lean built 96 prescript
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Andrew: So Jay? Mm-hmm. We had another tornado. Yeah. Recently. Everything okay? Yeah. ~We're we're good? Okay. Uh, ~Bloomington got hit by an EF two this past week. ~Uh, ~one fatality so far, as far as I know, and a lot of land and some structure damage. It is weird to be getting tornadoes in Indiana now. There have been tornadoes all over the country.
There've been tornadoes in Massachusetts and New York and all kinds of places you don't think of as tornado alley.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But, ~uh, ~this tornado was close to the church that I attend. ~Mm-hmm. Like ~one of my pastors sent ~me, he said, Hey, check out this picture. He texted ~me a photo ~that ~he'd taken. ~It's just ~looking due south.
~Mm-hmm. And ~there's clearly a tornado passing along the state highway, tearing things up. ~And ~we ~have ~had one other [00:01:00] close, ~close-ish ~call in March of 2023. Spencer, Indiana, ~which is ~where our shop is located, got hit by an EF three that had several fatalities and passed ~at its closest point, ~a little over half a mile from our shop.
Jay: Man, EF three, and that's really close. Yeah. Okay, so for reference, EF two is gonna be 111 to 135 miles an hour. EF three is 136 to one 60. That is no joke. No, this is,
Andrew: that's, yeah. I don't know if it's climate change or what, but ~like ~we've had tornadoes in Indiana more in the past couple years.
Jay: Yeah. I mean, ~allegedly I've, ~I've driven my car at those speeds.
Allegedly. Allegedly. And it is ~not, ~you know, here's an aerodynamic car ~that's, ~that ~is, ~you feel ~it ~at those speeds. Here's the side of a building. Wow. That is something. ~Yeah. ~So, ~um, ~have you given thought to preparation? ~I, ~I have. Maybe I'll get into, it might be a good topic, but preparation, what does that
Andrew: look like?
So, a couple years ago, a business just south of us got hit by straight line winds and it buckled their roof and the building collapsed. [00:02:00] And that ~that, ~almost put them out of business because, ~I mean, ~the roof fell on all their inventory. ~Like, okay, Uhhuh, ~the building was flat, ~right.~
With all their stuff inside it. And I looked at that and thought, you know what? I better have good insurance. I better check my insurance. I better read that policy. I better talk to my insurance agent and understand exactly what is and isn't covered. Because if you own a business, you are the grownup now.
~Mm-hmm. ~You are the one who has to be able to answer the questions to your own satisfaction. ~And ~a couple years ago, we had a pretty good hailstorm around the time we had that tornado. We lost several of our brand newly installed solar panels and found out that because of the specific way that our insurance policy was written, our insurance provider wanted to exclude those panels and not cover them.
~Okay. And ~we fought it and we did get it covered, but it was one of those ~Oh, wow. If, ~if there was this loophole that you could drive a semi [00:03:00] through. ~Yep. Our, ~our solar panels weren't covered. What if our building had collapsed and they'd be like, oh, yeah, well that's not covered either. ~I'm like, okay, ~time to change insurance companies.
Time to change agents. ~Time to just, if, ~if you guys aren't gonna do that work for me, it is not my job to be an expert in insurance. Right? ~Yeah. ~I need to do my own due diligence. I need to answer questions to my own satisfaction. It is not my job to be. A subject matter expert on insurance. Mm-hmm.
Jay: ~Or a Guinea pig.~
So, you know, when I first got started, I went with, ~um, a guy, a, ~a friend from church, captive agent, I believe he was with Farmer's Insurance. And I asked him, I said, Hey, I've got ~this, ~these products I'm developing, ~um, ~does my BOP business owners package cover, ~you know, ~product liability? And he said, ~eh, well, ~well what does that mean?
He said, ~you know, um, ~in some cases I've seen it covered in others. No. I said, ~so how do I, ~how do I talk to someone about this? I, I really need to know, ~I ~I want to buy the coverage. ~And, uh, he, ~he said, well, let me ~gimme, gimme 10 minutes. Lemme ~call. ~You know, ~someone at the main office ~or someone, ~he called back and ~he ~said, ~you know, ~Jay, uh, we don't have a great answer for you.
Normally, we ~usually ~[00:04:00] address this when there's a litigation event. And then we could, we could get into the minutiae. 'cause we can say yes or no. And I instantly canceled my policy in my mind at that point. So I have to get sued to find out if you will help me in this suit. ~So ~now we're with, ~um, ~Sentry, S-E-N-T-R-Y, Sentry Insurance.
They're really, ~they, ~they really specialize in metalworking and ~they've been, ~they've been really great. ~Um, well, ~I would say they've been great with our current. ~Um, ~agents, our last agent was just ~simply ~mailing it in ~just ~once a year, dropping off the binder. But this guy, ~I'm like, ~his name's Sean. Hey Sean, you know, here's the scenario.
What would it look like knowing our current policy? Would this be covered? ~And, ~and he's great. He's a hustler. He's a younger guy, really knowledgeable. So, ~I mean, yeah, ~shout out ~to the, ~to us guys that are in manufacturing. These, these are ~things, ~real things. The ~uh, ~disruption of business. We should ~just ~be prepared for, and it's worth ~just ~shooting a quick text or email to our agent saying, I got a hypothetical.
What does it look like from a policy standpoint?
~Yeah. ~
~Yeah. ~
Andrew: ~The, ~*the advantage of having a good *[00:05:00] *close relationship with your banker *~*mm-hmm. *~*Your primary attorney *~*and *~*your insurance agent, and also your shipping carriers if you ship things *~*mm-hmm. *~*Is hard to overstate. Right. Yep. We have a great relationship with our UPS driver.*
*Good relationship with our US Postal driver. I see our FedEx driver occasionally, *~*I don't know 'em that well. Mm-hmm*~~. ~But we have a good relationship with our bankers. They come and visit our shop and our insurance agents, our, our now insurance agent, previous guys, like we had them for years and they never came and saw our shop.
They never came and visited. They never came and met us or saw what we did. Mm-hmm. And when we finally let them go and transitioned, our new insurance agents were here. The next week.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: ~Like, ~Hey, you're local to us. We're within driving distance. We want to see you, see the shop, understand what you do, meet your team, and be able to give you the most relevant feedback on what we think you need.
~Mm-hmm. ~What we think you don't need, and how we can restructure your policy to make sure that it's the most [00:06:00] useful to you. Right. ~Yeah. ~I love that. Super valuable.
Jay: Yeah. ~The ~
Andrew: ~uh, ~that's the lean principle. Go to the gemba. ~Yep. ~You cannot understand a company nearly as well if you don't visit as if you do visit.
~Yep. ~You will see and hear and *smell things that will inform you about the overall state of the company. Mm-hmm. If you walk into a machine shop and what you smell is hot, smoky, burnt oil, that tells you an enormous amount about the shop. *~*Yeah.*~* *
Jay: Party time. I was thinking about the other side of natural disasters, the actual, you know why here in Southern California we have fire related issues, we have wind related power outages.
~Um, ~the other side of it, ~why does, ~why do natural disasters in our neck of the woods? Why does ~a, ~a customer in Nevada or New York, or in Bloomington, Indiana, why do they care? Like most people, when we're out of power, we're like, [00:07:00] Hey, we're trying our best. We don't have power or internet. ~You know, ~Manny works out of, ~um, ~San Antonio, so he's going, Hey, ~I, ~I can talk with you, but the home base can't ship anything.
*The mothership is down, the mothership has crashed, that type of thing. So, you know, *~*it, *~*it's not fair to our customers, our customer base to say sorry, we're having a natural disaster. *~*Um, and so, you know, I have, I've, *~*I've had inventory stashed at my house. Probably* not. It should be further away. I've had it stashed, ~you know, ~in a corner for probably 10, at least eight years, just so we could.
~You know, ~ship outta my home if needed. ~Um, mm-hmm. And, and ~ideally further, ~you know, ~decentralizing that inventory. That would be one thing. The other thing is ~like, uh, uh, ~if we actually had to go outsource, ~uh, ~machines, parts, could we do that? And ~that's, ~that ~just ~calls for a robust set of prints, inspection prints, assembly drawings, videos, all that robust stuff that makes, ~you know, the, ~a great company.
*Great. It's that you can take that and you can. Instantly transfer that to another party so that you can limp along. Because if our roof collapsed, we would be down for *[00:08:00] *months and months. Yeah. And you know, Dave Ramsey would say, three to six months of *~*your, *~*your expenses, but that still doesn't help our customer base.*
*Like we would, we* would turn our website off with literally no dollars coming in. ~That's, ~that's devastating. And so, you know, we've, we've planned for that type of stuff.
Andrew: Yeah, ~the, ~the economics of a household versus a business versus a country. Yeah. Like should the United States have an emergency fund, it's like, well, if they're sitting on that much cash with that much debt, they should pay down the debt.
They shouldn't just sit on the cash.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: *And the economics of businesses are not the same as the economics of families. That's right. We have a family emergency fund, but once our business grew to a certain scale. I stopped raising the ceiling on our family emergency fund. *~*Mm-hmm. *~*Because there's cash in the business that in a dire emergency*, I could just take a distribution of some cash.
Mm-hmm. And spend some money on the family side if I had to. [00:09:00] But there's no benefit to parking that cash on the personal side in the eventuality that I need it. Right. It's like, well, I, if I can move it. ~Mm-hmm. ~Let's just leave it in the business where it is. And if I have to draw a bucket of water from that, ~well ~we'll draw the bucket of water when the time comes.
Mm-hmm.
Jay: Yeah, that's good. Hey, can I get a Matsuura update?
Andrew: ~Yeah. ~So today, tonight? Mm-hmm. We are planning our first flights out unattended, overnight, run nice of a single long cycle part. That's all. Okay.
Jay: So, ~uh, ~tell me about the part, is it something that you'd been outsourcing, insourcing? What's the story there?
It's
Andrew: a test part. It, it is part of an injection mold project. So it's a, a piece of hardened tool steel.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And we're gonna be surfacing a pocket in it, so roughing, semi finishing, and then finishing out a pocket in this hardened tool. Steel. It's just a test part to allow us to. Check some things. We want to check to see how certain machine features turn out.
~Okay. And so it's not, it's not a production part. I won't actually make anything. ~It is just a test cavity. ~But, uh, ~[00:10:00] yesterday, ~today's Thursday, Tuesday. Tuesday, ~I ran the Matsuura by myself. ~Mm-hmm. ~From lunchtime to 9:00 PM ~Nice. ~While doing a whole bunch of other stuff, checking in on it every. 45 minutes to an hour.
~Cool. And ~topping up vices and fixtures in the pallet pool because we were running three different parts. ~Mm-hmm. ~Op one, op two, and then on op one of another part. ~Right. And ~it was so easy. Yeah. Good. It was amazing.
Jay: ~So, ~so you put one of your row devices on one of them as well, right?
Andrew: Yes. So we were running the op ones on laying, ~uh, ~night king vices that are gonna be OP two four on a, uh.
Four on AVO device, one per side. ~Okay. ~In soft drop there's gonna be OPT two and soft jobs. We actually just ordered some soft jars this week 'cause I didn't realize we were low on soft draws. I saw soft that I got to talk to Chris. Yeah, Chris is great. Yeah. And so, uh, once those advice, once those soft jaws get here, we're gonna cut 'em and throw all those OP one parts, not a huge number, but some on the roto device and finish off OPT two and get those finished [00:11:00] parts out.
Awesome. ~And ~it was interesting because. The whole ergonomics of a workstation around a pallet pool is like, ~okay, ~what wrenches do I need? What hex keys do I need? What fixtures am I loading and unloading? Are there any screws or things I'm taking in or out? ~It is, ~it really is a mix. ~Mm-hmm. ~You are in the mix changing gears from station to station to station.
Like if you, we had, we had five single station vices running op, one of a certain part. Aluminum part one per vice. Super easy. I can change three vices over 'cause you have access to three positions when the door on the PAL pools open, ~uh, ~I can change over three vice stations in 45 seconds. ~Yeah. Like ~you burn through them.
Yeah. ~But like ~the next position is. Four opt, two parts that each require multiple screws driven in from the underside of the fixture. So you have to unlock the zero point base, take the fixture out, take the previous parts off, put the next parts on, flip it face [00:12:00] down, drop 12 screws in, drive them all, torque them, and then put the whole thing back in the zero point base.
~Mm-hmm. ~And it's like that is a two ~minute ~to three minute process. ~Right. ~To make four parts at a single pallet station. ~And ~it really is interesting. We were talking this morning in our admin meeting, ~uh, ~how do we accurately update estimated production times ~mm-hmm. ~When we are running high mixed parts.
~Mm-hmm. ~We cannot track it normally the way we would do for most other CNC jobs where the operator's working on one thing at a time, and you start a timer and you run the job and then you stop the timer.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: This is like, okay, well we aren't even necessarily, ~the, ~the weird thing about the pallet pool is you set an order.
And you don't have to reload those stations in order ~Uhhuh, ~it will take any available next station in whatever ready order you set.
Jay: Yeah, right.
Andrew: Which means unless you have an extremely standardized [00:13:00] cycle of returning to the machine and accessing the pallet pool in a certain order and making sure these pallets are marked ready in a certain order, your actual production order.
Will
Jay: vary. Right, right. Yeah. You're just telling it's ready to go and it will decide. I wonder how it decides, like
Andrew: close. That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah. As far as I under, as far as I understand, you set an order. It will take whatever is the next available ready pallet in that order. And then loop back to the top.
~Yeah.~
Jay: Yeah. Like the hawes pallet pool monitoring system. It will, it will tell you. I don't know how it establishes it 'cause I ~just ~have never loaded the pallet pool, but it will show you an order. ~And it's ~normally, if, ~if, you know, uh, ~Paul or Alex comes in and changes out three different fixtures on a pallet.
Once you tighten your parts on, you hit a button, it picks it up, it puts it away, it presents another, I think it does it that way, but you can, you can reorder, you can schedule and unschedule things, but uh, yeah. I'm always curious how different companies do that. [00:14:00]
Andrew: Yeah. So far the interface is really easy to deal with and the simple like press ready switch mm-hmm.
At each pallet load station is really nice. ~Yeah. ~It's actually one of the only, one of the lean improvements that's on my. ~Uh, ~soon to attempt. Mm-hmm. Is that the Matsuura is, I mean, it's a big round pallet pool. It has a big heavy door mm-hmm. That swings open to expose three pallet stations and it doesn't have soft close at either travel limit.
~I. Interesting. Okay. ~It just has rubber bumpers. ~Yeah. ~And it doesn't matter when you're opening it, you can just kind of throw it open gently and it will get to the end and bump and it's fine uhhuh, but when you close it, you have to close it and chase it shut. ~Okay. ~Ensure the safety switches engaged and then turn the knob or key to move it from setup mode to manual to to auto mode.
Okay. And what I really wanna do is build a system that soft closes. Mm-hmm. Using cabinet hardware. At both ends. [00:15:00] So you do not have to ride the handle all the way to open. Right. And don't have to ride the handle all the way to close. You can just send it at a moderate pace. Mm-hmm. ~And ~it will bumper soft, close lockout, and then you can set it to auto mode and it will just go take the next pallet.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: So I have parts on order. Nothing's here yet, but I'm gonna be trying to experiment and see if I can figure out a way to do that. ~It's a nice.~
Jay: Is the door ~like a a, ~does it go on a round track or is it linear? Yes. Round track. Round track. Okay. Yeah. So we've ~uh, ~auto doored a few things here in the shop and that soft open, soft close, ~I.~
You know, there are, ~um, what's it called, like bumper or Oh, ~cushioned stop cylinders.
~Mm-hmm. ~
~Which ~you ~might ~might want to consider 'cause it goes to a known location. It slows down the last ~like ~two, three inches depending on the length of it. That might be fun to like, you know, just like one thing, I think it was ~like a, ~maybe a couple hundred bucks for a 36 inch long stroke cylinder on McMaster car.
Hmm. And it's simple. Just airline, you know, with a toggle switch, click and then it goes open, click it goes closed. That might be fun 'cause it we're, [00:16:00] we're going to auto door, our mx 'cause it's got this huge, it's probably a 200 pound door or something like that. It's massive and ~it's just, you know, we don't, ~we're not in and out of it a lot, but the operator fatigue, like right now we're making parts that are slugged out.
And ~you have to do it like that. And, uh, ~one of my guys is like, yeah, it's just like we're lugging the door open and closed multiple times per day. And if we ever wanted to automate this, it ~definitely ~needs an auto door, which the robot would ~then ~interact with. ~Mm-hmm. Um, ~the catch is that, ~uh, ~cushioned cylinders do not work with sensor ready, ~um, ~applications.
Uh. Sensor ready applications, which you want, ~the, the, ~the robot, ~uh, ~reading the state of the door, ~which ~if it actually did make it to its full stroke, ~or, you know, full, ~open or closed stroke, you can't combo ~the, at least ~the ones off. McMaster, you can't buy ~the, ~the automation ready ones. ~With, um, with, ~with a cushioned and monitored thing.
So you'd have to go external ~on the, like ~with a [00:17:00] proximity sensor like we did for One One Auto Door. Um, that's how you would've to do it that way.
Hmm.
That might be fun.
Andrew: Well, ~the, the, these are the, like, one of our, ~one of my favorite improvements was taking our two R four fifties and putting light curtains on them so the operators don't have to open and close the doors.
Oh, great. ~Yeah. Basically ever. Yeah. ~That ~was, it was the, uh, it ~was the classic, don't optimize a step, delete it. Yeah, of course. Great. Lean principle. Wonderful. ~Yeah. And, ~and such a nice quality of life improvement. ~Mm-hmm. Those, ~those light curtains have paid for themselves over and over ~and over and over and over.~
Yeah. Where'd you source 'em? Do you remember where? ~Uh, ~so we specked them out with Yama in. And we bought them directly through Yama in, but ~mm-hmm. ~They could not install them for us because we didn't also purchase the auto door option. So you had to DIY it? Yeah, we DIY it. ~Okay. We, we had, uh, we had a network.~
We have a network. There's actually a really great brother owners Facebook group.
Jay: Okay.
Andrew: That has a ton of guys all over the country and actually even outside the us. Running Brothers for all kinds of applications with automation [00:18:00] without R series, S series, all kinds of stuff. And there is no shortage of clever hack workarounds in that group of guys are like, oh yeah, I need to do this and this, but Yama ~and ~said I couldn't.
~And ~so I just ignored them and did my own thing.
Jay: Hmm.
Andrew: And ~the, ~what I've heard, and ~this, ~I don't know if this is true or not, is that generally. These Japanese parent companies are more liability sensitive or liability conscious than their ~American counterpart than than they're ~American counterparts. ~Sure.~
Okay. ~Where the, you know, ~our US guys are like, oh yeah, we can put light curtains on, no problem. And Japan's like, ah, you can't do light curtains unless you have auto doors. ~Mm. ~And ~I understand like. ~I understand liability is liability At the same time. I don't
Jay: understand ~why, ~why that seems weird. ~Like what's, ~what's going on there?
~Like ~if I want ~an, well ~a curtain, ~I ~gimme a curtain.
Andrew: ~I, ~I think ~probably ~it's an assumption about what kind of machining is being done. ~Yeah. Uh, okay. So something as basic as I. ~On the R series, there is ~a, there's ~a steel bulkhead wall. You have sheet metal between you and the cutting area ~uhhuh, ~but there are pass through channels like the chip evacuation channels run under the bulkhead wall [00:19:00] and are not closed off.
Jay: Hmm.
Andrew: Okay. In an absolutely outside freak scenario, could you hit all three bumpers, corner pocket. Bounce something down across. ~Mm-hmm. ~Under, up and out, right? Yeah. Theoretically, the physics say yes. ~It's, ~it's not mathematically impossible, it's just Yeah. Every, yeah, everything's possible in cad, so it's just mathematically super, highly improbable.
Right? Uhhuh. And,~ Right? Uhhuh. And, but the, ~the other quality of life thing is ~like, you know, ~if you're machining, we assume you're generating a bunch of mist. We want the doors closed, ~we want ~the machining environment closed. It's like, well, no, we're dry machining. ~Mm-hmm. ~There's no cooling. ~Okay. ~There are other considerations that just aren't relevant to us, and so anytime you try to prescribe ahead of time exactly how the [00:20:00] customer should or shouldn't use your part.
~Mm-hmm. ~It's usually a fool's errand. Yeah. ~It's not ever a hundred percent at Fool's errand. Yeah. But ~there are times where you're like, oh yeah. ~Uh, there's a, ~there's a great video. I'm trying to think who it was. It wasn't Mark Roper, but it was some similar, like Dad who has a YouTube channel ~who ~one of his sons had to do an assignment for school ~was ~like, you know, the classic write instructions for how to make a peanut butter sandwich?
~Mm-hmm. ~And the kid writes the instruction and the dad starts following the instructions. And then of course, as dads do. Takes every available opportunity to deviate in unspecified ways. It's like, ~right, ~unscrew the lid of the jar of peanut butter, put the knife in the peanut butter, ~uh, ~and the dad takes the knife handle down and drops it in the peanut butter, and the kid's like, you're doing it wrong.
~It's like, ~well, I'm doing what you said. You said unscrew the lid and put the knife in the peanut butter. Right. You didn't say blade first. You didn't, you didn't specify. ~We've,~
Jay: we've seen some wild and crazy applications of our work holding products. You know, there's that saying, ~you know, ~we try and dummy proof everything, and then lo and behold, they make a better d What makes a [00:21:00] better dummy?
I don't like that phrase, but ~it, ~it is, ~I like the ~comic relief ~of it ~where we go, wow. I would've never, never in my entire career would've imagined that you would've done that with the Rota device or ~with ~the max four pallet system. ~Just, ~just wild stuff that defies logic. And I do, I do think, like I was, you know, it frustrates some of the guys on my team, like who would ever do that?
And I said, look, *we're living in a great day and age where the barrier to entry has been lowered, lowered, lowered. Like when I got started, there's no YouTube, there's no John Saunders to help me with fusion. There's none of that stuff. And you know, the only way that you could really competently get* a job was if you went to ~like ~a trade school or grew up in a shop, something like that.
~You know, ~I was a rarity, you know, going back about 25 years of, of, well I'm just gonna buy a machine and just figure it out. And even at that, I put it in the corner of my dad's sheet metal shop. My dad's a sheet metal guy, didn't know anything about mills, but knew very little. He had a Bridgeport mm-hmm.
That I kind of learned on, but very different, you know, manual Bridgeport. And I had [00:22:00] four or five neighbors that had machine shops in the business park we were in. And I just bugged the crap out of them. ~Um, ~most of them were very helpful. They wanna see a young entrepreneur ~like, you know, ~get started, things like that.
~*And I'm, *~*I'm very, *~*you know, *~*thankful to *~*the, *~*that group of guys, but that's also an anomaly. *~*A a, *~*a community of people that would rally around a young guy trying to, *~*you know, *~*learn machining on his own. *~*Mm-hmm. Um, *~*but yeah, I do think that when people, especially if they're like *~*the, *~*there is a gifting called spatial relations that some people are *~*like *~*really good at.*
Some people are terrible. ~And if, ~if you don't have that, you'll do things and think to yourself. Yeah, it works because like I said earlier, it works in cad, but you know, a three foot breaker bar on our ROT device. A yeah, you broke our ROT device, but you probably took ~your rot, ~your rotary unit with the worm gear out of spec.
Oh yeah. That's why we do that. That's why we give you a three inch speed handle. You know, those types of things. So, yeah, ~it is, ~it is one of those things. ~Um, so ~I wanna go back to ~the, ~the pallet pool discussion because ~yeah, ~your roto vice is on it, but those [00:23:00] pallets don't rotate, so you're having to load things on the backside.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, John Saunders calls that the far side of the moon. So what is that? ~I'm, ~I'm a Pink Floyd fan. It's the dark side of the moon. Okay, perfect. Yeah,
Andrew: I mean, you're, you're doing that. ~This is, ~this is one of these interesting things where when we. Finished installation, we sent ~a bunch of ~feedback to Matsuura
Mm-hmm. And one of the things ~that ~I commented on was I had not realized that the pallets in the standard PC 10 pool. Don't free rotate. You can't unlock and lock them and rotate them. Mm-hmm. Now, I've done shop tours, other shops that had Matsuuras, I'd looked at Matsuuras at IMTS, and at no point had I actually gone through the process of loading or unloading a multi-site pallet.
Right. And on the MAM series, the robot brings your pallet. To a load unload station. Mm-hmm. And that load unload station has a [00:24:00] lock unlockable swivel. ~Sure. ~Unlock it. Spin it, and you cannot retrieve it with the robot until you lock it again. ~Okay. ~You have to have the orientation correct and locked before the robot will come in and pick it up.
Mm-hmm And apparently I had seen a video, I was sure I had seen a video of an MX with a PC 10 where there was a rotary station and sure enough there's a blocked out blank switch cover. On the PC 10 and you can get it from the factory ~mm-hmm. ~With an option to unlock and spin the pallet in one position.
Did you see that option in the paperwork? Probably not. I do not recall seeing that option anywhere. ~Yeah. ~When we asked our sales guy about it afterwards, he's like, yeah, I don't think there's ~any, ~any units in the US that have that. ~Hmm. Like it's. ~It's a very expensive option. 'cause it involves a whole bunch of extra integration.
Like the machine needs to know the orientation of the pallet before we reelect it. Sure. There's a bunch of closed loop things that have to happen. Yeah. But the idea that [00:25:00] this high mix, low volume pallet pool machine doesn't have the ability to optimize loading orientation, it's like ~I can't. ~I can't see the backside of this tombstone.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Right. What are we doing here? ~And so our, ~our solution, which we're planning to implement is to build a little overhead crane system.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And have a rotate station on a workbench outside the pallet pool. ~And ~any pallets that really need to be loaded offline, we will ~just ~cradle them out, set them down.
Unload, reload them and then cradle them back in.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And that, I mean, ~we, ~we can still poke, yoke that process. We'll be, ~you know, ~unlocking the zero point base. We won't be taking the whole matsuura capto style stud base out. That'll stay in our, we have HWR plates on top of those, so we'll unlock the HWR plate, lift out the tombstone, put it on our turn station, on the workbench, load it, unload everything, and then load it back in.
~Mm-hmm. ~But it's [00:26:00] one of those things where, because I had put hands on at a mam ~mm-hmm. ~And their load unload station unlocks, I had not noticed. And it's one of those things where it's like, well, you guys are the experts in this. Like you're the insurance brokers ~if you're, ~if you know that hail damage isn't covered, if it's a sunny day, tell me.
I don't know that, like if the sun was shining, but hail hit your solar panels, it's not covered. Yeah. Like, well, ~I mean, like ~you are the expert in this. Help me here. Tell me what's going on.
Jay: ~Yeah, I, um, I'll, ~I'll take you one step further. Here's what we've faced. So our, okay. Both of our, ~um, ~pallet pools have a load station.
Which you can index the pallet so you can reach, ~you know, the, ~the far side of the moon. ~Um, but we found, so ~keep in mind, this is on our EEC 400. We have ~our, ~our large HPS horizontal pallet systems. ~So, um, ~they're heavy, ~they're hundreds. I think they're just under 500 pounds, ~maybe under 400 pounds. I can't remember the specs on our website.
But anyways, ~it had this, like, like to, ~to index it, it had this pull handle mm-hmm. Pull knob. Mm-hmm. [00:27:00] Then you have to rotate it. Well, that much mass you can do it, but you're doing it one handed. So I was watching the guys talking to them and they said, man, why didn't they do a foot switch? So we're thinking, okay, let's, ~let's, uh, let's, you know, ~Neum, mattify this.
So ~we put together, ~we machined down some of their stuff and ~um, ~put just a little pancake cylinder on it with a foot switch from Automation Direct. I'll post a short or something 'cause it's worthy of. ~It's such a, like ~there's hardly any EC four hundreds compared to, ~you know, ~vertical machines out there.
Mm-hmm. But, and especially even fewer, um, pallet pools, but just an easy ~just ~foot switch, pneumatic positive pressure goes to it. It retracts the pin. You have two hands, you can control it. You just take your foot off, locks it in. It's the best little improvement, quality of life. And so ~there's, there's that, like ~even if you had that capability, ~the, ~the user experience of rotating things.
Is, ~that's like ~the next hurdle, ~you know? Um, ~I want to, I wanna share this because if you go to this website, I think it's Cix, C-E-I-L-I-X, they have this system called an Infinity [00:28:00] Crane, which is the coolest overhead handling solution.
I, that is a crazy, I'm looking at it right now. That is bananas. What is that?
You Okay. So.
It is basically, you know, like a, those robots are gonna kill us all. Okay, so these aren't robots, but you can robot ize it. So what it is, it's, it's a gantry system. ~So you ~think of a gantry rail that goes like an X, it moves left and right. Then you have another set of rails that go. Uh, you know, it's a y axis, but this is just a ceiling.
It's just simply a ceiling where it's got this hyper complex system where it just effortlessly goes in X and Y and then you, of course, it costs you so much. ~You, ~in their video, you attach a probably a hundred dollars Harbor freight hoist to it. ~Mm-hmm. ~But yeah, if you play some of those videos, I mean, it is just, I'm like, we don't need this.
We really want this at this point. So I'm wondering if you could do that. ~'cause that would, ~if you could just do a small section, [00:29:00] like a 10 foot section ~mm-hmm. ~Where you could move this around left and right. You could put it to ~the, ~the operator station, the load station over to some shelving. ~Uh, ~you could attach a robot to it.
I mean, I think Henry Holster's needs this at this point.
Andrew: Ca, there you go. Spending my money again. Of course, of course. I'm going to spend your money. Well, so the only thing is I look at it and go, ~it, it's, ~it's complex. It has a lot of moving parts, ~uhhuh, ~and I don't necessarily see in a constrained area what the advantage is over an X and y bar gantry system.
Jay: I know, I know. That's a buzzkill statement though. Like you still need this, right? No, but an XY gantry system ~does ~does solve the same problem.
Andrew: Albeit a lot. I, I need this about as much as I need a $5,000 Fender US Custom Shop Strat, which is to say, ~I mean, ~I desperately need it.
Jay: I, I am not, yeah, I'm with you on that.
I'm not gonna argue against that. ~Uh, ~so anyways, ~uh, ~vocab word for the day. Robust a size. Robust size, robust size. Did I
see [00:30:00] new Matt size? We were talking Yeah, I did say Neum Matt size. So yeah, go for it. ~Yeah,~
Andrew: so yesterday we were talking and ~I, I was, ~I was looking at a process. We were setting up a new job in the shop and I jokingly said, well, ~it's, ~it's pretty good, but we need to robust size this a little bit.
Like, ~you know, we just, ~I was torn between robust size and robust ate uhhuh. Both are good. The process, robust size is a little smoother. A little zippier. Sure. Um. But the idea like, okay, it works. Let's make it bombproof. Let's robust size it a little
Jay: bit.
Andrew: Yeah. ~Um, there's, there's so much, ~there's so much funny, like lean joke stuff.
Like, I want shirts. ~Like I, I, I actually, ~one of my guys designed some art that said, ~uh, ~born to flow, forced to batch.
Jay: Gosh,
that's super lean, nerdy. ~Like, ~I would not agree that it's super lean, it's
Andrew: super lean, nerdy. ~Um. ~You know, getting smed with it. You know, there's ~all kinds of, ~all kinds of lean jokes.
Speaking of lean, I bought a book. ~I'm gonna, ~I'm gonna pause for 10 seconds and go pick up this book. Sure. I'll be right back. Say on
Jay: mic. In the meantime, what I'm gonna tell audience about is [00:31:00] oftentimes I would say to my director of finance, ~I would say to him, uh, ~can you write a PO and schedule a pickup?
For whatever I'm sending to you in Signal. So today I officially said, Ryan, ~I'm, I'm going to, ~from here on out, I'm going to refer to this as a Pooh p po and pickup. So that's a little lean jargon that we're introducing into the ecosystem right there. So tell me about this book.
Andrew: I got bamboozled. ~Okay. So, uh, the, ~a book came up.
~I'm trying to think where I, ~it was in an article I was reading. It was. Five Pillars of the Visual Workplace by Hiroki Herano. ~Okay. Like the, ~this is part of the Origin of Five Sing. ~Mm-hmm. ~I'm like, okay, that's a book I haven't read. I should get that. And I hop on Amazon and I keyword search the author's name and the five pillars of the Visual Workplace.
And ~I sit, I, ~I get two results. One is an out of print hardback for like 60 or 70 bucks used. There's one copy available and the other's like a $10 paperback and it, it won the shingle [00:32:00] prize for excellence in manufacturing, so and so and so, and so five s for operators, the five pillars of the Visual Workplace, and it lists the author as Hi Yuki Herano.
Mm-hmm. You order it and it comes and on the inside cover it says. Based on the book, the Five Pillars of the Visual Workplace. Oh, that sucks. By Hi Yuki Herano, and it is a garbage soft back modern cliff notes of the book.
Jay: Okay.
Andrew: All right. I got bamboozled. Yeah, that happens. But I suspected I was being bamboozled, so I also bought the $65 hard back.
It's not here yet. ~Okay. But like the, ~the same way that I don't. Trust translators necessarily to capture the full meaning. ~Mm-hmm. ~If someone gives me a condensed version of something, I'm like, no, no, no, ~no. I'm not a kid anymore. ~I want to read what the author actually said. ~Mm-hmm. ~*Because there is gold in the details, *[00:33:00] *the phrasing, the choice of words, the emphasis, everything about it like.*
*If I wanna learn how to do something at an Olympic level *
Jay: *mm-hmm. *
Andrew: *I want to watch an Olympian doing it. I wanna* *learn from an Olympian who does it. I don't wanna hear somebody else paraphrase how an Olympian describes themselves doing it. Sure, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. *
Jay: Or
Andrew: an analyst or someone like that. Yeah.
I am still gonna go through this book and it may make it into our lean library, but. Man, lame sauce.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: Based
Jay: on the book. So the, okay, so the other thing, not just an Olympian, but ~um, ~like a five time gold medalist Olympian,
Andrew: uh, my friends, uh, Adam and Zane at Spirit of Systems, their company motto, I think it is, it's in Latin.
Those, these guys are all army veterans, but it is to be rather [00:34:00] than to seem, hmm. The whole idea is, you know the truth. ~Yeah. ~You know, whether you are actually doing it or not. You know, whether your work and your LinkedIn posts and whatever you're doing, you know, whether it's performance theater, or whether you're actually doing it.
Mm-hmm. And there is no substitute for actually doing it. Right. You cannot pretend hard enough. To replace actually
Jay: doing it. Love it. Yeah. The, the hand that, ~uh, ~does is the hand that knows. Um, and even the, that can filter things out, you know? 'cause there's a lot, like in today, in today's morning meeting we talked about actually all week, we've talked about failure and failure's.
The only way that you can actually qualify if things work or not. And once you feel like you've hit *success. Like I've said, like everything is broken. Like if it ain't broken, don't *[00:35:00] *fix it. No. At some point there's some optimized path that you can take. You just don't either recognize it or you just don't know it exists.*
*You don't have the mindset to know that there's* a better way to do it. 'cause you've taken ~that, you know ~that approach. Like, no, it's good enough. And sometimes you have to balance that. ~That's, you know, ~go back to the six types of working genius. The discerners in the organization will say, no, no, no. That's good enough.
We're just gonna run with this. We're gonna run this out. Exactly. That's what we do. Ship it. JSI. That's what we say. Just ship it. ~That's another Ackerman. ~Hey, I gotta run. I got another, ~uh, ~meeting right after this. ~Well, ~thank you Jay. Good to talk to you. We'll catch up next week. Likewise. Happy night.
[00:36:00]
===
[00:00:00]
Andrew: So Jay? Mm-hmm. We had another tornado. Yeah. Recently. Everything okay? Yeah. ~We're we're good? Okay. Uh, ~Bloomington got hit by an EF two this past week. ~Uh, ~one fatality so far, as far as I know, and a lot of land and some structure damage. It is weird to be getting tornadoes in Indiana now. There have been tornadoes all over the country.
There've been tornadoes in Massachusetts and New York and all kinds of places you don't think of as tornado alley.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But, ~uh, ~this tornado was close to the church that I attend. ~Mm-hmm. Like ~one of my pastors sent ~me, he said, Hey, check out this picture. He texted ~me a photo ~that ~he'd taken. ~It's just ~looking due south.
~Mm-hmm. And ~there's clearly a tornado passing along the state highway, tearing things up. ~And ~we ~have ~had one other [00:01:00] close, ~close-ish ~call in March of 2023. Spencer, Indiana, ~which is ~where our shop is located, got hit by an EF three that had several fatalities and passed ~at its closest point, ~a little over half a mile from our shop.
Jay: Man, EF three, and that's really close. Yeah. Okay, so for reference, EF two is gonna be 111 to 135 miles an hour. EF three is 136 to one 60. That is no joke. No, this is,
Andrew: that's, yeah. I don't know if it's climate change or what, but ~like ~we've had tornadoes in Indiana more in the past couple years.
Jay: Yeah. I mean, ~allegedly I've, ~I've driven my car at those speeds.
Allegedly. Allegedly. And it is ~not, ~you know, here's an aerodynamic car ~that's, ~that ~is, ~you feel ~it ~at those speeds. Here's the side of a building. Wow. That is something. ~Yeah. ~So, ~um, ~have you given thought to preparation? ~I, ~I have. Maybe I'll get into, it might be a good topic, but preparation, what does that
Andrew: look like?
So, a couple years ago, a business just south of us got hit by straight line winds and it buckled their roof and the building collapsed. [00:02:00] And that ~that, ~almost put them out of business because, ~I mean, ~the roof fell on all their inventory. ~Like, okay, Uhhuh, ~the building was flat, ~right.~
With all their stuff inside it. And I looked at that and thought, you know what? I better have good insurance. I better check my insurance. I better read that policy. I better talk to my insurance agent and understand exactly what is and isn't covered. Because if you own a business, you are the grownup now.
~Mm-hmm. ~You are the one who has to be able to answer the questions to your own satisfaction. ~And ~a couple years ago, we had a pretty good hailstorm around the time we had that tornado. We lost several of our brand newly installed solar panels and found out that because of the specific way that our insurance policy was written, our insurance provider wanted to exclude those panels and not cover them.
~Okay. And ~we fought it and we did get it covered, but it was one of those ~Oh, wow. If, ~if there was this loophole that you could drive a semi [00:03:00] through. ~Yep. Our, ~our solar panels weren't covered. What if our building had collapsed and they'd be like, oh, yeah, well that's not covered either. ~I'm like, okay, ~time to change insurance companies.
Time to change agents. ~Time to just, if, ~if you guys aren't gonna do that work for me, it is not my job to be an expert in insurance. Right? ~Yeah. ~I need to do my own due diligence. I need to answer questions to my own satisfaction. It is not my job to be. A subject matter expert on insurance. Mm-hmm.
Jay: ~Or a Guinea pig.~
So, you know, when I first got started, I went with, ~um, a guy, a, ~a friend from church, captive agent, I believe he was with Farmer's Insurance. And I asked him, I said, Hey, I've got ~this, ~these products I'm developing, ~um, ~does my BOP business owners package cover, ~you know, ~product liability? And he said, ~eh, well, ~well what does that mean?
He said, ~you know, um, ~in some cases I've seen it covered in others. No. I said, ~so how do I, ~how do I talk to someone about this? I, I really need to know, ~I ~I want to buy the coverage. ~And, uh, he, ~he said, well, let me ~gimme, gimme 10 minutes. Lemme ~call. ~You know, ~someone at the main office ~or someone, ~he called back and ~he ~said, ~you know, ~Jay, uh, we don't have a great answer for you.
Normally, we ~usually ~[00:04:00] address this when there's a litigation event. And then we could, we could get into the minutiae. 'cause we can say yes or no. And I instantly canceled my policy in my mind at that point. So I have to get sued to find out if you will help me in this suit. ~So ~now we're with, ~um, ~Sentry, S-E-N-T-R-Y, Sentry Insurance.
They're really, ~they, ~they really specialize in metalworking and ~they've been, ~they've been really great. ~Um, well, ~I would say they've been great with our current. ~Um, ~agents, our last agent was just ~simply ~mailing it in ~just ~once a year, dropping off the binder. But this guy, ~I'm like, ~his name's Sean. Hey Sean, you know, here's the scenario.
What would it look like knowing our current policy? Would this be covered? ~And, ~and he's great. He's a hustler. He's a younger guy, really knowledgeable. So, ~I mean, yeah, ~shout out ~to the, ~to us guys that are in manufacturing. These, these are ~things, ~real things. The ~uh, ~disruption of business. We should ~just ~be prepared for, and it's worth ~just ~shooting a quick text or email to our agent saying, I got a hypothetical.
What does it look like from a policy standpoint?
~Yeah. ~
~Yeah. ~
Andrew: ~The, ~*the advantage of having a good *[00:05:00] *close relationship with your banker *~*mm-hmm. *~*Your primary attorney *~*and *~*your insurance agent, and also your shipping carriers if you ship things *~*mm-hmm. *~*Is hard to overstate. Right. Yep. We have a great relationship with our UPS driver.*
*Good relationship with our US Postal driver. I see our FedEx driver occasionally, *~*I don't know 'em that well. Mm-hmm*~~. ~But we have a good relationship with our bankers. They come and visit our shop and our insurance agents, our, our now insurance agent, previous guys, like we had them for years and they never came and saw our shop.
They never came and visited. They never came and met us or saw what we did. Mm-hmm. And when we finally let them go and transitioned, our new insurance agents were here. The next week.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: ~Like, ~Hey, you're local to us. We're within driving distance. We want to see you, see the shop, understand what you do, meet your team, and be able to give you the most relevant feedback on what we think you need.
~Mm-hmm. ~What we think you don't need, and how we can restructure your policy to make sure that it's the most [00:06:00] useful to you. Right. ~Yeah. ~I love that. Super valuable.
Jay: Yeah. ~The ~
Andrew: ~uh, ~that's the lean principle. Go to the gemba. ~Yep. ~You cannot understand a company nearly as well if you don't visit as if you do visit.
~Yep. ~You will see and hear and *smell things that will inform you about the overall state of the company. Mm-hmm. If you walk into a machine shop and what you smell is hot, smoky, burnt oil, that tells you an enormous amount about the shop. *~*Yeah.*~* *
Jay: Party time. I was thinking about the other side of natural disasters, the actual, you know why here in Southern California we have fire related issues, we have wind related power outages.
~Um, ~the other side of it, ~why does, ~why do natural disasters in our neck of the woods? Why does ~a, ~a customer in Nevada or New York, or in Bloomington, Indiana, why do they care? Like most people, when we're out of power, we're like, [00:07:00] Hey, we're trying our best. We don't have power or internet. ~You know, ~Manny works out of, ~um, ~San Antonio, so he's going, Hey, ~I, ~I can talk with you, but the home base can't ship anything.
*The mothership is down, the mothership has crashed, that type of thing. So, you know, *~*it, *~*it's not fair to our customers, our customer base to say sorry, we're having a natural disaster. *~*Um, and so, you know, I have, I've, *~*I've had inventory stashed at my house. Probably* not. It should be further away. I've had it stashed, ~you know, ~in a corner for probably 10, at least eight years, just so we could.
~You know, ~ship outta my home if needed. ~Um, mm-hmm. And, and ~ideally further, ~you know, ~decentralizing that inventory. That would be one thing. The other thing is ~like, uh, uh, ~if we actually had to go outsource, ~uh, ~machines, parts, could we do that? And ~that's, ~that ~just ~calls for a robust set of prints, inspection prints, assembly drawings, videos, all that robust stuff that makes, ~you know, the, ~a great company.
*Great. It's that you can take that and you can. Instantly transfer that to another party so that you can limp along. Because if our roof collapsed, we would be down for *[00:08:00] *months and months. Yeah. And you know, Dave Ramsey would say, three to six months of *~*your, *~*your expenses, but that still doesn't help our customer base.*
*Like we would, we* would turn our website off with literally no dollars coming in. ~That's, ~that's devastating. And so, you know, we've, we've planned for that type of stuff.
Andrew: Yeah, ~the, ~the economics of a household versus a business versus a country. Yeah. Like should the United States have an emergency fund, it's like, well, if they're sitting on that much cash with that much debt, they should pay down the debt.
They shouldn't just sit on the cash.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: *And the economics of businesses are not the same as the economics of families. That's right. We have a family emergency fund, but once our business grew to a certain scale. I stopped raising the ceiling on our family emergency fund. *~*Mm-hmm. *~*Because there's cash in the business that in a dire emergency*, I could just take a distribution of some cash.
Mm-hmm. And spend some money on the family side if I had to. [00:09:00] But there's no benefit to parking that cash on the personal side in the eventuality that I need it. Right. It's like, well, I, if I can move it. ~Mm-hmm. ~Let's just leave it in the business where it is. And if I have to draw a bucket of water from that, ~well ~we'll draw the bucket of water when the time comes.
Mm-hmm.
Jay: Yeah, that's good. Hey, can I get a Matsuura update?
Andrew: ~Yeah. ~So today, tonight? Mm-hmm. We are planning our first flights out unattended, overnight, run nice of a single long cycle part. That's all. Okay.
Jay: So, ~uh, ~tell me about the part, is it something that you'd been outsourcing, insourcing? What's the story there?
It's
Andrew: a test part. It, it is part of an injection mold project. So it's a, a piece of hardened tool steel.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And we're gonna be surfacing a pocket in it, so roughing, semi finishing, and then finishing out a pocket in this hardened tool. Steel. It's just a test part to allow us to. Check some things. We want to check to see how certain machine features turn out.
~Okay. And so it's not, it's not a production part. I won't actually make anything. ~It is just a test cavity. ~But, uh, ~[00:10:00] yesterday, ~today's Thursday, Tuesday. Tuesday, ~I ran the Matsuura by myself. ~Mm-hmm. ~From lunchtime to 9:00 PM ~Nice. ~While doing a whole bunch of other stuff, checking in on it every. 45 minutes to an hour.
~Cool. And ~topping up vices and fixtures in the pallet pool because we were running three different parts. ~Mm-hmm. ~Op one, op two, and then on op one of another part. ~Right. And ~it was so easy. Yeah. Good. It was amazing.
Jay: ~So, ~so you put one of your row devices on one of them as well, right?
Andrew: Yes. So we were running the op ones on laying, ~uh, ~night king vices that are gonna be OP two four on a, uh.
Four on AVO device, one per side. ~Okay. ~In soft drop there's gonna be OPT two and soft jobs. We actually just ordered some soft jars this week 'cause I didn't realize we were low on soft draws. I saw soft that I got to talk to Chris. Yeah, Chris is great. Yeah. And so, uh, once those advice, once those soft jaws get here, we're gonna cut 'em and throw all those OP one parts, not a huge number, but some on the roto device and finish off OPT two and get those finished [00:11:00] parts out.
Awesome. ~And ~it was interesting because. The whole ergonomics of a workstation around a pallet pool is like, ~okay, ~what wrenches do I need? What hex keys do I need? What fixtures am I loading and unloading? Are there any screws or things I'm taking in or out? ~It is, ~it really is a mix. ~Mm-hmm. ~You are in the mix changing gears from station to station to station.
Like if you, we had, we had five single station vices running op, one of a certain part. Aluminum part one per vice. Super easy. I can change three vices over 'cause you have access to three positions when the door on the PAL pools open, ~uh, ~I can change over three vice stations in 45 seconds. ~Yeah. Like ~you burn through them.
Yeah. ~But like ~the next position is. Four opt, two parts that each require multiple screws driven in from the underside of the fixture. So you have to unlock the zero point base, take the fixture out, take the previous parts off, put the next parts on, flip it face [00:12:00] down, drop 12 screws in, drive them all, torque them, and then put the whole thing back in the zero point base.
~Mm-hmm. ~And it's like that is a two ~minute ~to three minute process. ~Right. ~To make four parts at a single pallet station. ~And ~it really is interesting. We were talking this morning in our admin meeting, ~uh, ~how do we accurately update estimated production times ~mm-hmm. ~When we are running high mixed parts.
~Mm-hmm. ~We cannot track it normally the way we would do for most other CNC jobs where the operator's working on one thing at a time, and you start a timer and you run the job and then you stop the timer.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: This is like, okay, well we aren't even necessarily, ~the, ~the weird thing about the pallet pool is you set an order.
And you don't have to reload those stations in order ~Uhhuh, ~it will take any available next station in whatever ready order you set.
Jay: Yeah, right.
Andrew: Which means unless you have an extremely standardized [00:13:00] cycle of returning to the machine and accessing the pallet pool in a certain order and making sure these pallets are marked ready in a certain order, your actual production order.
Will
Jay: vary. Right, right. Yeah. You're just telling it's ready to go and it will decide. I wonder how it decides, like
Andrew: close. That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah. As far as I under, as far as I understand, you set an order. It will take whatever is the next available ready pallet in that order. And then loop back to the top.
~Yeah.~
Jay: Yeah. Like the hawes pallet pool monitoring system. It will, it will tell you. I don't know how it establishes it 'cause I ~just ~have never loaded the pallet pool, but it will show you an order. ~And it's ~normally, if, ~if, you know, uh, ~Paul or Alex comes in and changes out three different fixtures on a pallet.
Once you tighten your parts on, you hit a button, it picks it up, it puts it away, it presents another, I think it does it that way, but you can, you can reorder, you can schedule and unschedule things, but uh, yeah. I'm always curious how different companies do that. [00:14:00]
Andrew: Yeah. So far the interface is really easy to deal with and the simple like press ready switch mm-hmm.
At each pallet load station is really nice. ~Yeah. ~It's actually one of the only, one of the lean improvements that's on my. ~Uh, ~soon to attempt. Mm-hmm. Is that the Matsuura is, I mean, it's a big round pallet pool. It has a big heavy door mm-hmm. That swings open to expose three pallet stations and it doesn't have soft close at either travel limit.
~I. Interesting. Okay. ~It just has rubber bumpers. ~Yeah. ~And it doesn't matter when you're opening it, you can just kind of throw it open gently and it will get to the end and bump and it's fine uhhuh, but when you close it, you have to close it and chase it shut. ~Okay. ~Ensure the safety switches engaged and then turn the knob or key to move it from setup mode to manual to to auto mode.
Okay. And what I really wanna do is build a system that soft closes. Mm-hmm. Using cabinet hardware. At both ends. [00:15:00] So you do not have to ride the handle all the way to open. Right. And don't have to ride the handle all the way to close. You can just send it at a moderate pace. Mm-hmm. ~And ~it will bumper soft, close lockout, and then you can set it to auto mode and it will just go take the next pallet.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: So I have parts on order. Nothing's here yet, but I'm gonna be trying to experiment and see if I can figure out a way to do that. ~It's a nice.~
Jay: Is the door ~like a a, ~does it go on a round track or is it linear? Yes. Round track. Round track. Okay. Yeah. So we've ~uh, ~auto doored a few things here in the shop and that soft open, soft close, ~I.~
You know, there are, ~um, what's it called, like bumper or Oh, ~cushioned stop cylinders.
~Mm-hmm. ~
~Which ~you ~might ~might want to consider 'cause it goes to a known location. It slows down the last ~like ~two, three inches depending on the length of it. That might be fun to like, you know, just like one thing, I think it was ~like a, ~maybe a couple hundred bucks for a 36 inch long stroke cylinder on McMaster car.
Hmm. And it's simple. Just airline, you know, with a toggle switch, click and then it goes open, click it goes closed. That might be fun 'cause it we're, [00:16:00] we're going to auto door, our mx 'cause it's got this huge, it's probably a 200 pound door or something like that. It's massive and ~it's just, you know, we don't, ~we're not in and out of it a lot, but the operator fatigue, like right now we're making parts that are slugged out.
And ~you have to do it like that. And, uh, ~one of my guys is like, yeah, it's just like we're lugging the door open and closed multiple times per day. And if we ever wanted to automate this, it ~definitely ~needs an auto door, which the robot would ~then ~interact with. ~Mm-hmm. Um, ~the catch is that, ~uh, ~cushioned cylinders do not work with sensor ready, ~um, ~applications.
Uh. Sensor ready applications, which you want, ~the, the, ~the robot, ~uh, ~reading the state of the door, ~which ~if it actually did make it to its full stroke, ~or, you know, full, ~open or closed stroke, you can't combo ~the, at least ~the ones off. McMaster, you can't buy ~the, ~the automation ready ones. ~With, um, with, ~with a cushioned and monitored thing.
So you'd have to go external ~on the, like ~with a [00:17:00] proximity sensor like we did for One One Auto Door. Um, that's how you would've to do it that way.
Hmm.
That might be fun.
Andrew: Well, ~the, the, these are the, like, one of our, ~one of my favorite improvements was taking our two R four fifties and putting light curtains on them so the operators don't have to open and close the doors.
Oh, great. ~Yeah. Basically ever. Yeah. ~That ~was, it was the, uh, it ~was the classic, don't optimize a step, delete it. Yeah, of course. Great. Lean principle. Wonderful. ~Yeah. And, ~and such a nice quality of life improvement. ~Mm-hmm. Those, ~those light curtains have paid for themselves over and over ~and over and over and over.~
Yeah. Where'd you source 'em? Do you remember where? ~Uh, ~so we specked them out with Yama in. And we bought them directly through Yama in, but ~mm-hmm. ~They could not install them for us because we didn't also purchase the auto door option. So you had to DIY it? Yeah, we DIY it. ~Okay. We, we had, uh, we had a network.~
We have a network. There's actually a really great brother owners Facebook group.
Jay: Okay.
Andrew: That has a ton of guys all over the country and actually even outside the us. Running Brothers for all kinds of applications with automation [00:18:00] without R series, S series, all kinds of stuff. And there is no shortage of clever hack workarounds in that group of guys are like, oh yeah, I need to do this and this, but Yama ~and ~said I couldn't.
~And ~so I just ignored them and did my own thing.
Jay: Hmm.
Andrew: And ~the, ~what I've heard, and ~this, ~I don't know if this is true or not, is that generally. These Japanese parent companies are more liability sensitive or liability conscious than their ~American counterpart than than they're ~American counterparts. ~Sure.~
Okay. ~Where the, you know, ~our US guys are like, oh yeah, we can put light curtains on, no problem. And Japan's like, ah, you can't do light curtains unless you have auto doors. ~Mm. ~And ~I understand like. ~I understand liability is liability At the same time. I don't
Jay: understand ~why, ~why that seems weird. ~Like what's, ~what's going on there?
~Like ~if I want ~an, well ~a curtain, ~I ~gimme a curtain.
Andrew: ~I, ~I think ~probably ~it's an assumption about what kind of machining is being done. ~Yeah. Uh, okay. So something as basic as I. ~On the R series, there is ~a, there's ~a steel bulkhead wall. You have sheet metal between you and the cutting area ~uhhuh, ~but there are pass through channels like the chip evacuation channels run under the bulkhead wall [00:19:00] and are not closed off.
Jay: Hmm.
Andrew: Okay. In an absolutely outside freak scenario, could you hit all three bumpers, corner pocket. Bounce something down across. ~Mm-hmm. ~Under, up and out, right? Yeah. Theoretically, the physics say yes. ~It's, ~it's not mathematically impossible, it's just Yeah. Every, yeah, everything's possible in cad, so it's just mathematically super, highly improbable.
Right? Uhhuh. And,~ Right? Uhhuh. And, but the, ~the other quality of life thing is ~like, you know, ~if you're machining, we assume you're generating a bunch of mist. We want the doors closed, ~we want ~the machining environment closed. It's like, well, no, we're dry machining. ~Mm-hmm. ~There's no cooling. ~Okay. ~There are other considerations that just aren't relevant to us, and so anytime you try to prescribe ahead of time exactly how the [00:20:00] customer should or shouldn't use your part.
~Mm-hmm. ~It's usually a fool's errand. Yeah. ~It's not ever a hundred percent at Fool's errand. Yeah. But ~there are times where you're like, oh yeah. ~Uh, there's a, ~there's a great video. I'm trying to think who it was. It wasn't Mark Roper, but it was some similar, like Dad who has a YouTube channel ~who ~one of his sons had to do an assignment for school ~was ~like, you know, the classic write instructions for how to make a peanut butter sandwich?
~Mm-hmm. ~And the kid writes the instruction and the dad starts following the instructions. And then of course, as dads do. Takes every available opportunity to deviate in unspecified ways. It's like, ~right, ~unscrew the lid of the jar of peanut butter, put the knife in the peanut butter, ~uh, ~and the dad takes the knife handle down and drops it in the peanut butter, and the kid's like, you're doing it wrong.
~It's like, ~well, I'm doing what you said. You said unscrew the lid and put the knife in the peanut butter. Right. You didn't say blade first. You didn't, you didn't specify. ~We've,~
Jay: we've seen some wild and crazy applications of our work holding products. You know, there's that saying, ~you know, ~we try and dummy proof everything, and then lo and behold, they make a better d What makes a [00:21:00] better dummy?
I don't like that phrase, but ~it, ~it is, ~I like the ~comic relief ~of it ~where we go, wow. I would've never, never in my entire career would've imagined that you would've done that with the Rota device or ~with ~the max four pallet system. ~Just, ~just wild stuff that defies logic. And I do, I do think, like I was, you know, it frustrates some of the guys on my team, like who would ever do that?
And I said, look, *we're living in a great day and age where the barrier to entry has been lowered, lowered, lowered. Like when I got started, there's no YouTube, there's no John Saunders to help me with fusion. There's none of that stuff. And you know, the only way that you could really competently get* a job was if you went to ~like ~a trade school or grew up in a shop, something like that.
~You know, ~I was a rarity, you know, going back about 25 years of, of, well I'm just gonna buy a machine and just figure it out. And even at that, I put it in the corner of my dad's sheet metal shop. My dad's a sheet metal guy, didn't know anything about mills, but knew very little. He had a Bridgeport mm-hmm.
That I kind of learned on, but very different, you know, manual Bridgeport. And I had [00:22:00] four or five neighbors that had machine shops in the business park we were in. And I just bugged the crap out of them. ~Um, ~most of them were very helpful. They wanna see a young entrepreneur ~like, you know, ~get started, things like that.
~*And I'm, *~*I'm very, *~*you know, *~*thankful to *~*the, *~*that group of guys, but that's also an anomaly. *~*A a, *~*a community of people that would rally around a young guy trying to, *~*you know, *~*learn machining on his own. *~*Mm-hmm. Um, *~*but yeah, I do think that when people, especially if they're like *~*the, *~*there is a gifting called spatial relations that some people are *~*like *~*really good at.*
Some people are terrible. ~And if, ~if you don't have that, you'll do things and think to yourself. Yeah, it works because like I said earlier, it works in cad, but you know, a three foot breaker bar on our ROT device. A yeah, you broke our ROT device, but you probably took ~your rot, ~your rotary unit with the worm gear out of spec.
Oh yeah. That's why we do that. That's why we give you a three inch speed handle. You know, those types of things. So, yeah, ~it is, ~it is one of those things. ~Um, so ~I wanna go back to ~the, ~the pallet pool discussion because ~yeah, ~your roto vice is on it, but those [00:23:00] pallets don't rotate, so you're having to load things on the backside.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, John Saunders calls that the far side of the moon. So what is that? ~I'm, ~I'm a Pink Floyd fan. It's the dark side of the moon. Okay, perfect. Yeah,
Andrew: I mean, you're, you're doing that. ~This is, ~this is one of these interesting things where when we. Finished installation, we sent ~a bunch of ~feedback to Matsuura
Mm-hmm. And one of the things ~that ~I commented on was I had not realized that the pallets in the standard PC 10 pool. Don't free rotate. You can't unlock and lock them and rotate them. Mm-hmm. Now, I've done shop tours, other shops that had Matsuuras, I'd looked at Matsuuras at IMTS, and at no point had I actually gone through the process of loading or unloading a multi-site pallet.
Right. And on the MAM series, the robot brings your pallet. To a load unload station. Mm-hmm. And that load unload station has a [00:24:00] lock unlockable swivel. ~Sure. ~Unlock it. Spin it, and you cannot retrieve it with the robot until you lock it again. ~Okay. ~You have to have the orientation correct and locked before the robot will come in and pick it up.
Mm-hmm And apparently I had seen a video, I was sure I had seen a video of an MX with a PC 10 where there was a rotary station and sure enough there's a blocked out blank switch cover. On the PC 10 and you can get it from the factory ~mm-hmm. ~With an option to unlock and spin the pallet in one position.
Did you see that option in the paperwork? Probably not. I do not recall seeing that option anywhere. ~Yeah. ~When we asked our sales guy about it afterwards, he's like, yeah, I don't think there's ~any, ~any units in the US that have that. ~Hmm. Like it's. ~It's a very expensive option. 'cause it involves a whole bunch of extra integration.
Like the machine needs to know the orientation of the pallet before we reelect it. Sure. There's a bunch of closed loop things that have to happen. Yeah. But the idea that [00:25:00] this high mix, low volume pallet pool machine doesn't have the ability to optimize loading orientation, it's like ~I can't. ~I can't see the backside of this tombstone.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Right. What are we doing here? ~And so our, ~our solution, which we're planning to implement is to build a little overhead crane system.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And have a rotate station on a workbench outside the pallet pool. ~And ~any pallets that really need to be loaded offline, we will ~just ~cradle them out, set them down.
Unload, reload them and then cradle them back in.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And that, I mean, ~we, ~we can still poke, yoke that process. We'll be, ~you know, ~unlocking the zero point base. We won't be taking the whole matsuura capto style stud base out. That'll stay in our, we have HWR plates on top of those, so we'll unlock the HWR plate, lift out the tombstone, put it on our turn station, on the workbench, load it, unload everything, and then load it back in.
~Mm-hmm. ~But it's [00:26:00] one of those things where, because I had put hands on at a mam ~mm-hmm. ~And their load unload station unlocks, I had not noticed. And it's one of those things where it's like, well, you guys are the experts in this. Like you're the insurance brokers ~if you're, ~if you know that hail damage isn't covered, if it's a sunny day, tell me.
I don't know that, like if the sun was shining, but hail hit your solar panels, it's not covered. Yeah. Like, well, ~I mean, like ~you are the expert in this. Help me here. Tell me what's going on.
Jay: ~Yeah, I, um, I'll, ~I'll take you one step further. Here's what we've faced. So our, okay. Both of our, ~um, ~pallet pools have a load station.
Which you can index the pallet so you can reach, ~you know, the, ~the far side of the moon. ~Um, but we found, so ~keep in mind, this is on our EEC 400. We have ~our, ~our large HPS horizontal pallet systems. ~So, um, ~they're heavy, ~they're hundreds. I think they're just under 500 pounds, ~maybe under 400 pounds. I can't remember the specs on our website.
But anyways, ~it had this, like, like to, ~to index it, it had this pull handle mm-hmm. Pull knob. Mm-hmm. [00:27:00] Then you have to rotate it. Well, that much mass you can do it, but you're doing it one handed. So I was watching the guys talking to them and they said, man, why didn't they do a foot switch? So we're thinking, okay, let's, ~let's, uh, let's, you know, ~Neum, mattify this.
So ~we put together, ~we machined down some of their stuff and ~um, ~put just a little pancake cylinder on it with a foot switch from Automation Direct. I'll post a short or something 'cause it's worthy of. ~It's such a, like ~there's hardly any EC four hundreds compared to, ~you know, ~vertical machines out there.
Mm-hmm. But, and especially even fewer, um, pallet pools, but just an easy ~just ~foot switch, pneumatic positive pressure goes to it. It retracts the pin. You have two hands, you can control it. You just take your foot off, locks it in. It's the best little improvement, quality of life. And so ~there's, there's that, like ~even if you had that capability, ~the, ~the user experience of rotating things.
Is, ~that's like ~the next hurdle, ~you know? Um, ~I want to, I wanna share this because if you go to this website, I think it's Cix, C-E-I-L-I-X, they have this system called an Infinity [00:28:00] Crane, which is the coolest overhead handling solution.
I, that is a crazy, I'm looking at it right now. That is bananas. What is that?
You Okay. So.
It is basically, you know, like a, those robots are gonna kill us all. Okay, so these aren't robots, but you can robot ize it. So what it is, it's, it's a gantry system. ~So you ~think of a gantry rail that goes like an X, it moves left and right. Then you have another set of rails that go. Uh, you know, it's a y axis, but this is just a ceiling.
It's just simply a ceiling where it's got this hyper complex system where it just effortlessly goes in X and Y and then you, of course, it costs you so much. ~You, ~in their video, you attach a probably a hundred dollars Harbor freight hoist to it. ~Mm-hmm. ~But yeah, if you play some of those videos, I mean, it is just, I'm like, we don't need this.
We really want this at this point. So I'm wondering if you could do that. ~'cause that would, ~if you could just do a small section, [00:29:00] like a 10 foot section ~mm-hmm. ~Where you could move this around left and right. You could put it to ~the, ~the operator station, the load station over to some shelving. ~Uh, ~you could attach a robot to it.
I mean, I think Henry Holster's needs this at this point.
Andrew: Ca, there you go. Spending my money again. Of course, of course. I'm going to spend your money. Well, so the only thing is I look at it and go, ~it, it's, ~it's complex. It has a lot of moving parts, ~uhhuh, ~and I don't necessarily see in a constrained area what the advantage is over an X and y bar gantry system.
Jay: I know, I know. That's a buzzkill statement though. Like you still need this, right? No, but an XY gantry system ~does ~does solve the same problem.
Andrew: Albeit a lot. I, I need this about as much as I need a $5,000 Fender US Custom Shop Strat, which is to say, ~I mean, ~I desperately need it.
Jay: I, I am not, yeah, I'm with you on that.
I'm not gonna argue against that. ~Uh, ~so anyways, ~uh, ~vocab word for the day. Robust a size. Robust size, robust size. Did I
see [00:30:00] new Matt size? We were talking Yeah, I did say Neum Matt size. So yeah, go for it. ~Yeah,~
Andrew: so yesterday we were talking and ~I, I was, ~I was looking at a process. We were setting up a new job in the shop and I jokingly said, well, ~it's, ~it's pretty good, but we need to robust size this a little bit.
Like, ~you know, we just, ~I was torn between robust size and robust ate uhhuh. Both are good. The process, robust size is a little smoother. A little zippier. Sure. Um. But the idea like, okay, it works. Let's make it bombproof. Let's robust size it a little
Jay: bit.
Andrew: Yeah. ~Um, there's, there's so much, ~there's so much funny, like lean joke stuff.
Like, I want shirts. ~Like I, I, I actually, ~one of my guys designed some art that said, ~uh, ~born to flow, forced to batch.
Jay: Gosh,
that's super lean, nerdy. ~Like, ~I would not agree that it's super lean, it's
Andrew: super lean, nerdy. ~Um. ~You know, getting smed with it. You know, there's ~all kinds of, ~all kinds of lean jokes.
Speaking of lean, I bought a book. ~I'm gonna, ~I'm gonna pause for 10 seconds and go pick up this book. Sure. I'll be right back. Say on
Jay: mic. In the meantime, what I'm gonna tell audience about is [00:31:00] oftentimes I would say to my director of finance, ~I would say to him, uh, ~can you write a PO and schedule a pickup?
For whatever I'm sending to you in Signal. So today I officially said, Ryan, ~I'm, I'm going to, ~from here on out, I'm going to refer to this as a Pooh p po and pickup. So that's a little lean jargon that we're introducing into the ecosystem right there. So tell me about this book.
Andrew: I got bamboozled. ~Okay. So, uh, the, ~a book came up.
~I'm trying to think where I, ~it was in an article I was reading. It was. Five Pillars of the Visual Workplace by Hiroki Herano. ~Okay. Like the, ~this is part of the Origin of Five Sing. ~Mm-hmm. ~I'm like, okay, that's a book I haven't read. I should get that. And I hop on Amazon and I keyword search the author's name and the five pillars of the Visual Workplace.
And ~I sit, I, ~I get two results. One is an out of print hardback for like 60 or 70 bucks used. There's one copy available and the other's like a $10 paperback and it, it won the shingle [00:32:00] prize for excellence in manufacturing, so and so and so, and so five s for operators, the five pillars of the Visual Workplace, and it lists the author as Hi Yuki Herano.
Mm-hmm. You order it and it comes and on the inside cover it says. Based on the book, the Five Pillars of the Visual Workplace. Oh, that sucks. By Hi Yuki Herano, and it is a garbage soft back modern cliff notes of the book.
Jay: Okay.
Andrew: All right. I got bamboozled. Yeah, that happens. But I suspected I was being bamboozled, so I also bought the $65 hard back.
It's not here yet. ~Okay. But like the, ~the same way that I don't. Trust translators necessarily to capture the full meaning. ~Mm-hmm. ~If someone gives me a condensed version of something, I'm like, no, no, no, ~no. I'm not a kid anymore. ~I want to read what the author actually said. ~Mm-hmm. ~*Because there is gold in the details, *[00:33:00] *the phrasing, the choice of words, the emphasis, everything about it like.*
*If I wanna learn how to do something at an Olympic level *
Jay: *mm-hmm. *
Andrew: *I want to watch an Olympian doing it. I wanna* *learn from an Olympian who does it. I don't wanna hear somebody else paraphrase how an Olympian describes themselves doing it. Sure, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. *
Jay: Or
Andrew: an analyst or someone like that. Yeah.
I am still gonna go through this book and it may make it into our lean library, but. Man, lame sauce.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: Based
Jay: on the book. So the, okay, so the other thing, not just an Olympian, but ~um, ~like a five time gold medalist Olympian,
Andrew: uh, my friends, uh, Adam and Zane at Spirit of Systems, their company motto, I think it is, it's in Latin.
Those, these guys are all army veterans, but it is to be rather [00:34:00] than to seem, hmm. The whole idea is, you know the truth. ~Yeah. ~You know, whether you are actually doing it or not. You know, whether your work and your LinkedIn posts and whatever you're doing, you know, whether it's performance theater, or whether you're actually doing it.
Mm-hmm. And there is no substitute for actually doing it. Right. You cannot pretend hard enough. To replace actually
Jay: doing it. Love it. Yeah. The, the hand that, ~uh, ~does is the hand that knows. Um, and even the, that can filter things out, you know? 'cause there's a lot, like in today, in today's morning meeting we talked about actually all week, we've talked about failure and failure's.
The only way that you can actually qualify if things work or not. And once you feel like you've hit *success. Like I've said, like everything is broken. Like if it ain't broken, don't *[00:35:00] *fix it. No. At some point there's some optimized path that you can take. You just don't either recognize it or you just don't know it exists.*
*You don't have the mindset to know that there's* a better way to do it. 'cause you've taken ~that, you know ~that approach. Like, no, it's good enough. And sometimes you have to balance that. ~That's, you know, ~go back to the six types of working genius. The discerners in the organization will say, no, no, no. That's good enough.
We're just gonna run with this. We're gonna run this out. Exactly. That's what we do. Ship it. JSI. That's what we say. Just ship it. ~That's another Ackerman. ~Hey, I gotta run. I got another, ~uh, ~meeting right after this. ~Well, ~thank you Jay. Good to talk to you. We'll catch up next week. Likewise. Happy night.
[00:36:00]
