction side so again just having everything integrated into a digital Erp system it just helps
in so many of those areas right right right yeah so it’s it’s kind of the the idea that if you
have a vision uh it’s it’s easier to organize your thoughts easier to organize uh the things you need to look
at and kind of uh moveing in a direction and versus uh really understanding like
you said you kind of mapped your process and and realize that it just wasn’t at
all scalable and uh being in a digital environment changes that pretty
dramatically yeah yeah it’s um you know as see in few slides here we’ve grown
pretty significantly and we’ve done that with fewer office staff than we had back
when I first took over right right yeah yeah so let’s talk
a little bit about that that process uh kind of you know relating what it was uh versus what
you’re able to realize working in a more digital environment obviously we have a few bull bullet points here uh but a few
few of those key things are are are really cutting down on the the errors uh that that happen in the process um being
able to capture data and move it along from from one step to the next so uh uh
you know everybody knows what’s going on it’s not just one person that has the tribal knowledge so to speak uh and and
and even just you know how how does that equate into higher throughput in the office I mean usually when we think
about a manufacturing environment a lot of us don’t think about throughput as something that happens outside of the
shop floor but but indeed it does and so you know how how are you able
to really see that that that change in terms of um being able to throughput
more with the same staff uh and and even not just throughput more but do it do it in a in a way that was more beneficial
for the rest of the organization yes so it uh you know starting at the quoting process you know
our our process before software was literally print out all the prints
um and and write down the quantities the customer is requesting on the prints and then walk those through the shop and
talk to the experts and say Hey you know this part it’s made out of stainless steel they want 10 of them you know how
long is it going to take to make these what’s your setup time how many Ops you know what’s what’s your run times uh and
we would do that we you know we did that until we implemented paperless and uh and of course that brought up a lot of
notes that never got captured right it’s like oh yeah we can do that in four Ops
five minutes per but we’re going to need this tool we’re going to need this gauge we’re gonna need this this and this and
it was just a conversation it was like oh okay yeah well I’ll remember to order that when the order comes through well
you never you never remember remember those things and and then the parts get made and they go to Quality and you’re
like Hey where’s that gauge we said we need it oh let let me go ahead and order that and and overnight it and spend you
know spend $120 to overnight it and it’s a it’s a $60 gauge kind of thing so um
right that that was the process um with with implementing paper lless you know
now and it was very um let’s see what’s the term here we would do it in chunks
right so we would print off that package and get that whole package pushed through the shop and then and then do the next one um it w we weren’t able to
multitask and work on many things at the same time whereas now in our digital
environment we’re uploading those request to our paperless Parts um we’re we’re
laying out the entire quote package so every line item is a part number we can
you know you can see what quantities are there um the system kind of Auto builds
the the basic router for us so it you know it includes a programming op it includes um a couple manufacturing Ops
um inspection shipping um um it accounts for part marking and it does that all
automated based on how the part is set up with a couple clicks of the button so first off just
setting up the quote is is much easier you know we’re we’re Auto emailing
things over and just Auto building those quotes and then what we can do is take quote and Pac mail it right we can tag
and and chat with people that need to be involved so we’ll reach out to a meil programmer and say hey look at this I
need I need this one specific thing from you I need you to what how long is it going to take the program or I know with
four Ops and here my setup times what’s the I know my run time should be about this what’s the breakout or send it to
Quality hey any tools we need for this job and that all happens at the same time right so instead of taking that one
piece of paper and going to each location now all of those communication channels are going out at one time and
the individuals are doing their tasks and sending them back um so it’s it’s really shortened the time frame that we
can generate quotes and and build that data and then they’re able through the chat and note features able to put those
things in there hey we need to purchase this thread gauge or you know this is pretty tough material we’re going to
need we’re going to need to put extra money in this job for some special tooling um so all those things are now
captured digitally which once that happens then they’re flowing into the Erp system and we’re taking action on
them at order entry and not on the back end when we need the tools yeah that’s that’s great I mean
you know it’s it’s definitely one of those things where you’re not you’re not
replacing the uh the the technical knowledge and the skill set of people on
your team you’re just utilizing them much more efficiently and being able to document it in a very clear and fast way
so you can benefit from uh from all that information for the throughout the entire Project without having to to
revisit it reent the wheel you know at every step along the way so I think um you know when when people think about
automating things or digitizing things uh there might often be a sense of uh
hey you know that might take over my job or something like that and that’s really not what you found it’s it’s much more
about giving giving everyone on the team better tools to get from point A to point Z for that project yeah and I
think I think the natural thing for shops is you know the quicker you can respond to quotes and the better you can
serve your customers it’s going to bring more business so even if you’re not in a growth mindset doing these things and
being more efficient and more responsive and more you know more reactive to your customer needs it’s gonna it’s going to
allow your shop to grow so even though you might not have that on your mind um you you’ll you’ll soon realize that now
that you’ve cleared some of these bottlenecks up the workload just kind of fills back up to the Top If You Will um
and and and the same amount of people are going to be able to do more tasks right right yeah and we all we all
know that oftentimes certainly in some Industries the first one to get that
quote in that looks reasonably within the price range was is going to get that order so I’m sure you’re winning more
business because you’re quoting so much more quickly yeah I couple question indries now that are like that and it’s
uh it can be tough to manage but uh but yeah the faster you can go the more more work you can you can
do yeah and so I had a couple other questions so you mentioned like the old
way where you would try to remember the thread gauge and you wouldn’t and you have to expedite it do you have any kind
of anecdotal um numbers for how much money you’re now saving by not having to
expedite and overnight things nearly as often yeah uh so we this been a handful
of years since we’ve done this but uh I I went through I spent uh at the end of
one year maybe three four years ago I went through our tooling cost and that kind of dived it up and it was you know
let’s I don’t remember the numbers let’s say we spent $15,000 on cutting tools as a total maybe 7500 of that was the
actual tool and the rest was was red red shipping or UPS so it was it was a one
for one um expense and just by being organized we
were able to cut out almost all of those expedited shipping options um which you
know put so much money just back in the bank at the shop and we still expedited a few things here and there but it
wasn’t the normal it was right it was uh it was a pretty drastic change same with material you know we’re yeah we’re now
you know some of the interesting things I used to always just purchase material and say yep we’ll take this as soon as
possible because it was it was chaos in the shop and we just wanted to have everything on hand because you never
knew when a job was going to get pushed back because we didn’t have what we needed and and now I’m able to actually
tell my vendors hey here’s a PO for this but I don’t need this for three weeks please don’t deliver until this date um
and so material is arriving much closer to the need date for the job than it used to help cash flow yeah yeah and
then can you also elaborate on this this part going from quote to PO to work order in a couple of hours versus a many
days you know for those that are still in a paper process like what what
practically changed you know uh to be able to do that yeah so I I remember
before we had um Pro Shop when we were on our other Erp system or even before
that you know now now the bigger the PO the more excited I get right like I
don’t get too excited over small P anymore but back then it was the opposite like the bigger the PO I was
like oh my Lord like this is going to take me a week just to get all of this
organized and and create the job packets fill out all the forms um and
now it really you know I can process a 10line item
po let’s say it takes me so I yesterday I processed three brand new POS brand new part numbers new to the company
never made them before I did all three of them within an hour and that was receive po get a PO into the into the
Erp system um create the the job uh information send it to Quality for to
start bubble the print and purchase material so I did this for all three POS within an hour three three POS uh uh it
was three POS four line items so not not drastic but yeah if that was three POS
and 30 total line items it maybe would have taken me an extra 20 minutes so
it’s it’s really not a lot more work based on the size of the PO you
know a a p a single line po might take me 20 minutes or a 10line PO might take
me 30 so it’s it’s very scalable because it doesn’t it it you know the SI the
amount of time it takes doesn’t exponentially get larger with uh the line items on the PO it’s it’s pretty
much a PO takes this amount of time and maybe add a couple minutes per line item
so uh yeah yesterday you know like I said we received three POS in um uh
going all the way back to the quote I want to say we spent maybe 30
minutes I’d say 20 to 30 minutes per quote um and these were three different
quotes as well so you know adding it all up from quote to P I’d say well within
two hours an hour and a half all of this work was done quote po work order you
know quality was bubbling the print and material was already on order right yeah
and I know I mean you’re obviously pretty small lean front office team so there’s communication is really easy I
know I’ve heard the same scenario in bigger organizations ations where they
you know get a customer po they literally print print it off and you know it goes to four or five different
people’s desks for confirmation and contract review and risk assessment and
it could literally be you know three four days later where it finally shows back up somewhere where they can start
issuing work orders um and uh so it’s I think this problem is exacerbated in
larger companies um to an even greater degree y yeah and the only things we’re
printing off are those little box labels that’s right that’s basically our traveler now I you know that’s my after
everything’s in the system we print off a box label that has a part image if it’s not itar has has the information on
it quantity and must leave by date um and that gets printed put in a sleeve and that’s the traveler that travels
throughout the shop and just kind of identifies material um you know just stays with the the job uh throughout the
shop yeah because obviously that traceability is is critical well let’s let’s dig in here and talk a little bit
about the flow of data from paperless Parts into Pro Shop can you kind of walk us through that yeah so the screenshot
on the left there is a snapshot of paperless parts and that’s basically what our estimates look like um up above
where you don’t see in this image is like the customer information part number uh you know a digital image of
the model um some of that customer specific information but then we get straight down into materials right what
material is it um and then on the left or on the right of this you’ll see all the the numbers the costs uh the pricing
Etc but really it’s laid out very similar to our Erp system and so we’re
you know we’re quoting for our programming time um our our our machine
time both setup runtime our outside processing these parts have some laser engrave and then we’re quoting for
Quality so that’s another another thing that we never used to capture we would never quote time for inspection um which
you know everybody knows that that’s usually where things really get slowed down and where you know you might make a
simple part it might get on and off that machine quickly but it might sit in quality longer than it was on the
machine so quot uh estimated or putting pricing in on on quality has really
helped us as well um and so once that’s done obviously send that to the customer
uh they sent the PO and then um we will facilitate the order through paperless
parts so we will go in and say hey this quote was ordered um and if you know if there’s any changes to what we sent we
can make those adjustments on the ply let’s say they order one more piece or or you know they they we give multiple
lead time options generally so we might make an adjustment based on when they they need it um so once we facilitate
that order uh we have an integration dashboard built in um and and and
paperless and and prosop have really worked together to make this um feature
available so it’s um it’s basically CSV coming out of uh paperless Parks
integrating into Pro Shop into an estimate and then in proos shop we take that estimate turn it into our part um
and then once we have everything built out um then we create the PO bring the part in and then We’re Off to the Races
so that that middle image that’s a just a quick snapshot of our integration dashboard um and like I said every time
we facilitate an order through paperless Parts it shows up on the integration dashboard we can then import that into
prosop um and then once that’s done I build out uh I build out the part level and what I mean by build it out as you
can see in our quote it’s pretty rudimentary it’s it’s really all the things that are happening on the shop
floor but inside Pro Shop is a lot more steps that really help us ensure things
flow smoothly so our first operation is always manufacturing planning right we always will sit down and discuss every
new job uh actually we go through every job and sometimes we just say oh NOP it
really runs great no changes you know run run like it did last time uh but we go through every single job and we meet
about it we talk about it and then it goes into our programming steps um and then we actually are having a step for
CMM programming um we have our our uh pre-processing checklist there so that’s
all kind of the contract review steps um I have a step in there to um you know
make sure that the Box label is printed and given the quality make sure that the
the files are uploaded um that’s where we’re queuing our work for purchasing so
we’re setting the status on our our materials which then cues purchasing to go purchase those um we’re doing a tool
check make sure we have all of our tooling that we need any special tooling we need um and then there’s also steps
in there for Quality they go in and bubble the print um and they’re adding um so there’s a
third software here that we haven’t discussed where we upload our blueprints into the software it auto bubbles them
for us automatically creates the inspection plan per bubble note we are also importing that into Pro Shop and
that generates our inspection plan uh for that part number which then in turns
our our quality and flows through to the as9102 so um so yeah once once the order is
generated it’s imported into Pro Shop I think it takes maybe three button clicks to do that um I go through into paper
lless uh excuse me prosop another few button clicks and I have my part built out um I might be copying some notes
from one to the other um and then once all my parts are built then I’m in
importing the PO as well so that’s an import um I’m going through my checks on the PO uploading the file of the PO and
and and then we’re generating the work orders in prosop and then that’s where all the purchasing steps are generated
from there I love it and the the Keen eyes will notice that some of these times are
different but this is after running this job a few times and you made some TW some tweaks to your targets or whatnot
right correct yeah and that’s another thing really nice about Pro Shop is you know being in a digital environment when
my machinists uh when they get done with OP one or they get that first part they
get an automatic popup that says okay what was your cycle time what was all this information and when they input
that information it updates Pro Shop real time so I can I can easily see you
know where we estimated the part at versus where it actually ran uh at and if it’s if it’s better fantastic if it’s
worse that gives us the opportunity to go and discuss and say what’s going on here is is there is there a tool we can
purchase is there something we can actively do to help achieve the estimate time that we quoted it
awesome and then I know we wanted to share this quote here um you want to elaborate a little bit on this yeah so
um you know one of the big challenges of running a shop is just the little details that get missed you know
especially up front in the office where you’re interacting with the customers um they are constantly giving us
information about things that are needed that might not be on the print or or
like I said earlier where we’re talking with quality and to say hey that need they needs that that gauge um and and
really we’ve come down to the environment now to where the only time we miss something is when when it gets
missed up front estimating um you know when we when we didn’t recognize that we didn’t have that gauge um we didn’t we
didn’t factor in that we would need a couple of end mills for this job instead of just the standard you know one per
job kind of thing so um if if we ever miss something it’s because it got missed in estimating but our secondary
step is that manufacturing planning step and that’s where we catch anything we do
miss at estimating and that’s the first step in the process so as soon as that work order is generated it populates
onto our Manu uh it populates onto a report that I built um and so once a
week twice a week depending on what the workload is like we sit down with a team and we go through that report and
anything that does not have a manufacturing planning Che step completed generates on that report so we
go through uh we look at it we look at the notes that were generated during quote um and then we add you know if
there was anything missed if we did miss that gauge that’s where we catch it right before it hits anything and so um
we may have missed to that estimating but at least we’ll get it ordered and it’s not going to delay the job
right on that’s great yeah yeah I estimated for many years so I know the
the uh potential to miss something because there’s so many details to to figure out yeah and you’re always up
against the clock right I mean nobody ever says here’s a quote please take four weeks to get this done you know
it’s it’s usually can I get this tomorrow can I get this in two days three days and it doesn’t seem like
there’s ever enough time to to do quote so it’s it’s always kind of a rushed
environment and and it’s it’s understandable to know that some things would would get missed and we should
just minimize them the best we can uh we’ll be all right so yeah let’s let’s kind of switch
gears a a bit and and talk about you know how all of this filters down I mean
obviously at the at the front end we we uh we we know that that the the the more
information we can share from step to step the easier things get the more visibility you have but when we move to the shop floor uh you know it’s it’s
very common to say well you know if I’m a machinist I I have what I need and I and I sit up my machine and and uh uh
make my parts and you know that’s what I do all day but uh in reality there’s a lot of opportunity moving from a
traditional paper based system to provide uh a lot more information to the
shop floor and then of course that equates to um uh throughput improvements and uh and just sort of
General uh General visibility improvements you you want to kind of share some of your experience with that
and what uh what your shop employees sort of have thought about the process yeah so our um you know our scheduling
process before Pro Shop um was a wall of bins on you
know a bunch of bins on a wall that had basically machine uh names on them and
so what we would would do is we would just take the Travelers and put them in the respective machine bin um and we
would prioritize front to back you know so the the the next job is the one in the front and the last one’s in the back
and uh just like you said you know so the The Machinist their their job was to to make make the parts and so their
their day-to-day was to you know get the machine up and running get the material
and once that job was done they would roll the card up to Quality and then grab the next job not knowing what the
next job was right they’d never seen it before so they the first time they’re looking at the job is when it’s time to
start working on the job which there’s a lot of lag time from last cut to first
cut on the next one with that environment there was sitting down looking at the print for you know 10 15
maybe an hour uh maybe they were program maybe they had to program it so now now
we’re going to program it while the machine’s not doing anything they’re going to go find their material um
they’re going to start looking at the tool list that are already in the machine changing out tools adding new
tools um so really they were they were only getting to the next job when they
were done with the original one which created a lot of downtime um so now having all of our
jobs scheduled in prosop to their respective machines our employees are
looking not only at their next job as they’re running the the job they’re currently on
but they’re looking even farther ahead than that they’re you know they’re they’re looking at the entire schedule
so we schedule every job as it comes into the machine shop and so they you know when we’re really busy that
machinist knows what he’s going to be doing for the next two months he knows every job that’s scheduled on his
machine for two months um and so that he can just start working through it where you know while he’s he’s running one
part he’s programming for for the next one he might go grab a cart um he knows exactly where the material is he knows
when it arrives um you know he can digitally visually see if the material is here or not so once it it is here he
might go grab a cart go grab the material you know maybe it needs to be cut maybe not um he might stage that at
his machine he can pre-build tools um you know he he knows what tools are in the machine he knows what tools he needs
for the next job so all of these things that are happening to get ready for the next job are happening while the current
job is running um we’re doing a lot of programming ahead um you know very
rarely is a part ever not programmed before it hits the shop floor where that used to be the norm you know it used to
hit the shop floor and then it would get programmed when it was time to run on a machine now you know almost every job is
programmed at at the time it’s on the floor or before it even gets to the floor so uh We’ve really gone
from um you know having a lot of downtime between jobs to as little as
possible to where you know that that cart’s being rolled up to Quality and as soon as he gets back to the machine he’s
loading tools he’s loading the program uh and he’s making his first cut pretty darn quick after that previous sh was
done brilliant yeah yeah yeah I think we all know what it’s like to have to uh rumage
through a stack of papers as you see on the left trying to find a little bit of detail versus you know being able to
just see it on on a screen and be and and even dive in if you need to get into
more detail than what you have in a simple report or dashboard view uh it’s really at your fingertips and and uh you
know a click or two away versus having to sift through 50 other jobs that are going to happen in the next two months
yeah and it’s it’s highly visual right like we might we might go through the planning stage and and we might call
that part oh that funky s- looking bracket right cuz that’s what just it looks like um and and so as the
machinists are at the schedule just looking through you know they’re not really recognizing what work order is
what or what customer or PO number is what but when they see that image like here on the right when they oh there’s
that funky s bracket we talked about two weeks ago I know exactly what what we need to do there so having those visual
images is is very powerful as well in the system and I think you told me a story
once where um you received an order and of course when the work order gets created if you Auto
assign it to the planners they instantly get notified and like you know the very
next like they were I think it was one of the F first times you realized that as soon as they get notified they were
they’re looking at the drawings they’re already starting their plan and the order was just put in minutes before
right yeah so we have we have dashboards in every Department here at at the you
know at the the shop and so uh so for us quality is really the next step after
the work order entry um and and currently I’m still doing the purchasing uh we’ve had people here that that did
purchasing in the past um but but once that that part is in the system and that
work order is generated instantaneously purchasing knows oh I’ve got demand I’ve
got to go buy this material and quality also knows brand new job brand new part I need to Bubble this so off often times
before I can get up off my chair and say hey we’ve got some new work you know they’re already well aware of it because
they can see it populate on their dashboard um and they’re they’re they’re working on it before and and now we’re
in the environment I don’t even have to say hey we got new work it just people know to work from the dashboards and
look at the dashboards and and we keep the pages refreshing automatically and
and and when they see something pop up they just get to it right when it’s uh there and um there’s no lag time I don’t
need to tell anybody to do anything it just it just happens do you feel like that do do you
feel like that change happened uh organically uh or or was it something that you really had to drive as uh as
how you wanted people to work within their within their individual roles uh there was definitely a little
bit and I wouldn’t call it drive but just early on you know where when we
first implemented Pro Shop and it was you know dashboard were new um I I I
would just walk through and say hey just remember check your dashboard check your dashboard um there were and I kind of I
would I would tell them early on hey new work you know go check your dashboard do your work and then I would slowly back
out of that to where I wouldn’t tell them and if I notice you know because I
can monitor the same dashboards here I have a big screen just right here that kind of monitors a handful of different
dashboards if I noticed something sitting in the queue uh early on I would go by say hey did you see that do work
oh no I didn’t check the dashboard and and so real quickly and this all happened you know within a few weeks
real quickly they got into the habit of just always check the dashboard and we have we have TVs set up everywhere so
it’s not like they need to go actively look at the dashboard um it’s on TVs
everywhere so as long as they just remember to glance up at it a couple times a day or daily um that’s that’s
all that we need to happen now and I wanted to I know we need to keep
moving along here but I also wanted to just ask you quickly about repeat jobs and the difference between a paper
process and a non-paper process I know that um it’s common that you know with
with paper Travelers paper setup sheets tool lists you know if that gets misfiled or lost or is now obsolete um
it can it can be a real challenge to try to figure out what you did last time and
try to you know do that again so how has that changed with the ability to like add digital pictures or videos or or
have that just no no no chance of things getting lost and having it be the latest
so uh a repeat job before Pro Shop sometimes was harder than a new job um
you know because like you said you’re you’re going through that scan file package and and maybe The Machinist
wrote a bunch of notes on the print of oh I did this and this or this is the obset this is what tool I use but uh you
know I I don’t know many machinists and I’m guilty of this that have have legible handwriting you know I I I don’t
have very good handwriting so not only does the handwriting start not that great but then you scan it and it gets
further degraded um and then maybe you know you were printing that scan file
out to give to them so it’s degraded one more time and and yeah before you know it you’re spending more time trying to
decipher for what you did last time um than it than it took to maybe set it up
originally and so now uh on a repeat job we’re documenting on the operation
inside prosop what all the notes are what what what the offsets are what the
steps are what we’re cutting our material to uh you know material lengths we’re taking images of that material in
aice what Vice we use um you know we’re we’re taking images after op one here’s
what it looks like here’s how we’re holding it um and all that’s uploaded into broch up on the operation so when
they’re on op one they can see all those images okay looks like last time we used a standard cart Vie with Mighty Bite
Jaws we’re just biting right into the material and cutting apart op two you
know maybe there’s soft Jaws or or maybe we’re we’re on thin Parts we’re clamping onto a fixture plate um uh it’s just
super easy to show that in a picture rather than trying to explain expl it uh
through language and and typing good stuff let’s um let’s uh keep
on schedule here uh talk you you already talked a little bit about the inspection process um can you just elaborate on
what that used to be using paper forms and what that work today so this was
another one where I was like there’s got to be a better way you know before that we would we would if we had a digital
PDF um I literally would go in Adobe and make a bunch of little red circles and
drag them to the dimensions and then make a little red number and drag that inside the red circle and that’s how we
created our bubble prints um and then we had an Excel form that we generated um
and so then I would take that bubble print and say okay number one diameter quarter inch plus or minus 5 thou
manually type that into the Excel spreadsheet under number one um and just create our inspection plan that way and
then that was a printed form that got printed out put into the job packet and then The Machinist would or quality
would input that data into the form and then scan it on the back end Etc Now
with uh with our Auto bubble software um and the auto generation of that
inspection plan that all happens with a few clicks of a button and um if if the
the bubble software um and and we use high QA just for everybody’s knowledge
um if it does it perfectly it’s really like three clicks of a button and we have that exportable uh CSV that we’re
putting into to protop every now and again they need to go in and adjust some things oh it it misread that
nomenclature on the print and and and we just make a quick change save it and
then we’re exporting so um and then we export that into uh proshop and our
inspection plan which is the image you see in the top left there is built automatically so you can see we’ve got
our Dimension tag um we’ve got the drawing description uh we got what
inspection equipment we’re going to use and then our tolerance known and when quality or the machinists are inputting
data it’s very visual it’s it’s green if it’s good it’s yellow if it’s close and
it’s red if it’s bad um and if it’s bad and red it automatically pops up an NCR
form we can fill out you know an NCR for that scrap part um and and then quality
is is handling those on the back end um but all this information is is done live
is done right at the spot of inspection um and then uh when we go to create our
quality packages on the back end this used to be such a pain um you know we would have to sip through the files find
the material Search print those out um find our inspection report print that
out or copy it um just build that package manually now we have a full
as9102 with with one click of a button we go to our inspection op we print
generate the forms it automatically pulls in our material search that we’ve uploaded when the C when our vendor sent
them to us it automatically prints our as9102 form with all of our inspection
data automatically prints any search from outside processing other than material automatically prints our CFC uh
and that’s all done with just one click of a button it packages that all together in one PDF so we’re either
emailing that to the customer or some of our customers like it printed put in the Box um so the the post quality packaging
of the the documents and search is really really simplified I love it that that is one of
the magic features in Pro Shop is this auto inspection package generation it
really can be a lifesaver awesome well let’s uh let’s get into into some actual real results
and metrics so do you want to walk us through sort of yeah these bullets here
so immediately after implementing uh prosop you know we saw 50% backtack
growth for two years um and then 30% in the third year um and so that that
really was facilitated like I said earlier you know just being able to respond to customers better having
having more knowledge on the shop floor getting things moved through the shop so we’ve we’ve really you know grown the
shop internally without adding a bunch of equipment um you know I essentially
have the same number of machines I do uh when I bought the shop uh We’ve upgraded
some of them so we’ve replaced old machines with new but I really haven’t added uh new machine count to the floor
so this is all internal organic growth through uh just being more efficient uh
we did add a shift in in uh this timeline so we we added the shift um
increased our you know man hours um in the shop but but this is all really just
just creating efficiencies throughout the shop and and how we’ve been able to grow through those efficiencies um and
one of the things I’m most proud of is the profitability um you know we really stayed consistent throughout those
growth years and uh I think a lot of companies and shops will know that in Rapid growth and time en Ms it’s really
hard to maintain profitability you know you’re you’re hiring like crazy you’re just you’re you’re just you’re just
making decisions sometimes just to keep up and uh those don’t always match with profitability so to grow that much and
stay profitable and consistent throughout that time is uh is something I’m really proud of um ontime delivery
has only improved um you know before before this digital environment A bad
month for us was you know 30 40% ontime delivery uh you know just normal shop
where everything’s on fire customers are screaming at you trying to figure out you know when their stuff going to get
done and you’re you’re telling One customer it’ll be a couple weeks but you’re making a job that another
customer is upset at and so it’s just a a pain in the ass environment to deal with uh but now now on a bad month for
us 70 you know just sub 80% um um is is
bad for us and we’ve had a couple months here this year where we’ve had 100% on time on time deliver I’d say we we are
are averaging pretty decently in the high 80s low 90s um but uh it’s not
uncommon to have 100% on time month either either
um and then yeah your last topic here you know we’re trying to so part of
going pro shop going full digital is just trying to up
our
I’m monitoring purchasing I’m monitoring quality I’m monitoring backlog I’m monitoring ontime delivery um and then
we walk into the other departments and we can see that wow quality has their own dashboard they they see work that’s
on the shop floor that’s not ready for Quality yet before it gets to Quality you know they know they can see it on their dashboard so showing them the
system and how it works and how how the shop uses it really gives them uh a sense of ease
because one of you know one of their biggest concerns is not whether we can physically make the parts or not but can
you deliver Quality Parts on time that’s what they’re trying to alleviate and I
think a lot of those uh concerns are alleviated once we show them our environment and how we manage the
process from beginning to end yeah I think that’s so insightful you know one of the things I’ve been
saying for years is that people in supply chain and quality they’re really in the risk mitigation business right
their their job is to make sure that they work with shops that are going to not mess up and not have late parts or
bad parts because that has such a huge ripple effect into their production process or launching Rockets or whatever
they’re doing and uh so yeah when you can instill that confidence that that you have really strong business
processes and systems that’s a very attractive proposition Y and it really you know
they’re they’re like Gatekeepers right they’re a lot of the big oems I’ve noticed are they’re more gatekeeper
mentality where no we’re not we’re not taking on new shops we don’t need to introduce any more chaos to our
environment but once you show to them that no this is how we operate man they are all about getting you rushed through
that system and and getting all the documents signed and you know getting all the information so they can start
sending your quotes yeah and then last time topic
before we get questions going so I guess if people do have questions great time to start putting them in the Q&A section
um you want to talk about uh your recruiting of employees and and how
that’s improved too yeah so um you know this this also has helped me step up my
game uh or move up the food chain if you will you know um as we’ve taken on more
OEM Aerospace work we’ve had a higher need for Quality Management people we’ve had a higher need for for more robust
programmers better setup machinists you know so we’ve we’ve actually hired a lot uh higher up in the skill chain uh when
it comes to both Machining and quality and one my quality manager actually um
he he came to us um he was looking to leave his existing shop and um you know
it was he told me after the fact that it was the systems that we had in place that that pushed him towards us um
obviously you know we had a good company um I think there were probably opportunities closer to his home but
being in the quality management role and the one doing the search and the inspections and all that you know he
knew what a pain in the butt that could be in a paper environment or a an Erp system that didn’t deal with quality and
when I showed him that here’s how you create your inspection plan and you just
upload this and you download and you import and then the search packet you just go to this operation you click this
button and here your PDF he was like knocked out of his chair kind of thing he’s like oh my God
like when can I start kind of thing like when can I get all life and just
have this be my environment so it’s it’s really helped us uh attract employees um and then the whole onboarding process
you know I have a a checklist of all the things we go through um we we cover safety topics I introduce them to the
team show them where exits are fire you know all these things that are checklist so we manage that in Pro Shop uh now so
I have U my my my checklist is saved in Pro Shop it’s basically an onboarding uh
task inside Pro Shop um and and so I just pull up that task we do all the checklist items and then the first thing
that they do when I release them to the floor is they go into Pro Shop and do training inside Pro Shop on fundamentals
how to get through Pro Shop how to navigate some other items dashboards um and then they’re off off and running and
that’s all manag digitally uh inside Pro awesome that I love
that that’s yeah that’s great and I I assume that uh it takes a little bit of Burden off of uh Personnel for
onboarding new employees as well they they can they can you know in in a little bit of a fashion sort of selfs
serve in terms of uh getting up and going yeah absolutely it’s you know when
we hire a new Young machinist um you know we will take them out and then kind of Buddy them up with a machinist on the
floor and it used to be to where the first couple days was the experienced
machinist showing the new guy or gal you know here’s here’s proot here’s how you
log in here or not proot but here’s the Erp system here’s how you log in here’s where you find this information so it’s
more just navigating the system all of that is now taken care of before they even get to the shop floor so now now we
get them on the shop floor and it’s like okay go ahead and log in Pro Shop they know what that means pull up your work
order they do they know what that means and they’re doing tangible tasks right they’re going to go gather material
maybe start building tools or start programming um that’s really the first steps when they get on the floor not
navigating the computer system well that’s fantastic that’s
fantastic goe yeah we’re getting right toward the end of our hour U didn’t didn’t really leave a lot of time here
uh for Q&A but of course if anyone does have any questions um we’re we’re here to help uh moving
into a digital environment a digital world can be daunting uh and uh If U you
have any questions about that feel free to reach out to us I think we have our contact information there po thank you there you go um so feel free to reach
out to us we’d love to help uh answer those questions and uh maybe even help you uh get on that path to a digital
transformation um thank you for uh the ntma for hosting us today we really do
appreciate it uh if there’s any other thing that we can help with again you know reach out to us and we’re happy to
do so uh as as soon as you need it yeah and thanks Justin for doing this today
and I appreciate you putting your email up here so you’re accessible phone number people want to ask you questions
um and uh it’s been it’s been an honor to to be a partner for you and watch you
through that crazy growth of the last several years so congratulations on everything you You’ done yeah thank you
thank you guys for putting this together and doing this along alongside me uh it’s been it’s been fun and just a real
quick plug for ntma you know if there’s any shops out there that are not ntma members or not maybe you are a member
but you’re not involved uh get involved get involved locally get involved nationally uh ideas like this are run
rampant at ntma meetings and uh it’s full of shop owners shop managers
talking about challenges solving you know figuring out solutions to those Paul I know you go to a lot of ntma
events um it’s such a great community of people and it’s all about helping shops
succeed and helping owners of shops and managers of shops succeed so get involved with ntma if you’re not already
yeah great call to action it’s such an incredible networking group and so supportive and collaborative and yeah
we’ve really immensely enjoyed being being part of it for the last few years awesome what think we need to wrap
up and say goodbye to everybody but yeah yeah thank you everyone appreciate all the time uh have a great rest of your
day uh have a great holiday season since that’s where we are right now and uh uh yeah hopefully we’ll chat soon all right
thanks everybody we’ll see
you