well hello hello everybody Welcome to this month’s webinar people streaming in

here it is good to see you all well not seeing you but good to have you all here

I think uh we’re going to have a um a good session today we’ve worked

hard on this one and have uh a bunch of really great clients that are joining us as well to share their experience with

these five essential aspects of what we think all manufacturing companies need today so I love to kick these webinars

off with asking people where they are joining from so if you would throw into

the chat that would be brilliant uh and thank you Luke from kicking us off

in Michigan and brousard Louisiana JD and Brainard Minnesota McMinville Oregon

and IBC and Kentucky and Illinois and Colona all right Hawaii O very good

Cheryl must be on vacation I don’t think Cheryl H lives

there all the time Indianapolis awesome Leander Texas all right Santa Barbara

great wonderful thank you everybody for being here let’s Jump Right In because we have a definitely full

agenda love to start by introducing Brian here on our team how’s it going Brian hey everyone it’s going great

today Paul thanks good so uh just little bit of housekeeping uh thank you for

throwing in the chat feel free to use the chat if things resonate with you if you want to share an Insight um but if

you have a specific question for any for us or any any one of the guests that are that’ll be joining us please put those

in the Q&A because it’s much easier to kind of administer them there and make sure we get to them um

and uh let’s get going so always like to start these by sharing our mission statement uh we deliver powerful

manufacturing software by deeply understanding our clients challenges in order to meaningfully improve their

businesses and Inter their communities you know it’s that uh communities part that’s just so important to me and to us

uh manufacturing is the ground floor Foundation of everything that’s made in the world especially Machining um and

it’s just so important that the that companies like yours Thrive to to uh help our whole economy and whole world

today we are going to talk about five main aspects uh having all of

your information as much as possible in one spot getting rid of paper having deeply embedded good solid quality

driven business processes um taking on a culture Improvement mindset and having

that really deeply embedded into your culture for continuous Improvement and having really great

Partners uh for those that aren’t as familiar with who we are we’re going to stare a little bit here right now just

about what uh what the history is of pro shop and our team and our product uh so let’s do that now um so

back in 1997 my partners and I started a machine shop right out of

college uh the guy on the far right there uh took out a second mortgage on

his house and that was enough money for us to buy a Hos vf4 um

used manual Mill and lathe and some equipment and some for those in the Northwest some Boeing Surplus desks and

other things like that and uh and start start our shop uh as we as we grew uh we

kind of outgrown we kind of outgrew the excel-based um management system we started now we’ll get more into that

here in a few minutes and uh really wasn’t keeping up with our growth we looked out in the market to see if we

could find some software to help help run the shop and we just could not find anything we thought was worth buying um

and uh it was right around that same time in 2000 that Brian actually joined our team as a machinist so he was there

from the very early stages and he and and uh all the rest of the team helped

develop Pro Shop and helped our company grow over the next many years to a

pretty good siiz uh shop um but during that time we actually started even taking on um

some software customers uh starting in about 2008 2009 and this was our largest

machine one of our largest machine shop customers that then became our first software customer and then that kind of

accelerated uh although it wasn’t that fast our process of deciding to sell the shop and go full-time into the software

business so that happened in 2014 that we sold the shop wasn’t until 2016 we actually turned on a website and

started bringing Pro Shop to all of you but here we are today today um and

that brings us to our first essential thing that we really truly believe that everything as much as possible needs to

be in one cohesive system it’s just so disruptive when it’s not and so I’ll tell you how we got there so 97 there

were six of us if you can believe it in one machine we tried to keep that thing running around the clock as much as

possible um there is that same building with some paint on the walls and by that

the time this picture was taken we actually bought a second machine of VF too as well um but uh we were you know

we had the problem that uh we had lots of even as small as we were we had lots

of data in various little places um uh there was certainly some tribal

knowledge we didn’t have everything uh accessible to the setup machinists and The Operators and whoever was doing

things and so uh Kelsey on our team um

used his whizbang ex cell uh skills and built us some pretty cool gota say for

90 for 97 998 um pretty cool spreadsheets and if you study these

sheets you will see an incredible amount of detail that we tried to put as much

and there was more tab these were from two different tabs on this sheet but we really tried to put everything that we

possibly could right from you know uh the material po numbers and the mill

specs and how much time it should take to do things and was it signed off and you know and the work instructions and

the cutting tools and where your g54 zeros were and all these kinds of things

um and we’d have visual M Visual Basic macros for spawning new work orders and things but it just it became uh you know

ultimately a bit too challenging but it was a wonderful addition uh or

improvement over the what we were originally doing when we first opened the doors so with that about the time yeah I

was just going to say this is about the time that I actually came into the company and it was yeah hugely different for me to have at my fingertips all the

information that I needed I was used to working in other shops that uh you very often had to run around asking people

what to do how to do it what they knew about the job uh you you very uh

occasionally would find a a fold there was some information in it that was usually disconnected from what the active job was uh and it was just always

a mess so having every Everything basically available within a couple of clicks uh right at the point where I was

working was a huge change for me as a machinist and really a welcome change at

that so probably a little less frustrating than what you were accustomed to oh yeah yeah and and the

ability to actually share my information with other people as well uh was uh

really kind of key to being able to work uh as efficiently as we could to to to

get stuff out the door and keep the spindles turning yeah yeah awesome and it was that reinforcement from people

like Brian that quite honestly had way more years in the industry than we did you know we had only just come out of

college shortly before that and we’re just kind of making it up as we went so it was definitely validating um that

we’re on the right track so I’d love to bring in Tim rouso from above all CNC

hey Tim how’s it going today thank you for joining us yeah thanks for having me appreciate it so uh um this uh kind of

thought about you for this because you recently were featured in a modern machine shop uh article which maybe

Sarah can dig up and share with us in the chat um but love to hear your

perspective on what you used to do before um having disperate information in various places and then what it’s

meant to you and your team and your decision-making and everything uh your efficiencies to kind of get as much into

one spot as possible yeah yeah so the cliff notes I started uh above all in

2016 came from managing a shop that I started in uh right out of high school so I’d been there for about 13 years um

about halfway through my career there we had implemented a another Erp system so

I was familiar with that um in in my company initially I was bootstrapping it

started it all on my own uh was using Excel and uh just whatever worked for me

to keep track of things and then as uh I started a family and needed to hire people and got multiple machines and

then also had to run a business um it became very obvious that uh we had to do

something to collect all of this so um I wasn’t aware that you guys actually started in 2016 which or went live with

U selling Pro Shop so I was just looking through my email and I think I contacted you in 2018 yeah and

um yeah I mean the way you described the software having everything contained uh we we use it end to endend from from

estimating all the way to uh C certificate of conformance and packing slip um the only thing that it doesn’t

handle is the accounting side obviously um uh it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s insane

how much time it saves and how much more fluid it is we do use you know for dim

tagging like high QA uh uh to import it’s purely for an import thing like

we’re in and out of that software on a per job basis maybe five or 10 minutes and then all of the work is done in Pro

Shop uh we watched some of your webinars in the last year and introduced oursel

to the Tool Crib uh as well as process development and we’ve implemented those

things as well and it’s it’s also been huge I mean the the inventory management

with um tools or helicoils or pins or it’s I can take I took care of two weeks

of purchasing requirements in like six minutes this morning using the um purchasing

dashboard so right it’s it’s a no-brainer I mean I the I

can’t even I don’t even know how much we’re into you guys every year for

like the software because I don’t think about it it doesn’t matter it’s a necessity like

it it just it just works so well and in a day and age where everybody has or

once every bit of information on their phone I’ve noticed with the younger

generation uh uh here at the shop um having all the kiosks at the machine and

all the available data uh accessible to them at any moments notice throughout

the shop has has been huge in productivity and shortening setup times so

fantastic has it um does it help I mean helped you focus on or I guess as

you freed up more of your time are you able to do more of the things you feel like an owner should be doing including

uh yeah nurturing like personal life family I have two young kids you know um

that kind of stuff is is very important to me you know I don’t want to be you know working here all weekend into the middle of the night it comes up here and

there but um sure it’s pretty much a hard and fast rule that you know people’s lives outside of work are also

very important so if it’s able to allow me to uh to do those things and and be

present in those moments and also is just a no-brainer uh because I’ve worked

for the alternative of that and it’s hard to watch you know yeah yeah now I

certainly remember those uh those uh all nighters on occasion and and uh long weekends and yeah trying to keep that

work life balance is certainly critical yeah well awesome Tim well thank you so

much for sharing that um yeah it’s uh it’s to to see also that you know you

started with certain aspects and then you’ve onboarded additional modules and that has continued to kind of pay back

or free up time or let you be more efficient um yeah is super common right

prap is a pretty vast system and it would be quite an undertaking to try to jump in and take every single module on

at once it’ probably be impossible so um but uh yeah as you have time to to on

board uh other aspects or modules um yeah it’s great to hear that uh that’s

continuing to pay you dividends yeah definitely thanks Paul yes thank you so much Tim all right so our second

essential is getting rid of the paper uh sometimes this is a tricky process

people love to hold on to their paper and hold it in their hands and uh but if your job

Travelers look anything like this which are uh uh taken from a customer before

they switched um we need to this this section is for you

because there are so many pitfalls and potential mistakes very expensive ones

uh in this packet right here um you know all the red Sharpie notes uh to not use

to use gloves um how many times do we see that written all over these things um and things crossed out and uh and

heaven forbid this gets misfiled um that would be a complete disaster so um we’re

gonna also play quick little uh where’s Brian uh because Brian is is hiding in this picture um I’ll keep it short he’s

right here behind this toolbox and this big CRT monitor which does date um both him and us as a company so again about

three years in we had about a dozen people maybe four four or five machines at the time um and these Excel sheet

things which sometimes were digital sometimes were not um were very much becoming problematic and uh so we went

honestly into an Earnest search for software um and uh we just could not

find anything that we thought was worth buying so instead we knew this guy Matt

who was friends with a friend of uh my partner Kelsey and and uh talked to him

and he’s like yeah I could build you something and we very very naively thought it would take maybe a year to

two to build a simple system that would replace our spreadsheet and then we’d be good to go and just keep using that uh

in the future but we just kept coming up with more and more features that we wanted to build and uh and this next slide

um not what it looked like originally but the concept is very much still the same you know we took basically what we

had in those spreadsheets and put it into a browser-based environment so we didn’t have to say hey would you close

that sheet so I can open it up right that was the constant thing as we uh were’re trying to deal with Excel but

Brian I’d love for you maybe to speak to what it’s like as a machinist or an

inspector or a lead to um you know to to show up and and have everything that you

need to do uh in one spot yeah I mean having having brought the system into a

web browser I think was really kind of key for that uh we able to use well I mean at the time we didn’t have multiple

tabs or anything uh but you know eventually we did we were able to use multiple windows uh we could log into

multiple computers it was very common for us to be able to uh run more than

one machine at the same time and and having a computer at each machine and

and being able to open this information was was really key and of course once you get to this page which is usually

you open up the schedule you click on the work order you review the work order and then click on the operation and boom

you’re right here so so you know two or three clicks but once you’re here everything you need to do everything you

need to know about the job is here I can track my time I can do my inspections I

can uh refer to the work instructions or even go in and add new work instructions and and um uh review the cutting tool

list and know which tools do I have what what do I need uh where uh where can I

find them in the tool Library what same thing with the fix streen all of that information is just on this one screen

uh and like I said being in a browser uh even in the beginning it was really nice

because everyone was really uh really into the internet it turned out it was a pretty to actually go into a browser

uh because here we are today and it’s ubiquitous but um really really easy to navigate way easier than Excel certainly

easier than looking for a piece of paper uh and again just everything right there that you could possibly need without

having to go anywhere else to find the data yeah and I’ll give credit to both Brian and you know all the other folks

that worked on our shop floor because they were the ones out there making Parts every day saying you know what

would be really helpful is if I had a link right here that talk me took me to this type of a page so the whole design

of it and the whole architecture was just super organically built by people

you know from the feedback of people like Brian and all the other folks on the team so yeah yeah um and again as as

we brought employees in from other shops um this was kind of a you know a big uh

realization of sort of what it was like to go from paper based to to non-paper based um and uh but they’d also bring

fresh ideas is that we didn’t have ourselves um you know some of them were

had been in the industry a long time and had lots of great ideas for how to

present data or look at things or a different form that might be needed so speaking of someone that’s been in

Industry a long time I’d love to bring up Kurt uh from kjm Perfection um Kurt if you want to turn

on your camera and unmute yourself thank you so much for being here um and I will

first note for those looking at the screen that it is indeed the case that

Pro that Kurt has put our logo down into the corner of his logo and sign on his

building that is immensely humbling Kurt you I didn’t even think I realize you

had done that until sometime after you told me you had done that so yeah thank you for joining us today and would love

to hear a little bit about your shop and what it was like to get rid of paper and bring everything into uh sort of a

paperless system well thank you for inviting me um and so far as your logo

goes that’s a that’s sort of a marketing tool for us to um attract some of these

younger kids from school who are into the newer technology and whatnot uh so

we’re kind of we’re kind of using you guys and it it it works our it’s our pleasure it’s our pleasure um yeah tell

us a little bit about K imperfection um what what you were doing before Pro Shop and and what it’s been like to to get

rid of paper off your floor well we were we opened in 1980 uh we’ve always been

here in home Louisiana um we actually started with a database way back then and I think it

was called Lotus oh yeah you switched two or three times

until we landed with brop um we found you guys um one day we were we were just

slow at at the office so I went home and started doing some research and when I I called um if you remember Paul you had

answered the phone and you did a quick demo for me and uh one of the one of the

bullet points on my checklist was the document or the the saving of the documents or eliminating the paperwork

yeah and when when I saw how quickly you could save documents without having to create a folder

hierarchy and name them and maintain a server and and and all of

the all of the expenses that go with that the paper the toner the the it

support it’s a huge just just the the paper part of the whole thing is just a

huge savings um we used to accumulate um

stacks of paper for someone to come behind us to grab and then take to another computer to scan it and you know

figure out where it belongs and whatnot now it’s just we don’t accumulate anything because it’s scanned into the

system immediately because the the associated uh page that it belongs in is

already open so right it’s a no brander there’s there’s there’s practically

we’re not 100% paper list but we’re probably 95% or so sure yeah yeah the the uh we

we had a an office trailer um that we’ve since gotten rid of but the entire

hallway over the length of the office trailer was stacked with filing cabinets much like what you have there um got rid

of all of that we used to have those Banker boxes so every year we would Purge the filing cabinet store the

documents in the Box send the box to a storage unit and then after 10 years we

would Purge anything older than 10 years from the storage unit and send it to the shredder it was a

cycle and realistically they go back and find information in that is is

practically I guess it’s not impossible but it’s it would be an uous task if you

needed to retrieve a document that was even five years old so so we’re we’re kind of in the

business of putting shredders out of business right you don’t need to hire them anymore man we had a we had a shredder

at every desk and then when we got right before we got proot we had we we

graduated from that to we outsourced it so that we could recycle the paper we had two big bins of that now we’re down

to one and that doesn’t even fill up once a month it’s huge um and like I

said it’s not just the cost of the the paper and and that sort of stuff it’s the management of the documents that’s

where they’re real expens is especially if you know a customer calls looking you know urgently wanting

an MTR or something from two years ago now it’s it’s seconds you know and

and they have it within seconds the the um we’re going through the process of

obtaining our API certification now we we just finished our final audit um

during this process we had to deal with three different consultants and every one of them said that Pro Shop is one of

the most advanced systems that they they’ve seen and I guess the American petroleum Institute is used to the old

school stuff because uh they would it would be typical for them

to call and say you know I’m come and do your audit and so I want you to prepare these documents for me meaning the

paperwork right which which we would do but then when they needed additional documents they were so impressed how

quickly we could retrieve them uh it just it makes it makes the whole process

you know of an audit just so much more seamless yeah that’s and and just love

to have you share just very briefly what it was like with your people on the shop floor and sounds like you’re trying to

attract that younger that younger you know uh set of employees but uh some of the ones that were there before was it I

imagine there’s there’s always some challenge with that and some trepidation at first yeah some of these guys are my

age and they’re kind of stuck on the the old way and they they hate they hate to

they hate to lose the the paper part but everyone’s coming around the younger

guys now we we quickly realized that one monitor was good but two monitors are a

lot better so we outfitted each work center with two monitors and um yeah

these guys take to this like it’s second nature it’s so it’s so easy to train

them as opposed to like you mentioned before spreadsheets um I think spreadsheets are probably

kind of oldfashioned compared to to to you know this system um a lot of kids

are not really learning spreadsheet sheets like you would think it’s not really it’s not necessary

as far as our business goes yeah spreadsheets we keep is just for notes and things like that but uh

everything that we do is is you know we haven’t fully implemented every module

but we’re we’re getting there and so uh

I I I think that the the once we get to if we get to the point where we can say

we are 100% integrated with Pro Shop you guys will have upgraded it and it will have to catch up to the new bells and

whistles that you that you put in yeah it’s uh it is a journey and

we’re always adding new stuff so well thank Kurt thank you so much I appreciate you sharing your experience I know I’m sure a lot of folks on this

call can relate to it um it’s just a really common situation uh that many

shops find themselves in so thank you for that I really appreciate that time thanks for having me yeah of course

thank you all right number three um really having an integrated and not just

quality management but business management process um you know way back in the day as we were about uh 10 not

quite not quite 10 years old maybe eight to nine years old we decided that we wanted to get our ISO certification we

wanted to get as certif ification ultimately and we were trying to and this was Brian’s idea we’re trying to

check the Bingo boxes of um you know what uh what we thought you know clients

would want for us to get into that sort of higher aelon of of clients um of

Industries um but I also think we were we were foundationally um believed it was really

important to have really good business processes that help to run our company we’d you know we’d read read the emth

and several other books and realized that the most profitable companies the most well-run companies are ones that

had really good business processes and if we could sort of check off that box

as well as you know uh get that ISO and asert and and itar and various things

down the line that we could not only attract and get into the right Industries but probably be more profitable at the same time and so we uh

built a bunch of modules this is why it didn’t take just a year or two to to build pro shop um so these are all

modules and I and I swear I I cannot this would be like a complete

spaghetti uh plate of spaghetti with the way that every single module links to every other module it just would be

impossible to represent but hopefully this is uh represented good enough um

there’s a whole section of this this board that has all the other modules that aren’t even included in the qms

aspect of of it um and again folks like Brian and and people on the team were

very organic uh in helping us design and build this over over the

years and Brian you shared this one uh this took this screenshot just this morning and gave it to us to put into

here you want to share a little bit about what what it was like to be able to have this aspect of the system

developed and help our shop yeah uh you know in in a very traditional uh

organized shop uh and I say organized because a lot of shops uh that are traditional are not organized but in an

organized shop what you get is a a first article report and or some sort of an inspection report you fill it in usually

by hand someone reviews that data uh they they uh double check your numbers

to make sure everything is in tolerance and if it’s not in tolerance then they follow the path um and you often write

down your name and uh what inspection equipment you’re using and so on and so forth and all of that is just preset so

so as a machinist when I W again when I walk up to a job it’s right there I open it up I can fill in my results it

automatically calculates for me whether or not it’s intolerance um and if it’s

not intolerance it gives me the option to go ahead and go down the path of non-conformance reporting and and uh

then of course that that autog generates a message to A A specific user usually

an inspector a supervisor that hey Brian had a problem on the Shelf floor do you want to go and check it out uh so again

all of this information is just right on the page that I’m already working on with my setup notes and my tool list and

all uh all the other details that I need and I don’t have to do anything special my planners already got that ready for

me and uh my my setup times uh in in

practicality all of our setup times went down uh because we didn’t have to wander

around and we didn’t have to do a bunch of manual data entry it was all preset

for us and that was huge hug uh when we looked at trying to be more efficient out on the shop floor again to keep

those spindles turning and keep Parts moving through the shop awesome could not have said that

better thank you Brian yeah so there’s this sort of tactical level which of course is important um we also brought

it from the whole you know very high level business process and how that related to our interest and in being uh

compliant to various standards like as9100 and so we built a bunch of functionality to be able to tie directly

into various uh modules or Pages or places within Pro Shop or even external

um in some cases um and tying it right into what the standard says we have to do to meet the requirements of the

standard and pass an audit um so from things like the standard here um and

then incorporating things like rmas and making sure that that the the

the over head work which it is definitely additional work there’s no no two ways about that uh the additional

work that it takes to you know maintain an ISO or as or API or 1345 whatever the

compliance standard is um doing it in a way that is as efficient and and time

efficient as possible so that um we’re not having to hire people just to fill

out forms and push paperwork and slow down and not have those spindles be turning um so I’d love to now introduce

uh Jeremy from TK machine uh Jeremy uh is love to have you share a little bit

about your shop thank you so much for being here um you just recently got your as certification uh uh Kelly and Mike on

our team helped you a bunch with that and I’d love to have you just talk a little bit about the importance of

integrating really solid quality processes into your shops workflow and a little bit about about

TK yeah thanks uh for having us um in here so we yeah we just got our

as9100 let’s see what was it end beginning of June or end of June something like that

um and it has let’s see it it was actually

pretty I say it was easy but I didn’t have a lot I wasn’t doing a lot of work Kelly and Michael were uh but I don’t

think we would have gotten it if if I had to implement it so that that was a huge help to do the flying start and

have them working on it as well um and it’s it’s made our workflow a lot

better uh everybody knows what to expect everybody’s on the same page as far far as the quality and all that goes um and

all the information is just it’s right there for them so they they don’t have to go searching for it you

know so I know that uh you you know having sat with you looking at your system um and just seeing you in your

shop uh and I’ll give a little sneak peak we are um actually through this

process of getting helping Jeremy get certified which took about four to five months I think in total um we actually

shot a mini documentary about it so we visited a couple of times and had a film crew there and uh but anyway sitting and

watching uh you work and seeing what your system looked like I could tell that you’re

kind of I don’t want to call you OCD but you love your doted you love your teas cross you want things to line up and not

be incomplete and that’s quite honestly a really important aspect about certification is you gotta you know when

when the auditor comes and says show me the objective evidence that you do it the way we say you have to do it or that you say you do it um that you can’t be

missing a bunch of stuff so I know you told me that this kind of helped facilitate uh a reason to do things the

way that you always wanted to do it um is that fair statement oh yeah yeah it’s

a lot of it was stuff that we wanted to implement but it was we just keep kicking the can down the road

right and got into a situation where we we wanted to open more doors for more

customers we’d had customers reach out and we didn’t have a qms system in place

at the time and we jumped in to do it just to open those doors and

forced us to do a lot of those things and they just gota make time for it and would you say that the additional

work that it does take because you know it does take more work to be compliant

than not do you still think at the end of the day that time is more than fed

back in process or profitability or whatever yeah

um we we would spend a lot of time before you know fixing mistakes that would slip through the cracks they would

never make it to the customer um right but things would slip through and we’d

catch it and you know redoing things it always takes longer than doing it right the first time yeah so that’s for

sure awesome um well thank you so much Jeremy I appreciate it it was so fun to

uh to to work with you uh get in your shirt and do that video and we will be

uh releasing that to the world soon um it’s our first little mini documentary and it was awesome to do that with you

yeah it was it was so yeah fantastic all right we’re gonna keep moving here um

unfortunately the client scheduled for this section was not able to join us um

but we’re still going to share their story and and the story of our own shop and this is not quite as much a pro-hop

Centric thing you know it’s tangentially related but when we really decided to

formally make this part of our company um it was about 2010 we had about 50

employees at the time and we kept on having the same problems over and over

again right um and we knew some concepts of of lean and this whole sort of

continuous Improvement mindset you know we’ read the goal and um some of those

other important books and we just knew there was ways for us for for our company to just get better and faster um

and so we decided to uh formally kind of you know really dig into kind of a lean

manufacturing transformation which I know sometimes is a buzzword and and uh

is sort of um uh thing of the day or of the week at some companies um but uh we

really dug into it and and one of the things that I wanted to point out here is that this was this was in our office

we had a sort of these Kaizen tickets which uh look like this um and sometimes you know the the

solutions to those things were just shop activities you know it’s maybe it’s

building a little workstation for doing packaging or changing out the way we you

know cut material or who knows what but sometimes it was actually a pro shop enhancement and that’s what this far

right column was sometimes these Kaizen tickets would be like you know there’s no real easy way for us to solve this

with with plywood or duct tape or cardboard so this is going to be a software solution and we put those ones

into that column on the far right and so we did this in the office we did this I think we had Brian maybe

what five four or five different teams at different departments in the company and you were uh you were instrumental in

you know the shop ones can maybe share a little bit about what that was like to kind of culturally kind of move that

direction and the impact yeah yeah so I as a as a as a culture we all learned

every employee um was involved in a team at some point in time uh we we would rotate teams uh if you worked sort of in

different in different areas like said I worked in in the office as well as out on the shop floor so I was yeah there’s

a good picture there I was on multiple teams at multiple times but um learning

about continuous Improvement provided us with obviously the ability improve right

that’s important you you want to continually work to doing things better do making them easier making them more

efficient but at the same time we also learned what what Improvement really was

what waste is and how it affected our daily lives uh and it’s um it’s common

to be thinking about when you go to work all the crap that you have to deal with

all the stuff that’s not fun and learning about yeah the those things

there on the right what what is the Improvement or what is the waste and how do we categorize it and classify it

learning about all of that helped us to really parse out all of the different

wastes that we were seeing uh talk about it in an intelligent way and then come up with meaningful solutions that

weren’t moving the waste from one person to the other but actually addressing the root cause of why these things were a

problem and so we could stop doing them ultimately uh forever rather than just

like I said kind of moving it from one stage to the next and okay well we moved it over there now it looks a little different and so let’s look at it again

it’s much more involved in that uh and and yeah like you said this can be done in any environment um it’s done in all

kinds of companies around the world medical uh you know it’s done in hospitals they do it in Office Buildings

um it’s it’s a a really uh great way to to build culture and community within

the company because everybody’s working in teams and that’s that’s great for Community uh but also at the same time

uh have tangible results at the end of the day or the end of the cycle or whatever you want and then you get to do

it all over again and you just keep working on it and and you keep finding things that that you can continue to improve on and uh as as a machinist and

as a you know a project manager and a scheduler having the ability to have an

impact on the way way that we as a company ran and what we did for our work

was huge it was a huge amount of employee satisfaction that that uh that I personally got from that and I know

that a lot of our co-workers did as well yeah you thank you for that that

was that was Perfection um and uh yeah

it it uh I think we and now I’ll give credit to to Kelsey and Scott on our

team who kind of were the pro the lean champions at different times but did such a great job of really including

everyone I mean look at this stuff just really going to town with like you know super deep um uh you know value stream

workshops we’re really like questioning everything that we did um and why we did it and do we need to do it and how that

compare to the to the waste of the Toyota production system and as I said sometimes there’ be a software solution

and this is an example of what we call Process development where it’s like a a way right in Pro Shop to to identify

problems identify Solutions and people to do those um and uh you know it not

only helped our general business processes to implement lean but

individual part numbers as well right um and so that’s the level you can take it to and then I wanted to highlight and

again uh Kevin or Brian from jjr couldn’t join us on this with scheduling

uh things came up at the last minute but um really cool shop uh jjr engineering

fabrication down in Woodenville Washington and when we were down there to shoot a

video uh last fall uh this this chart this corkboard is in their uh employee

meeting space right on the shop floor there’s a space where they come and they have their morning meetings and I again

kind of like Kurt and his Lo our logo on his on his building I was blown away to have our mission statement right there

um along with uh the the book two second lean which is written by a guy named

Paul Acres who ironically lives here right in the same town as we do so Bellingham Washington

so a lot of influence on jjr from up north um but they have fully bought into

uh you know making Improvement a daily part of their day um spending time to

you know learn about lean to make Improvement activities every single day to their workspaces so

uh and it has transformed their shop and I’m just going to very quickly I was going to show a video but I’m not um

we’re going to jump right into a picture um although Sarah can probably share the

video if you want to watch it on your own um video that they made with us but this is just a I think a brilliant

example of how they combin the digital side and the physical side so you’ll notice in this is a snapshot out a proot

this is one of their job routers and uh operation 2005 is final inspection and

so they built a department 2005 there’s a big sign sticking up right out of the top and this this this rack the

stainless steel rack right next to the to the workbench uh is is final

inspection um 2005 and here’s the digital dashboard of every work order

that has to go through operation 2005 um and so they want to be able

employee to walk into the building um you know no exactly which department or

which station is matching the digital side of where a job is going to go um be

able to pull up that job on a word on a dashboard right here and go straight to exactly what they need to do um so it’s

all itemized it’s all laid out and it’s one of the best examples of just a really sort of pure um you know meshing

of the digital and physical side um so I just yeah really wanted to share it’s

it’s uh check out that video it’s a really cool company doing cool stuff um I think that’s

important to to to recognize that when you work in a digital environment um you have to translate that into the physical

world as well and and yeah they they did an excellent job of that like you said yeah yeah and it seems like it’s such a

simple concept when you see it in practice it’s like oh they just made up some signs it’s make make it very visual

they put big TVs you know it’s it’s actually not a major investment in the grand scheme of things um

but just so so great so the last one I want to share uh number five is having

great partners and uh for us that actually was a whole bunch of different

organizations so and actually we’re going to go back in our own timeline in 2002 um probably early because we all

remember 911 and the the um that we were pretty heavy into Aerospace and and 911

was devastating to the Aerospace industry and you know the prior you know three or

four years after we started our shop you know the economy was strong things were good we thought we were brilliant

businessmen um when 911 happened and our work dropped off a cliff we were not

prepared uh we did not know what to do we we weren’t good at managing our cash flow uh we thankfully found through our

local University here the Small Business Development Center and this gentleman Tom door who uh who I will credit for I

would not be here standing in front of you if it was not for Tom he he he we were literally weeks away from

bankruptcy and he helped coach us through that and make some some important but tough decisions about how

to how to handle that um and it really just was the first time in our history

where we took some outside Consulting some outside help uh admitted that we

didn’t know everything um and we needed some help so just a an

incredible part of our story uh next I’d say most impactful we

engaged with our local MEP uh the national uh M manufacturing extension

partnership which I’m hopefully all of you know every state has their own MEP partner uh for us it’s called impact

Washington and Sarah Stewart was a consultant for both ISO as and lean and

she kind of specialized in in doing both so uh she was a huge part of our story a

lot of that stuff we just shared about lean and continuous Improvement came from Sarah and her uh her brilliant mind

so um unfortunately we fortunately or unfortunately we didn’t find uh a really

strong software partner um but here we are today um so maybe I guess it was

good that we didn’t find one um and then we try to do this for our customers so here’s five of our team at uh at true

life last week actually um you know really try to be a partner to our

customers um and uh here’s the guys at uh Canon machineworks with their

apartment sized machine it was one of the biggest lathes I’d ever seen in my

life um here’s Brian with one of our uh student businesses that we donate Pro

Shop to to help their students learn more and run their businesses Al lean way um and uh and I’m going to bring up

up here Mike uh from Mike Payne from Hill Manufacturing I think Mike’s Camera

isn’t is on the fritz right now but Mike are you uh here with us I am here you

awesome thank youing you can’t see me but no um

so we’ve you know we’ve been working together for quite a while I know you you know when you bought Hill several

years ago you kind of jumped both feet into the industry um engaged with lots

of different companies partners and I think have a good perspective on what it means to partner with good companies

good organizations to help you guys succeed and I’d love to have you share just a little bit of that uh with this

with our crew here today yeah thanks for having me um and I love the opportunity

to talk about you know just having good partners because I think you know throughout my career whether that was in

when I was in private Equity or you know how now transitioned into Manufacturing bace it’s you know all my successes I

can point to having good partners and um you know I remember years and years and years ago I don’t know who said it I

don’t know where it came from but um you know there’s the saying like all things

being equal I want to do business with friends all things not being equal I want to do business with

friends um and and I feel like um you know honestly I mean that’s that’s a lot

of what I got out of Pro Shop um Paul you’ve become a great friend of mine a great mentor in this industry for those

people that don’t know my background I spent 20 years in private Equity did a lot in and around manufacturing um was

actually even in the manufacturing software business early early in my career um but when I bought you know a

40 machine shop with all these employees and so forth in

2017 didn’t know the dayto day and and how to make that successful um I knew I had a good shop a

good Legacy business I knew I had goals for growth we definitely didn’t have the systems to support that we had much like

the stories everybody else has told we had a we had an access database supported by Excel supported by a file

room um and it worked but it was not gonna

help us grow um honestly Paul and Pro

shop were one of the kind of the first things I explored once I got into the industry

and I mean we wouldn’t we so we have doubled in five years which was our original goal and um we wouldn’t have

done it without Pro Shop um but even you know so beyond that I mean so being a

good partner with Pro Shop and or feeling like they’re a good partner to me anyway I don’t know how much value I

bring them on a day-to-day basis you’re here sharing your story so that’s uh that’s immense sure the um but you

know as much as I’ve learned about the industry or or even just calling Paul or Zach or somebody when I just can’t

figure something out or how did you handle this you know having that outlet has been great we’ve gotten customers

because of Pro Shop we’ve um gotten vendors you know I mean you know your

good partners the people you’ve chosen to do work with someone mentioned High QA earlier we use high QA

it’s been a huge help for us um you know you in machine monitoring was something we were very interested with you guys

partnered with data nomics yeah you know that endorsement by you has now turned

into Data nomics is a great partner of mine right I mean same thing I can call them I talk through things there’s

feature development that comes out of those conversations um but I mean just in general outside of the world of Pro Shop

I mean I think anybody in business knows the value of good partners right right whether it’s your um your Banker your

accountant your lawyer your uh maybe a mentor a previous boss a business partner any of those

types of things um we all need those right from yeah

whether it’s through some of those tough convers the tough times like you were talking about being weeks away from um

bankruptcy and your me helped you or your yeah I guess it was your me helped you yeah our me has been critical us

right my banker is absolutely one of my best friends um same with my

accountant Partnerships in general just make us better right and if if those people care about our business like I

truly believe your team cares about our business um you know it it just helps us

all be better right uh much like I care about Pro Shop which is why when you ask me if I’ll get on here yeah I want to

help you guys like if if this is help then I want to do that because you’ve done a lot for

me the and you know we talk a lot about the the tangible things of pro shop and

again we wouldn’t be where we are without it but you know I Paul I had shared a story with Paul that I’ll share

with the group um last over the last couple months we’ve been doing a large

project for one of our top two or three customers um and it’s eating our lunch I

mean it’s just Absol we probably shouldn’t have taken it um found out middle way through the job we’re were

about the only shop that would take it in the area which is maybe never a good sign

um we’re missing deadlines happen on occasion yeah you know we’re missing

deadlines which means they’re missing deadlines which means they got to answer you know so all kind of came to a

meeting Monday they’re coming over and of course you know we’re just expecting the worst um we all get down the

conference room I had gone in there early I pulled up all the the you know pulled up the PO with all the parts and

the work orders and where we’re at with everything and um it was the first time

this group from that customer had ever been to our shop I’d never met any of this group we’ which is also not a good sign

it had been escalated right so we were meeting now with like all of our normal team’s bosses

basically um and I kid you not I I shared this with Paul um gosh 10 minutes

into the meeting when they saw how well we had our stuff together because we had

it all right there on the screen in Pro Shop it totally changed the

tone um they understood all of a sudden I mean we’re not just goofing off like

we’re struggling and it was brand new part you know it’s 10 new parts of a

bomb that they’re doing that they it’s first time they’ve ever been made I mean so there’s there’s been engineering problems there’s been material problems

all sorts of problems um it totally changed the tone we walked out of that

meeting we’re all on the same page we talked about deviations that we that if

they can get approved we can cut this from three more weeks to three more days I mean almost well three to four weeks

to four days yeah that’s huge we’re all on the same page we’re

all happy we had the inspection data they needed we had everything needed just at our fingertips and

um you know I’ve talked to them every day since they’re thrilled we’re happy we’re delivering we’re starting to

deliver Parts like Friday instead of you know we’re tell you know a week ago we’re were telling them it’s three three

to four more weeks um so anyway that you know just there

there’s all the obvious benefits of you know some of some of the things we’ talked about you’d get with no offense

to Pro Shop you’d get with a lot of Erp systems right sure um you’d get with a lot of accounting packages you’d get

with quoting pack all these individual systems are out there I think proot brings them together the best um but you

know having having you guys that have walked us through this over the last five years it’s taught me the business

it’s it’s introduced me to other people in the industry that taught me the business has just been

invaluable Wow Mike well thank you so much yeah I’m glad that story turned out as good as it did I know we can all

relate to jobs that have just kicked our butt we probably shouldn’t have taken in the first place but uh glad that we

could help be a positive in that equation um well uh we are getting close to time

here um I want to just ask any of the other panelists uh that are on with us

if you want to uh you know come back on un mute share anything uh thank you

Anthony for in the chat it’s hard to find Partners sometimes that people really care about your business so um

it’s important when uh when you do because like Mike said a lot of times that can snowball um you know I I know

of other clients that you know started with us and now we’re working with you know EA growth systems one of our

partners for profit Consulting we introduce them to their new accounting firm they’ve gotten clients that we

introduced them to and um and uh yeah I know back in our days you know Tom and

Sarah uh that helped us so much they introduced us to other people um so yeah

hopefully uh you can find good partners we would love to be one of those for you if you’re not working with us

already um hopefully it comes across that we genuinely care we’re trying to do the best by all these manufacturing

companies that are so important to uh to our economy to our world um if anyone

does follow me on LinkedIn definitely please share and use use the thank a machinist hashtag just as a Shameless

plug for that um and uh because as you all know Machining is part of everything

in the world but most people have no idea that’s the case and I definitely want to uh continue to advocate for that

um get more more knowledge out there in the world Sarah also dropped uh the

links to the podcast Mike was on machine shop Mastery uh my my podcast which is

you kind of see the logo here um thank you for sharing that Sarah um and uh

yeah thank you all for being here today really appreciate your time and uh again if you’re looking for a good partner

that’s not just out to sell you some software but really be in your corner um we would love to chat with you so thank

you all for your time today thanks Brian for sharing your perspective thank you uh to to Kurt and

Tim and Jeremy and Mike for your joining us today and uh we’ll see you all on the

next webinar have a great rest of your day