The Manufacturers' Network

Connect with Ashleigh Walters:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleigh-walters-makethingsbetter/Website: https://www.onexinc.com/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the manufacturers' network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you today to Ashley Walters. Ashleigh is President of Onex, an employee-owned business operating for over 54 years in Erie, Pennsylvania. Onex designs services and manufacturers high-temperature industrial furnaces. When Ashleigh assumed the general manager role in 2013, the company has lost sight of its mission and family-centric core values. Today Onex's mission is to make things better: empowered employees, happy clients, thriving communities.Ashleigh holds a BS in chemical engineering from Auburn University. She's the chairman of the board of directions for Northwest industrial resource Center, a manufacturing extensive partnership, and President and director of Aspire casualty, a reinsurance company. Ashleigh is the author of "Leading with Grit and Grace: a journey of organizational culture change. Ashleigh, welcome to the show.Ashleigh Walters: Thanks so much for having me, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Please share with us a little bit about your background and what led you to Onex, to begin with, in 2013.Ashleigh Walters: Sure, I have; as you noted, my bs in chemical engineering from Auburn University. I met my husband there back in 1998. He started Onex in the southern division in 2002 when we graduated from college; I joined Onex in 2003 as a technical salesperson.Fast forward to 2013. I was a stay-at-home mom with two little boys, and my father-in-law called to let me know that the current leader had left the organization and that he needed me to lead and take a look at the financials.Lisa Ryan: Okay, and then, and so what happened, I know that there was that they had kind of lost sight of their vision by that time so tell us a little bit about the process of what you saw and how that transition started to take place.Ashleigh Walters: The previous leader was a command and control style leader, so he had siloed the company. People weren't working well together. People were living in fear. The first thing I started asking curious questions: how are we doing this; what's going well; what's not going well. As I asked those questions, employees at first were fearful of answering me because they thought I would find something wrong in what they were doing. They thought I was going to throw them under the bus. Then they realized, as I helped them solve the problems they were facing, that I wasn't there to hurt them; I was there for them and helped get rid of the obstacles in their way. I call that a much more democratic approach to leadership.It's really about putting people first. As a leader, I have to help them. The most important part of my job is helping them do their job to the best of their abilities.Lisa Ryan: How about how many employees do you have it Onex.Ashleigh Walters: We have 50 full-time employees.Lisa Ryan: Okay, so going around and talking to each of the employees and having those conversations. How much time would you say that that took out of your week?Ashleigh Walters: To change a culture takes time. It took us a good four years before I felt like we were in a spot where everybody was on the bus everybody was on the same page. We did many different events and used many lean principles to help us make that cultural shift, so we started with a value stream mapping event.We mapped our entire production process, and then we went on to map our office processes as well. Since we did those different lean-type initiatives, it started the conversation and started the collaboration. Those initiatives are what helped to lead to the culture change as well.Lisa Ryan: So take us back to the early days when you first came in, and you start asking these employees questions, and they were still in that fear state. What did that sound like? How are they reacting? What did it feel like that there was the trust wasn't there?Ashleigh Walters: Yes, I think it was a very divided organization people came to work with their heads down to their work and left for the day. Now you can feel a difference when you walk in the door. You get smiles and friendly faces, and how can we help. It's just a different dynamic. You can tell people are working together, all playing on the same team.Lisa Ryan: You mentioned that you were helping employees when you were asking questions and then pitching in and giving them what they wanted. What were some of the things that they were asking as far as what's going on, what's working well, and what's not.Ashleigh Walters: yeah, sometimes it was just as easy as like a report; it took a ton of their time that I didn't need. Maybe the previous manager had wanted to see this report every Monday, but it wasn't important to me. Just flushing out some of this helped. I always asked what takes up the most of your time and annoys you. Then, whatever that was, we worked to try to fix it. We found three different people filing different AP stuff in different ways; it was just redundant tasks.We tried to flush out kind of the inefficiencies and waste in the system and, as we helped remove those obstacles and get rid of that annoying work for people, they were more apt to give us even more ideas on how we can improve.Lisa Ryan: I love that question of what annoys you because that can be a little bit of a difficult question because you don't know exactly how employees will answer that or what they're going to come up with. Was there some hesitation in using that word? What was it about the word annoying that made it?Ashleigh Walters: We've gone on to use that Paul Acres from his book and he says what bugs you might be a better way to phrase it. You're never allowed to talk about another person. It's always a process or a piece of your work that is causing the issue that you'd like to see improved. I also call it servant leadership in that you're there to serve. Those on the team look like going to their workspace and seeing them do the process and helping them understand like there is a better way to process - whether it's an officer on the production floor.Lisa Ryan: And I know that in your intro, it said that you're that Onex is an employee-owned ESOP, so was it like that, when you first came on board or how did you transition to an ESOP.Ashleigh Walters: So when I first joined Onex, my father-in-law, Eric walters, was the majority owner of the company. Drew and I purchased him out in 2018 and became the majority owners. Drew and I had begun thinking about Okay, what does a succession plan look like for us. And while I understand retirement succession planning for 40-year-olds seems like a very odd topic, we also knew that third-generation family-owned businesses only had a 13% success rate. So, while our two sons, we would love for them to come and work for the company, one day if they so choose, we didn't want to make that something they had to do. We tried to understand what succession planning for the future might look like for us.I sat in on a panel for succession planning, and I found out about an ESOP. When I came home and told Drew, I think this could be an excellent plan for us. He told me I was crazy that I hadn't understood what I heard about the planning event. We watched all the YouTube we could find on it, and he said, "actually, I think you're right. This is going to be a good option for us." We already had that family-centric culture. We repaired that culture, and an ESOP was a kind of a natural transition for us. It was just reimagining what a family-owned business looks like.Lisa Ryan: What is an ESOP? What does that mean that the employees own the company? What there a percentage is that is. Please share a little bit about what that looks like because Drew thought it was too good to be true. People who listen to this don't understand the full implications of what an ESOP is. Can you share a little bit about what you discovered?Ashleigh Walters: ESOP's became part of the law in 1976. there are not many of them in the US, I think; maybe around 5000 Companies are ESOP's. So it's not something that's widely known about. An ESOP is an employee stock ownership Program. That means Drew, and I sold all of our shares to the ESOP trust, so all of our shares went to the ESOP trust. They are released every year to the employees who Onex employs within that year, and they release based on payroll out of the total payroll for the year. The company is also valued every year, and so you, the employees get a statement at the end of each year that says, these are the shares that you own, and this is the value of those shares. The employees never pay a dime to be a part of an ESOP, but it becomes their retirement plan. So when they retire, the statistic is that they retire with 2.5 times more as an ESOP company than a traditionally matched 401k.Lisa Ryan: So what does that mean as far as succession planning, though? The employees own the company, but once you and Drew decide to retire, what happens in that next step?Ashleigh Walters: It's just like every other company. The next step is to make sure that we have leaders within the company that are coming up and learning how to lead and manage the company so that one day when we retire, those leaders are still here. The thing that Drew and I felt the best about is that previously, before we sold the shares, if Drew and I had been killed in a plane crash or a car wreck or something, then there wasn't a succession for the company itself there was no we don't know who would have bought the company if we weren't here. If something happens to us, the employees go right along; the company goes right along with no change.Lisa Ryan: Okay, that makes sense, so what are some of the things that are keeping you up at night.Ashleigh Walters: So I think as a leader, what keeps me up at night is always trying to assess a situation and understand what my options are for addressing it and thinking through the different options, all the different scenarios. It weighs very heavy on me that I have 50 families banking on me to make the right decisions. While I don't always make the right decisions, I try to fail fast, learn from them and quickly recover.Lisa Ryan: And from a networking standpoint, if you were to reach out and learn from your manufacturing colleagues or people that are listening to this podcast, what are some of the things that you might like to learn from other manufacturers.Ashleigh Walters: Since COVID 19 hit, I haven't been able to be in person and network with these other manufacturers or other business leaders in person. I do miss that. I always want to hear what they're doing, and their organization is going well. What I'm interested in is to hear about is not just the standard business stuff, but what are they doing that's different and unique, that's helping move their business forward.Lisa Ryan: And, by the same token, what expertise or insight would you be willing to share with your colleagues.Ashleigh Walters: So I certainly have led through to crisis now, so anybody coming out of this COVID 19 pandemic and it's just feeling a little tired and a little lost and doesn't know which way to go. I'd be more than happy to share my story and see if there's a nugget in there that would help them.Lisa Ryan: If you were to wrap this up and then nice bow and give your best idea or suggestion for something that's worked over there and Onex to the people listening, what would that be?Ashleigh Walters: So I think that the freedom to fail has been an ample opportunity and a competitive advantage for us here at Onex. I mean, you're free to make decisions within the bounds of our vision or mission and our core values. I'm not letting you light up a furnace and make it destructive. I'm only saying like think outside the box. Don't take the status quo; try something new. If it doesn't work, that's okay try again. You truly learn more from your failures than your successes but never make the same mistake twice.Lisa Ryan: that's terrific advice, and it also helps you create a safe environment for people. They would rather know that if something didn't work than they told you. You learned from their mistake and moved on versus knowing that they would get in trouble, and then you don't know where it's going to.Lisa Ryan: Well, Ashley, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show Thank you so much for sharing your insight with us.Ashleigh Walters: Thank you so much, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' etwork. See you next time.

Connect with Per Sjofors:Email: per@sjofors.com.Website: www.sjofors.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast. I'm here today with Per Sjofors. Per is the founder of Sjofors Partners. Pricing has always been an interest area for Per. As a serial entrepreneur running companies in Europe and the U.S., he did pricing experiences. Now some of these experiences worked spectacularly well, and others not so much. As a result, Per founded his company out of his frustration that his business schools taught him that pricing is too abstract, too academic for a business executive to act on. Per, welcome to the show today.   Per Sjofors: Thank you very much, Lisa, and thank you for having me.Lisa Ryan: Absolutely. Share with us a little bit about your background. What brought you here, and with this whole focus on pricing and the craziness that goes along with that?Per Sjofors: Well, it's a little bit of what you just mentioned. I had been able to run a few companies here in the U.S. and in Europe before I moved here. And these experiments we did with pricing - some were spectacular. I mean, we could see revenues are up 25 percent the next quarter, and others were complete duds. And business school learnings were so academic and so theoretical that it was useless. So, 13 years ago, I decided I was too old and too opinionated to report to anybody.  So I decided to take that interest in pricing and develop a process that would make every pricing experiment a success. That is the process that we've been using ever since. And the core of the process is to understand how you can predict sales volume at different prices. Now, once you can predict sales volume at different prices, and when you can predict revenue at different prices, you can set the price that is the best for you if that prediction is correct. Lisa Ryan: Right. When it comes to manufacturing, you and I have talked about this a couple of times, but we think that there's just one way to do pricing in cost-plus. But this is one of the biggest mistakes that manufacturers are making. And there are two others. What do you see about these mistakes, and how can we start to turn that around and be more profitable?   Per Sjofors: Cost-plus is a big one. I've been there myself in some of these companies. We use a rule of thumb because different industries have different rules of thumb - some are 35 percent, some is 50 percent, some double the price. In some industries, you go up as high as ten times the cost. But, it's all irrelevant because your cost as a manufacturer has very little to do with the value you deliver to customers.   There's another very logical thing, but a lot of manufacturers don't think about it. And this is if you manage to reduce your cost, your price goes down in dollars. If you manage to reduce your cost and have your prices the way they are, there's no reason to make a little more money. The other another mistake, of course, is to look at a competitor.   If you have competitors that have prices online, it's quote-unquote, easy. And many times, in manufacturing, you don't have that ability. You try to get somebody at last year's price list or maybe an international price list or something like that. And they'll give you some hints somewhere where competition or pricing sets their prices. But it doesn't tell you the story. It doesn't tell you what deals they're making, doesn't tell you about bundles they're making. It doesn't work. That tells you what kickbacks they may offer to their clients and special incentives, and so forth. So trying to set a price based on a competitor leads to using the wrong price. And by the way, that competitor may well have guessed in getting to set their price in the first place. Lisa Ryan: When you think about it, you're trying to differentiate yourself from your competitor anyway, as far as in terms of product, in terms of service, and in favor of something else that you're doing. And if you're going to price yourself the same, then what differentiating factor do you have?   Per Sjofors: Well, you used a very keyword here, differentiators. When I did these experiments, the key was to figure out from the process I developed how you can differentiate yourself in meaningful ways to your customers so that you can command higher prices so that you gain a little bit of pricing power.Let me give you an example. We're currently working with a company that provides steel plates that you run over when there's a trench in the street. Can you think about something that is more commoditized than a piece of metal?Lisa Ryan: And it doesn't have to look pretty. You're driving over it for.Per Sjofors: Exactly. This company naming no names here, has managed to become the high price leader in their market. They charge between 20 to 25 percent higher fees than the competition. They also charge delivery fees - the competition doesn't do that. Now, how do they do that?  Well, by adding services to a commodity product. They have managed to position themselves to be the thought leader by providing educational services on safety. They have consultants that advise on what kind of steel plates you should use. They have managed to differentiate themselves in a way that is meaningful to their clients.Lisa Ryan: That's probably what happens when you're selling that to a purchasing agent. They're thinking that they're just calling and buying pieces of metal to put on a road. But when this manufacturer comes and says, and we can do this, and we can share this, these safety tips and everything, it's just really looking at your business differently.Per Sjofors: Exactly. Yeah. This is a trend that's been going on for a while. We know that more and more commodity manufacturers are becoming service organizations that also sell the commodity. By doing so, you almost always increase that pricing power.   Lisa Ryan: You mentioned in our conversation a couple of weeks ago that maybe you have a little less flexibility in the price if you have a commodity product. You talked about bundling, making it difficult for people to compare those apples and oranges of the bundles. But then you're looking if you're doing a strictly a cost-plus, then you have some of these higher-margin things that maybe you're letting leaving money on the table. So tell us about both ends of those of that spectrum.Per Sjofors: It's fascinating because companies that use cost-plus typically have the same uplift or margin for every product. But every company has specific products that are a complete commodity and certain products that have a level of uniqueness. One of the recommendations that we discuss is how to segment the product on a scale from unique to commodity. You want to categorize these anywhere you want to call them A, B, and C, meaning A are unique products. C is complete commodities, and B products are somewhere in between.That leads to a different pricing strategy for all of these with the unique products; all discounting should stop, prices should increase. For C products, it's all about strict cost control. True commodity products are being sold on price. And for those B products, those are sort of in-between; you should find out if you can add something to make a product a B product, so you gain that pricing power.Lisa Ryan: There are three mistakes that manufacturers make in their pricing. What else are they doing wrong?   Per Sjofors: Cost-plus is a mistake because the cost has little to do with the benefit that your competitor does. It's the benefit and the value that the customer sees. The sort of costs among various manufacturers are similar, so you end up having a near-identical product with near-identical prices. But that is also an opportunity because that means that the savvy manufacturer can differentiate themselves and, once they do, see a doubling of sales growth and three to five times higher valuation, which is enormous.  We touched upon this already; the third major mistake is to guess. I remember speaking to a CEO a couple of years ago. He had this product, and he said, we priced this one hundred sixty dollars. I don't know; he said maybe he should have been ninety-nine. Perhaps it should have been three-fifty. I don't know, but one hundred and sixty just felt right.   Lisa Ryan: It's so funny. We talk about this, and immediately my mind goes to Shark Tank. You have people coming out of Shark Tank, and they want a ten million dollar valuation. And the product hasn't even come to market yet. But then they say the sentence that the sharks hate, "but this is a three billion-dollar business." Oh, yeah. Well, I think, and if we just got .02 of the market, we can make tons of money. That drives the sharks wild. Per Sjofors: Another there's another term for that, which is the Chinese sneaker syndrome. You know, I'm going to sell sneakers to only half a percent of the Chinese population, and I'll have a million-dollar company. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's also interesting that you mention Shark Tank because they talk about pricing there sometimes, but the sharks make the same mistakes. They're saying your price is like your competitor or price a little lower. Or, your product is not as good as a competitor, so price a little lower. And how much is a little lower? Well, it's gotta be lower, or your product is a little bit better; it's gut-feels higher. That's not the way to do it. That's guessing. Right.   And it's so funny because companies generally go from, you know, everything should be driven by data, and then you guessed the price.    Lisa Ryan: Well, it's kind of like asking your friends or asking people, hey, I'm about to develop this product. Is it something of interest to you? Oh, yeah. That sounds like a great idea. That's the best idea I've ever heard. But a follow-up, would you buy it and what would you pay for it and try to get that real sense of. Yeah, that's a great idea, because again, we go back to Shark Tank. How many of those people are all my friends told me this was a great idea.   Per Sjofors: Whenever you do some as a startup, you never want to talk to your friends about this. They will never tell you the truth. You come up with a dud of a product or a product idea, and they will say, oh, yes, this is great. There are statistics that roughly 40 percent of all startup fails because they say there's no product to market fit. Why? Because they haven't done the research. They haven't understood what potential customers truly are willing to pay for that product. So they're guessing their price, which means that they're either too high and won't sell anything or are too low, and they're not making enough money.  And so they fail. It's about that ability to understand sales volume at different prices. And that will always lead to the right price. And sometimes, if you do this as a startup, you may end up saying, I will never make money on this product, so get it right now.Lisa Ryan: And when it comes to pricing, again, a lot of people are thinking, well, it's got to be the low price. If I can just come out with the lowest price, I can make it up in volume. So, what's the error of that thinking?Per Sjofors: This is a very well-known example, but look at Apple versus Samsung. Samsung has telephones or smartphones that are technically superior to Apple in virtually all aspects, yet a Samsung phone is three hundred bucks, and an Apple phone is twelve hundred. How do they get there? Well, they got there by superior marketing, by having differentiators that make sense to the client. And yes, Apple has a small market share, but they have superior valuation. And they generate 70, 80 percent of the whole cell phone industry's profits.   Lisa Ryan: If somebody's listening to this podcast today, decides that they need to start looking at their pricing, what's a good place for them to start?Per Sjofors: Well, obviously, I want to put myself forward. There are very few people that work with pricing in the way that we do. It's a unique way, and it's a practical way because it came from that very practical need I had in the companies I've been running. So obviously, my website is sjofors.com, and my email is at per@sjofors.com. Lisa Ryan: And so what does that process look like? Where do you start with your clients?   Per Sjofors: We work specifically with manufacturers. We start with an impact analysis, which is relatively short. We have our own A.I. software. It's a fairly short term and not a very expensive analysis of a company's transactional sales data. From that, we can assess how much more would they make if they price right. A typical 20 small 25, 50, 100 million dollar manufacturer, the results of that, is almost always several million dollars in in in in in revenue that is pure profit.   Lisa Ryan: Wow, so that's a big difference. So if you could wrap it up in a nice bow and share your best idea or biggest aha, somebody's watching this today can use it right away.   Per Sjofors: Pricing is much more important than most companies believe it is. And pricing is also something that you can work with proactively. Pricing is part of the four quadrants of marketing for a reason because those four pieces are connected. And when you start working with pricing proactively, the company will earn superior profits, crush the competition, and lead to unexpected shareholder values. Lisa Ryan: It has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thanks for hanging out with me here.   Per Sjofors: Thank you very much, Lisa. And thank you for having me.Lisa Ryan: You're welcome. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network podcast. See you next time.

Connect with Lisa AndersonWebsite: www.lma-consulting.com You can also call 90963039 Telephone: 909-630-3943Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan from the manufacturers' network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you today to our guest, Lisa Anderson. Lisa provides expertise and advice on maximizing the customer experience and enabling profitable, scalable, dramatic business growth. She's worked in industries as diverse as aerospace and defense, building and industrial products, food and beverage, consumer products, and health care products. Before founding LMA consulting group, she was the Vice President of operations at Paper Pack. Her tenure included transitions and promotions through its transformation from a $100 million family-owned business through a merger and acquisition of three businesses combined into one 350 million dollar global company. A leveraged management buyout followed this combined with an investment banking group, which sounds like quite the ride. Lisa Anderson: Thank you. I'm glad to be here, and it was a great experience.Lisa Ryan: So share with us a little bit about your background, including more details of what you did with Paper Pack.Lisa Anderson: So I've been consulting now for 15 years, but before that, I started my career at Coca Cola and did planning and distribution planning. I went to a press plastic injection molder and then onto Paper Pack. It was quite the experience. We grew the core business and then bought a division of P&G and bought another smaller entrepreneurial company similar to us. It was quite an exciting challenge to merge cultures, people, processes, and systems successfully to integrate the products, grow the business, and increase profits and increase the company's value. It was a great experience to utilize in my consulting today.Lisa Ryan: And even with all of those changes and everything you went through in your history before today. The last year has been, shall we say, rather interesting in manufacturing. How are you working with all of these changing conditions in the manufacturing marketplace?Lisa Anderson: Well, never been busier. Current clients are finding that their demand is volatile. It depends on who their customers are, and the importance of the customer is shining through with coronavirus. A food manufacturer could be their customers' customer could be a Costco as an example, has been increasing as people are still shopping for food. On the other hand, the customers' customer could be Starbucks, and that took a nosedive when a lot of Starbucks slows down and, in some areas of the country, only drive through their open. That's led to volatility in demand, which meant that we had to focus extra efforts on understanding changing customer decisions, getting a change in customer behaviors, and getting a better handle on our demand, so that we could know what to manufacture and how to set up our supply chain to be successful.Lisa Ryan: And that's one of the things that I've been hearing from a lot of the people that I've had as guests on the show is the thing that's keeping them up at night is the supply chain, because you don't know one day to the next, so what are you, seeing as far as what's going on in manufacturing what's going on in the supply chain.Lisa Anderson: Well, that's a great question. I'm seeing that manufacturers that were already innovating and understood the importance of having a diversified supply chain. That doesn't mean that "hey, I have to have ten suppliers for every material or anything, but it does mean we have to be used uncommon common sense and be thinking strategically ahead. For example, when I was a Vice President of operations, we had one of the critical materials we purchased from Brazil. There are plenty of things that can go wrong in getting the product from Brazil into the United States, so all along, we had a backup source of supply in the United States on the east coast. Now we didn't just establish a backup supply that we went to them if something went wrong. Instead, we had 20% of our volume going through the backup source supply all along, so that they were working with us, they knew they could count on us for some volume. They knew they were the backup supply, but they were a vital backup supply. This did not make our private equity investors happy because they preferred that we didn't have to spend as much money on this critical raw material. Luckily, we won that battle and kept utilizing them because we had issues with the ports somewhere along the line. I think it was the transportation challenges. There's plenty of obstacles, and our backup sources supply ramped up quickly. One of the clients that we're doing that sort of thing already is better off than saying no. No time like now to start and rethink what you're doing in your supply chain, and that's just one example. The other thing is folks had supply let's say you had two places within Asia well, that's not helpful, even if they had China and India let's say they both experienced issues around the same time, and it still created challenges. So, it's thinking about the same thing that could be true in the United States, when I was in that role again everything under the sun happened, of course, when I was in that role, so there was a hurricane the things happen. In North Carolina, our plant was lucky, as a P&G plant, so they planned it strategically on a hill, which was helpful because the rest of the town was underwater. That said, we weren't, but no, we couldn't do anything for several weeks in our suppliers were affected. Hence, we had to have backup sources of supply and sources of production. You know, the ability to be agile so that the issues could happen, no matter where you are. However, the closer you are to your customer, the more likely, you can respond quickly, so I'll turn it over to you because there's plenty more I could talk about. Still, I'm sure you have other questions.Lisa Ryan: You said companies that are already innovative are the ones that are faring better. What do some of those innovations look like? If somebody hasn't necessarily been that innovative to this point, what would be a good area for them to start?Lisa Anderson: Well, you know that's true, so it could be something simple like getting a better handle on customers' changing customer requirements and changing customer patterns. That could be as simple as talking to your customers and collaborating with customers to impact our customers' customers. How do we positively impact their product and service? It could just be collaborating with your customer on innovating in terms of the service you're providing. So it could be that you customize a product on the fly. At the end of the process, your customer can tweak the product or tweak it to the service. Some of it's just about having the service to figure out what your customers' customers need. Let's say your end customer is a customer at Walmart, which is the same situation as if your customer was Boeing, which is surprisingly enough at the end in Walmart. You have a customer buying product so that you can get that point of sale type data, and at Boeing, they're using the product to build a plane either way. If you can figure out what needs to go to all the Boeing branches, there are fewer than Walmart's, but several still exist. So if you can figure out what needs to go to each Boeing for each growing facility, Boeing doesn't have to do it and have what they need when they need it. They don't have too much; that's a service that you're providing to Boeing. The same thing is true for Walmart, which is more expected. Still, Walmart's the same thing. If we provide products to every Walmart in the country and the distribution centers, it depends on what you're doing and what you're supplying them, which saves them a lot of hassle. They can focus on more activities that help them promote the products in the store. Let's say that's some of the innovative products and services you could provide without even having to redesign products or do anything significant. When it relates to the product, there are many configured orders like options on products, where you can say you know I'd like it in this package size of that package size or this color. Suppose you can put those closer to the customers' point where you serve the customer. In that case, your customer can change their mind. They don't necessarily know what their customers will do to have a more agile, flexible service to better serve their customers. Hence, it's all about how do you find ways to serve your customers better in a more profitable way? When you look at how we do it more profitably, we go back into our manufacturing side and say, what can I produce these items to a certain point in the process and then mass customize or customize the fly. Lisa Ryan: Well, one of the things that it's such an interesting way of looking at things that people are only considering their customers and the fact of just taking it that one step further, to think about your customers' customer. It gives you that much better of an opportunity to understand how you can better serve that customer so that they can serve their customer. It just opens up not only a whole new conversation and way of looking at things, but it sets your business apart because nobody else is asking them that question. You can do something right off the bat, sit down and look at your top three customers, top five customers, etc. and think about what's my customers' customer. Then have that conversation.Lisa Anderson: It's shown through the coronavirus because the customers' customers reacted differently from the past. Historical patterns were blown up. Everything changed. If the customers' customer supported hospitality, they probably aren't doing well. If they supported the PPE type of business, they increased dramatically. That was true for many other less obvious industries, how you service those customers, and what kind of value you could provide. You can differentiate yourself far easier and quicker in a way than even redesigning products. Not that you shouldn't be looking at that also.Think about it consumers have changed the way they consume it during this pandemic. Not everything that we did pre-pandemic is what we want to do post endemic. We may not even know, but we will evolve, and so our businesses, our understanding of what new products they would need in new services. We were talking about services before this. So, what new products they'll need and or what tweaks to products they'll need in the future. Given what's happening in the pandemic, we don't want to wait till it's done to figure that out. Somebody had to be first. Apple came out with the iPod, but the iPod was just a better walkman. No one knew they needed an iPod. So I know it's fascinating about it, it wasn't entirely new. You have to think about how can I make my customers' lives better. What would they want?  Lisa Ryan: Well, and one of the things that came out of the whole pandemic was it's speeded up the technology. If it had not been for the pandemic, we're probably light years ahead now just because we have been forced to adopt technology that may have taken months or years to be able to implement. So what is some of the technology that companies should be looking for looking at today?Lisa Anderson: Well, that's true. I've been involved in this region of the country, which in southern California, was known in terms of advanced manufacturing and significant and distribution. Because of the Asian supply chain, and so they had been concerned for several years, we needed to re-skill and look at how we deal with the changing conditions. Because of technological advances, we're going to automate warehouses, as well as manufacturing facilities. How would we keep up with changing conditions since the pandemic that has been accelerated? What was five years ago was is happening now. So that's like to your point, first of all, that's true. So what are some of the necessary technologies? You want to have a modern system, which is the system, that you use to take orders, ship receive, produce, invoice, etc. These days, if you have a highly customized system, if you have a system that cannot scale with your growth, you are behind your competitors' rest. Because of the modern systems today, we have many capabilities built into them that you can utilize to scale your business successfully. They also integrate better with some of the technologies that I'm going to talk about, so I started with the system. You can't build a house with just windows; you have to have a foundation and some walls. So it would help to have a foundation in your technology to start with, so with that said, artificial intelligence is gaining momentum. How does that apply well for one in the demand forecasting, which we just talked about changing customer conditions? The ability to apply artificial intelligence to find patterns where there are none is helpful. So that's one of the areas where artificial intelligence is coming into play similarly in like cash flow planning, which is critical especially depending on your size company or status. Certainly, if you're looking at going into an area of growth, having cash to support that growth is essential. It certainly comes up on the manufacturing floor, so when you look at it instead of doing preventative maintenance, how do I predict which maintenance which equipment or machinery do I need need to be looking at now, instead of just going to what the preventive maintenance schedule let's pinpoint where it's going to break down and fix it - resolve that before it even breaks down. So that's one of the areas that a lot of the manufacturers, especially the bigger ones, have been doing all along, but that's, so that's like artificial intelligence. Still, there's plenty of folks looking at robots. Robots are good. Robots are bad. Well, robots are both. I'm working with a food manufacturer that has invested a lot in technology. Technology has its good points and bad ones. You can go faster and be more efficient; you don't have to worry about people standing next to each other with covid and all sorts of advantages, on the other hand. But you have high-speed lines going by with like food bars, in this case. One thing goes wrong, and the rest is kind of that Lucy show everything could start flying off the line. You get all sorts of issues and waste and all kinds of problems. So you have to bring the right skills in. You have to do it smartly, so it's not always going faster is not always better if you don't keep your quality, etc. However, many robots, a lot going on their Internet of Things, certainly connecting machinery to other systems and related parts, are gaining momentum. You know the augmented reality. One of the things with the virtual world we live in today is that the experts may not be readily available to fly out and help you with your machinery or equipment or just everyday tasks that you have to do.It would help if you had an expert. So, we can do a lot with webinars and zoom and those kinds of things when it comes to more analysis, the planning, the project side of things in the end, and even the earpiece side of things. When it comes to the machinery and equipment, it's helpful to show somebody what's going on, so you can start simply by showing a video of what's going on in the manufacturing facility and walking through.I've done that with some clients just to layout their processes. Still, you can go a step further. There are 3D glasses and ways you can collaborate with folks to help somebody who's solving a problem on the line. Some technologies support that type of activity; there are autonomous vehicles and all sorts of opportunities. I think technology is also making labor costs less relevant I mean, that's been happening anyway because if you're comparing it to China. Let's say the rates have been going up in China. There are so many extra costs added into the end to end supply chain when you think about inventory and IP and the risks and all these other things. In addition to that, technology has allowed us to produce faster, more efficiently, automate tasks. One of my clients uses a robot to produce throughout the night, so they need the skills to set the product up, but then, if they can keep it on a certain product that they required extra volume of they can produce that through the night, and then in the morning, they can look at it. That helps them keep up with customer demand, so there's a lot to be said for that requires very little labor. Hence, it's enabling folks to relook at their manufacturing and supply chain operations and reevaluate where should I source products, how should I set this up where should I be located those types of things.Lisa Ryan: When the other thing is that I've noticed in just in the last year, how much easier technology is. It's much more intuitive than it's ever been before. It's much less scary than it's been before, where in the past, that might have been this whole overwhelming project product or project to bring all of this technology into the plant. Now you get it, and it simplifies your life, probably to a greater extent than the pain of implementation, as you would have had just a few years ago.Lisa Anderson: I think that's very true. That reminds me of another aspect of the system that's gaining popularity is E-commerce and B2B. Collaborating with customers with a portal for those kinds of things has gotten far easier and far more implementable. The philosophy has changed largely, and so that's partly why some of the modern ERP systems and the appropriate partner are quite important. But if you can implement these technologies and more of a like strategic sprint or in an agile fashion, you don't have to worry about learning something completely new. Agile is a somewhat uncommon common sense, which means let's try the most critical piece and start to implement there. We start directionally, and then we iterate and change as we go, but it means that you don't have to have everything perfect and spend months and months before you see any results and then like something's gone wrong, and you have to start all over again, which is not.Lisa Ryan: So if you were to give your best piece of advice to people listening today, what would that be?Lisa Anderson: Well, so I would say, the one thing that they can do is look at changing customer conditions changing customer requirements and how you can add value to that to your customers and your customers' customers. It will take your business to a whole new level. More companies will succeed, and not only succeed but pull away from the competition during times of turbulence. If you want to pull away from the competition by innovating, pulling all the resources to innovate, collaborate, and look at your data. None of that will be possible if you don't start with your team. Ensure that you have the right people on your team and that you're empowering and engaging them. This sounds easy, and it is not easy to accomplish. You really need to be doing that and creating a culture of innovation, and...

Connect with John Hrdlick:Email: John.Hrdlick@inxintl.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-hrdlick-ba953815/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, and welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, John Hrdlick. John is President and CEO of INX International Ink company. He spent most of his career in the industry at INX during his 44 years with the company. He's worked in the production lab and text service, eventually landing. Operations Management around 1994 as a VP in 2011, he became a senior CIO, and then President. He added CEO in 2019. He enjoys managing the employees towards their goals and challenges in all of his roles. He's also an active member and participant on NAPIM boards and the IMDPA associations. John, Welcome to the show.John Hrdlick: Hi, Lisa. I'm delighted to be here. Always a pleasure talking to you.Lisa Ryan: Share with us what led you into INX, and share with us that journey of what got you to where you are.John Hrdlick: Well, it's a journey that most people don't see these days. I came out of high school; there were other opportunities. I did start college after high school, and at the time, due to the cost and my maturity level, I didn't last very long. And I left with the idea that I'd get my act together, I get some money in the bank, and then go back to school. So that led me to a shift position in a factory. I was laid off, and a friend of mine got me into the business where he worked. I was a production worker. That was a different company. I stayed there for three years and then went to INX to make more money because I got married. So I've been very fortunate to work for a company like INX, and opportunities kept coming my way. Every chance I had to move up or take on a different role, I took it, and it eventually took me to where I am today. Everyone has a mentor, and I was lucky to have Rick Leaneti. He's my mentor. He was our President for 19 years, so he brought me up to the organization, which helped me understand our company's culture. It took me all over the world. I've seen most of our employees. I think most of our facilities and that also includes seeing customers all over the world. So even though I had mainly operational positions. I was still involved with sales and people and to be successful. I focused on that taking care of our people and taking care of our customers.Lisa Ryan: So when you said that everyone in the company had a mentor expand a little bit more about that. What did that program look like, and how did that what levels do people get mentors. How did that process work?John Hrdlick: Well, at the time, we didn't have a program. Individuals at INX would take people under their wings and help them along. I worked for Rick for ten years. Then I left and came back about five years later and worked for him again. I moved up to our corporate office, and there was probably a period of five or six years where I didn't work directly for Rick, but he was always there.When I became CEO, he and I worked together every day. Even when I didn't realize he was mentoring me, he taught me and helped me and the ability to do what I do today; it wasn't an organized program. It was just someone who saw something in me and took me under his wing, and you see that all of our company.Lisa Ryan: Starting on the production floor and then ending up as President, you're right. It's not a story that you hear every day. So, is that one of the things that you attribute to success is the fact that they groom people within the company versusJohn Hrdlick: Least I would say there's a good mix. But what he has done over the years is they do nurture their employees. INX is a great company, and people tend to stay and make a full career out of our company. If you look at our average tenure, our employees were with us for 22 years on average. That has gone down in recent years for two reasons. Number one, our business is growing, so we're adding employees, but also because of the baby boomer effect, we're seeing a lot more retirements now. It's not uncommon to see people at INX with 50 years or more of experience, in their 40s, like me, 30s 25.Every month, I fill out anniversary cards for each employee. In North America, South America, and Europe and it's one of their milestone years, whether it's 5, 10, 15, and so on. I send them a handwritten card, and that resonates with employees. It fits our culture of having open-door policies. Anybody can call me up or send me an email. Sometimes that creates a lot of extra work. Still, anyone who works at INX knows they can connect to senior management at any given time. That is very important and the opportunities they see to move up in the company. So it's an excellent all-round company.Lisa Ryan: How many employees, approximately, do you have?John Hrdlick: Overall, in our part of the company, we have roughly 1300 employees.Lisa Ryan: So 1300 employees and regularly, you are sending out handwritten cards acknowledging those employees. Did I hear you correctly?John Hrdlick: Yes, but that's for milestone anniversaries only. Suppose I had to do that every year for every employee.Lisa Ryan: Right. You'd never be enough time.John Hrdlick: On average, it's probably 12 to 15 cards a month to fill out.Lisa Ryan: Okay, that's such an important point because that 12 to 15 cards, which most people don't even write one or two and a month, but it makes such a colossal difference takes minimal time. So what would you say you invest an hour, a couple of hours?John Hrdlick: I would say two hours. I try not to write the same thing. And every card - and many of the employees I know. So I can add something that I know about them. So roughly two hours; I break it up, so I don't do every card in one sitting before my writing gets terrible or unreadable. So I try to take my time and break it up throughout the month.Lisa Ryan: I've been on the receiving end of a note for a handwritten note from a CEO or CEO. When I was in the welding industry, Bud Kailash was at the top of the organization as Chairman CEO. When I had a good month, Bud would write on my Commission statement, "Congratulations. Lisa. Good month." It means the world when somebody takes the time out to do that. So I want to commend you for doing that. To the people who are listening, these little personalizations can make such a huge difference to your employees. Speaking of that culture, which obviously, you must have a pretty terrific culture because of the tenure you have there besides the handwritten notes. What are some of the other things that are going well?John Hrdlick: There's a lot of things we're doing well. But if I look at the top of the list, I have to say I can't talk about this without mentioning our response to covid. We're very proud of our employees. The last year, every directive we sent out, every update letter we've sent, everything we've asked our employees to do, they've responded. We're in an essential company, so we never stopped manufacturing. Our corporate office moved to their homes to work within three days of covert starting, which's roughly 80 people. To repeat the cooperation and attitude from our employees to keep everything running during this time is very commendable we 86% of our products find their way onto food packaging. That food packaging and beverage packaging ends up in the grocery stores, and that's what made us essential. We were part of the supply chain that get food and beverages in the stores for people who couldn't go out to restaurants and things like that anymore. We reminded our employees of their part in that process, and we made sure we were communicating every month with them. So they were up to date on everything we were doing.Lisa Ryan: Wow. What are some of the other things that you or your leadership team do to take care of your employees to connect with them?John Hrdlick: Well, we work in a very competitive industry, and to stay profitable, reasonably profitable, and viable, we have to manage our costs very well. So many years ago, we instituted a program that thinks it's TPM - total productive maintenance. We didn't come up with it. It's based on a Japanese model. But the best way I can describe TPM is it's lean on steroids. It's to get the involvement of the employees' management needs to go out on the shop floor, talk to the employees. Ask them what's working, what's not working. What did they need from us to help them and whatever we do to improve our production floors' efficiencies, the employees are directly involved. So that helps us involve them in the entire process, but they get to know management. The employees see me walk around. They see our CEO walk around in our various division vice presidents, and you get that one on one relationship with employees. We're one of them. We're coming to them for help to make us more efficient. That has helped us over the years to mitigate our manufacturing costs increase every year. When we budget, we target zero budgeting for our operations. With our business growth, we strive to, year to year, keep our costs reasonably flat as much as possible.Lisa Ryan: So it sounds like you've created a safe environment for employees to get to know you, to feel valued to be, to feel heard, to feel that their input is also appreciated. Do you have specific examples of an idea that maybe came from the floor that you were able to implement that made a significant difference in the company recently?John Hrdlick: Yes. There are so many. Some of them have minor impacts, but they all add up. Others can go well into six figures in savings, but they're all related to the process itself. We recently had a significant improvement in our freight costs in 2020. Simply by our logistics team taking a harder look at the areas in our freight costs that we weren't managing well, putting out monthly metrics, and then working with the plants on how they could improve those metrics. We worked with our freight vendors on how we could improve with them as well. That was a significant cost saving in 2020. At some point, that team has to present their project to management, giving them recognition. It involves management asking them questions and giving them the proper pat on the back for what they've done. Whether it's small savings or considerable savings, they're putting their effort into helping us be better, and we show them a lot of gratitude for that.Lisa Ryan: And for the people who are listening to this, who may be afraid to ask employees what they want because they think they're going to come up with some off the wall: I want $20 more an hour and six months vacation. So when you take the time to ask your employees sincerely, what have you found in the real world that happens?John Hrdlick: Well,  when we're walking around the plants. We call it the Gemba. We talk to the employees and ask them how they're doing and what would make their job easier - things of that nature. It's a casual conversation. And generally, when I'm part of that, you can get 1, 2, 3 ideas that will take back to the local management team, and they have to act on them within a certain amount of time and either accept them as valid projects or reveal that is could be rejected. Sure, as there's a little bit more to the story. But no matter if we accept or reject an idea, the employee is talked to about it. And if we reject an idea, their manager explains instead of not saying anything, so that helps. And of course, we have suggestion boxes, and we try to get a certain number of suggestions every month from every facility. There's always encouragement for our employees to put something in the box. So when you do something like that, you can get some off the wall ideas. But again, we address every one of them. None of them had been too terrible, but some that aren't realistic, and we explained that to the employees.Lisa Ryan: Right. So what are some of the things that are keeping you up at night?John Hrdlick: Well, go back to covid, we've been running. We're essential, and we've been successful, but we still have cases we've had cases. Luckily, we haven't had to shut down our facilities in any way. Still, I get worried about that; now and then, you get a phone call in the middle of the night. We run 24/7, 24/5, so those phone calls can come, and sometimes it involves me being called, So anytime I hear the phone ring in the middle of the night, it's a problem at a facility or Japan, but that worries me. But again, our employees have been very resilient and cooperative. Other things that wake me up at night or keep me up. I would say the last few years. There have been significant problems with freight carriers, the service level, and that service's cost. They're short drivers. The tanker trucks are in short supply with qualified drivers. So everybody in manufacturing is probably dealing with this problem in one way, shape, or form. But when we can't get our product to a customer or can't get our raw materials to our plan because of transportation problems, we can quickly create a massive problem with our supply chain. The other thing that can keep me up at night is we're very focused on safety had our company, and from time to time, there might be an accident in a plant and some of our plants. The nature of the product they produce can be more dangerous than others, but I never liked to get the phone call that there was an employee accident or a product spill somewhere. We're concerned about the welfare of our employees. And then, when you go beyond that, it can have a broader impact. So those things cause me to either be woken up in the night or sometimes stay on my mind.Lisa Ryan: So, from a networking standpoint, if you were to connect with other manufacturing colleagues. What are some of the things you would like to learn from them, and in turn, what is some of the expertise or strategies that you would be willing to share with other manufacturers?John Hrdlick: Well, we can always use help, and we always look for help dealing with the job openings we have in manufacturing, and I think everyone's been dealing with this trying to entice younger people to get into our industry and work in manufacturing. We've tried many different things, and we could probably share some of those with other people, but we're always looking for new ways to draw people to or would be very beneficial to me and the rest of us. That's very important to us, and also the area of freight again. We're doing something different with our freight management system. Still, I would like to hear what other companies are doing to deal with the challenges out there because it impacts manufacturing, like filling open positions. So those two areas are areas where we could get help from other manufacturers. We could also share what we've done; maybe that could go both ways. Areas were where I think we could help if anyone is still trying to get their arms around managing through covid, I think what we've done as a company wasn't rocket science, but it's been very successful. Our TPM program would help other manufacturers, even if they only use a portion of it. As I said before, it involves the employees, and anything you can do to include employees will eventually improve your operating efficiencies. So I think that those areas we could help, but other people could help us.Lisa Ryan: Terrific. Well, John, if you were to wrap it up in a nice little bow with your best tip for somebody listening today to improve their workplace culture like you've done so well over things. What would that be?John Hrdlick: Keep it simple. It's not all about the numbers. The numbers are significant. But if you take care of your people and take care of your customers, treat them as human beings, and the result is the numbers will take care of themselves.Lisa Ryan: John, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been an absolute pleasure having a conversation with you.John Hrdlick: Oh, thank you very much. Lisa Ryan: I am Lisa Ryan, and this is the manufacturer's network. See you next time.

Connect with Suzanne O'Connell:Email: soconnell@certifiedThomaspartner.com.  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannemoconnell/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, andwelcome to the manufacturers' network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you toour guest today. Suzanne O'Connell. Suzanne is a mechanical engineer andcertified Thomas partner. She has 28 years experience in manufacturing and 20plus years in digital marketing, and nearly a decade serving Thomas industrialsB2B clients. Welcome to the show.Suzanne O'Connell: Lisa, Thank you so muchfor having me. Glad to be here.Lisa Ryan: So as we get started. Thatis a lot of engineering and manufacturing in your background; tell us a littlebit about your journey that made you decide to do that.Suzanne O'Connell: Well, I always loved mathand science, so pursuing mechanical engineering was a natural path for me.Ironically, I started in computer science. And then I fell in love with HVACand refrigeration -  thermodynamicsclasses, if you will. So I changed to mechanical engineering. I started inproduct development, and I was writing selection software for a manufacturer ofcooling towers, evaporative fluid coolers -product lines like that. I realizedthat I like people as well. And when you're coding software, you're not gettinga lot of interaction with people. So I naturally progressed into an insideTechnical Sales role and then into outside sales roles, and finally into theconsultation role that I have at Thomas.Lisa Ryan: And I know that you do alot with digital marketing and there's so much going on with this wholeinternet of things. Please share with us a little bit about what that is in howit's impacting that industrial space.Suzanne O'Connell: Well, there's a lack ofskilled employees, which is further driving the adoption of automation. Andthere's an accelerated trend to embrace and deploy the Industrial Internet ofThings. So businesses are now driving scale through technology, and they'reable to collect more data than they ever have been able to previously.Lisa Ryan: So when you're talkingabout automation. How exactly does industrial automation change the way thesetraditional job roles are viewed?Suzanne O'Connell: Well, the drive forautomation and technology on the shop floor is transforming the way that welook at the future infrastructure and work opportunities and manufacturing;historically, we've been divided between blue-collar and white-collar jobs, wesee the emergence of new collar jobs that combine complex technology and datawith traditional manufacturing capabilities.Lisa Ryan: Why know that one of thethings we've seen in the last several years is this large influx of millennialsinto the industrial space. So how have you seen this demographic creating thosenew opportunities and challenges?Suzanne O'Connell: Well, it's an excitingtime where we're about 50/50 between our millennial managers and our babyboomer generation. So that's changing dynamics in the office. And this newgeneration has very different requirements for doing business. They've grown upwith the internet their entire life. They're used to getting things in aninstant, and they don't tolerate slow any longer. So it's creating someinteresting dynamic tension between employees and business and their customerbase as they rise in positions of authority. We are also seeing our babyboomers adapt to millennial behaviors. So we see a lot more engagement electronicallyversus phone activity that we have seen historically.Lisa Ryan: One of the questions thatI get a lot from my clients is attracting Millennials and Gen Z into thisindustrial space. So we're looking at this IoT; we're looking at all of this digitalautomation coming in. But what are companies using to attract these newgenerations?Suzanne O'Connell: I think they're naturallyattracted to technology and the reporting capabilities and things that comewith that. Whether they're taking roles in purchasing and doing onlinesourcing, taking roles in marketing departments where they're able to dodigital initiatives, or working out on the shop floor, they're using the latestand greatest technology on that equipment.Lisa Ryan: We've talked for the pastyear about how it has impacted how manufacturers are marketing their products.So what do you see that's different this year regarding industrial marketingefforts.Suzanne O'Connell: Well, there's anacceleration. There's a need to have a digital presence more than ever. Some ofthe other methods of reaching customers, like trade shows, fell by the waysidebecause of the pandemic. Adjusting from word of mouth, “they'll call me if theyneed me” mentality to develop basic strategies to lead and nurture prospectivecustomers, providing a buyer's journey through content and their own digitalpresence.Lisa Ryan: And so what would be whenyou don't have access to historical things like trade shows? Share a little bitmore about what that agile strategy would be something that somebody listeningtoday might consider implementing.Suzanne O'Connell: So you have to have kindof a comprehensive and cohesive strategy. It's a long, complicated buyingprocess now, and multiple stages take place. And different types of contentsupport visibility throughout that buyer's journey. We're finding that not only is it long and complicated, but it'salso primarily self-guided so the need to reach somebody at an earlier entrypoint in the conversation has become a marketing necessity. We're seeing manyof our customers adopt the educational type of content in ebooks, white papers,and case studies.People are early on in new product development stages or a newproject; they have content to support visibility within the research stages. Somoving from there, you know, you have to have a good foundation in the website.That's what all of your digital marketing efforts are intended to drivevisibility and opportunity to. You need to build quality traffic because it'snot just about reaching more people; it's about reaching the right people.We're finding our clients are developing strategies for their niche focus: whoare their buyers? What are the capabilities that set them apart from thecompetition? and trying to market specifically to those business objectives,rather than just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.Lisa Ryan: And I know that Thomas hasdone a lot of research in that area. So what would be one of the studies youwere talking about? What are the steps in the industrial sourcing process?Suzanne O'Connell: Yeah, so we did the mostcomprehensive study that's been done into the industrial buying process, and weuncovered that there can be up to 139 touches that take place from someoneestablishing a need to making a purchase decision. We found that holds trueregardless of Industry focus, job function within the organization, or productand service being sourced. They're looking for ways to speed that process up.They funnel down into six distinct stages. I think I mentionedresearch as being one of those - design & evaluation are other steps thatwe see. But the biggest frustration we hear from buyers and suppliers is thetime it takes to produce a quote. So our clients are looking for faster, moreresponsive ways for their sales team to follow up on leads. They're looking formore qualified leads to come through so that they have to do less to nurturethose. It's a combination of a lot of things.Lisa Ryan: So 139 steps. Holy cow. Atwhat are you seeing as far as being able to, you know, speed up the process.What are some of the sourcing trends that you're seeing within Thomas, and doyou expect that to continue into this year?Suzanne O'Connell: Yeah, so it just speeds upthe process; Thomas has done some things on our platform to make it easier toget the job done. We've introduced supplier validation filters. The ability tofilter on quality and diversity. All different things that matter to peoplewhen they're buying products.So we're trying to continue to make improvements to the platformto make it easier for them to find the right supplier. For our clients, we'remaking sure that they're accurately represented in the space. So making surethat there's a lot of really robust content about what they do and who they doit for so that when people are looking for their products or services they havegood accurate information, and it makes it easier for them to be found. So as far as sourcing trends and just in general, anything that'spackaging, bottling, private label - that's going through the roof. Obviously,things that are related to PPE are through the roof. But we see an uptick insourcing across all products and services, which is fantastic. It shows thestrength of manufacturing, which we love to see, but there's a lot of reasonsfor that. There's reshoring that's going on. There are hiccups in the supplychain that are still taking place from shut down, you know, last spring. Sothere's going to be a continuation of needs and then new products coming outdue to changes that are taking place in society.Lisa Ryan: So let's back it up for acouple of minutes here. If somebody is not familiar with Thomas and preciselywhat it is that you do. Can you just share a little bit about what you do?Suzanne O'Connell: Sure. So Thomas has fourcenters of excellence, Thomas net.com is our supplier sourcing platform. At therisk of dating myself, we had the Thomas register, which were big green books.I sourced out of those in my first job out of college. In 2006, we tookeverything online. We stopped printing the Thomas register. We now have over70,000 categories that represent products and services, system Integration;anything that's manufacturing related. We have 1.2 million active registeredusers using the platform to find Suppliers for those products and services. Sothat's one area of excellence for us. We have our product data solutions group, so very advanced websolutions – everything you need from interactive product catalogs, eCommercesolution, we're even doing 3D CAD and BIM on the fly for clients. And so a lotof strength with our technology there. And then we're a full-blown digitalmarketing agency. So anything that impacts our clients online: websitedevelopment, search engine optimization, even full comprehensive inboundmarketing strategies that we implement on their behalf. Our latest segment is our industry data. We used to talk about ourdata within Thomas net.com, but there's been so much interest in it that we'vepulled it out into its own pillar. So Thomas is sharing sourcing trends andindex reports. There's a lot of power in first-party data, and we trackeverything that's on the platform, so we're able to identify trends insourcing, and pockets in the US where there's more opportunity for thoseproducts and services. We even had a roundtable at the White House. Lisa Ryan: I am one of the people whoused the Thomas register. So I'm very familiar with the big green books.Suzanne O'Connell: See, you still see them onthe shelf in some clients' offices, which always makes me smile.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of thechallenges with family-owned manufacturing businesses that they're facingregarding such succession. And what does Thomas's data forecast as far as thosekinds of businesses?Suzanne O'Connell: Well, we're seeing manybusinesses consolidating through private equity acquisition, specificallycustom manufacturing businesses. A lot of those were started after World WarTwo and handed down to the second generation. They're attempting to make theirway to the third generation. But many of their family members aren't interestedin continuing that business. So there's not often a family member or a staffperson to step into that leadership role. Some of these businesses were run as more of a cult ofpersonality. At the end of the day, they don't have processes and systems tohelp them survive a transition without outside funding and leadership. And Ithink that's what we're seeing primarily with custom manufacturing.Lisa Ryan: Interestingly, you saythat because that's what has happened with my husband's company. They were onthe second generation, and there wasn't a third generation to hand it down toexcept for one son, the rest of the kids didn't really have an interest in thebusiness, and they were recently sold to private equity. Suzanne O'Connell: Yeah, and you know it'sinteresting to see with these acquisitions what takes place, as some of them areholding companies where they're beefing them up to be sold yet again. So Ithink it's pretty fascinating.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to a companylooking at upping their game with digital technology, what would be your besttip to help them get started.Suzanne O'Connell: I think starting withunderstanding what their digital footprint looks like currently is first andforemost, that foundation is solid. Some of the other initiatives that you cantake on are a lot like landscaping before the house is built right, so you haveto see where you are currently. Most companies have a pain point - what is thehole in their current marketing that they're trying to fill? You can customize strategy around any marketing budget, right? Andthere are differences. You can be more aggressive if they have the funding todo that or be more conservative and tackle what needs to be done first. So,often, I'm talking with clients and giving them different engagement levels,helping them understand what they need to do now, but where they're likely tobe two, three years from now, they're planning with that bigger picture inmind.Lisa Ryan: And how are some of theways you help the clients you work with. And what's the best way for people toget in touch with you if they want to learn more.Suzanne O'Connell: I begin by listening totheir business objectives and aligning digital marketing initiatives withthose. Whether they partner with Thomas or not, I want them to have a betterunderstanding of what today's buying process looks like at the end of the day.And what they need from a digital strategy to ensure their success long term. Acomplimentary customized strategy we can look at together to know where I wouldstart with anybody that had an interest.Lisa Ryan: And what's the best wayfor people to get in touch with you.Suzanne O'Connell: LinkedIn is great. MyEmail address is soconnell@certifiedThomaspartner.com.  Lisa Ryan: Thank you so much forbeing on the show today. It's been great to have a conversation with you.

Connect with Eric Schwarzenbach:Email: eschwarzenbach@rollomaticusa.comWebsite: www.Rollomaticusa.comShow Transcript:Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan of the Manufacturers' Network podcast, I'm excited to introduce you to today's guest Eric Schwarzenbach. Eric is President of Rollomatic, which is a manufacturer of CNC cutting tool grinding machines. He's been there for 24 years, Eric. Welcome to the show.Eric Schwarzenbach: Thank you, Lisa. And thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'm excited to be on your show and talk about the time we've gone through now in covid. Lisa Ryan: Share with us a little bit about your background. I know you've been with Rollomatic for 24 years now. But what got you to where you're at?Eric Schwarzenbach: I was at that time I was living in Switzerland. I had the opportunity to move to the US and take over the subsidiary of Rollomatic here in Illinois in 1997. I was green in terms of what America was and then the culture here, but I was highly excited to come here. I'm originally born in Switzerland and moved to England when I was 19 years old.My mother tongue is German, so I had to learn my English in England. And of course, coming to the US with English British was more difficult because I asked people, What their surname was. And they said, What are you talking about? But I was always in this industry of grinding tool machines since I left Switzerland. I worked in England for 14 years and then moved to Denmark to work there for five years. I traveled in Europe at the time, and then I worked in Switzerland for another company for 12 years until I was very fortunate to find Rollomatic and get the precision here in the US.Lisa Ryan: That's great. That's so funny that you talk about American English versus British English, because, in this country, we think that we're speaking English, but I guess not so much.  This has been an interesting past year with covid and with the pandemic. Share with us some of the things that have come up working as a result of the changes you've had to make. How have you gotten through the last year?Eric Schwarzenbach: The covid situation opened up several opportunities for us, which were beneficial for the company. We didn't see that initially; in the pandemic, we all got scared. Businesses around those collapsed, but it also opened up opportunities. The most significant one is that we had already made plans to install a COO - chief operating officer, who would work along with me. We installed him on April 6th, a week before the country was closed down. Travel came to a grinding halt, and I worked from home for two months. He was on his own here running the company, which was very good for him to learn. We were able to implement certain measures in the company where we separated tasks and duties. We improved the working processes in place and put specific procedures in place that became very beneficial. I returned to work again in May back to the office. The fact that we didn't travel meant we couldn't travel with customers. We didn't have any trade shows going on, so we didn't have to prepare for them or execute them. This gave us so much time to focus on our teams and to educate and train our teams.  Lisa Ryan: What would be an example of one of the procedures you changed that resonated with your staff there?Eric Schwarzenbach: The organizing of the applications and service team was before we had one person doing the entire two teams. We split that, and we went back to whiteboards - on the wall with magnets and dry erasers. We went back to basics to organize and to schedule and to be able to try to follow the process of doing tests grinding for our customers. It improves your speed and the quality of it. It also gives us the readiness to give feedback to our sales team.Lisa Ryan: And how did your sales team deal with not being able to go to trade shows and see their customers. What did they do to keep those relationships going?Eric Schwarzenbach: Of course. The salespeople were working from their home office. Because they didn't travel, they're able to make more phone calls than ever. They kept in touch with video conferencing and email. The phone calls made a big difference and the fact that we had our test grinding process ready for customers to either come in or send the material to me.  Lisa Ryan: And was there anything else that any other processes or procedures that also made a difference that maybe you weren't doing before coven and now will be an integral part of your business in the future.Eric Schwarzenbach: I hold a weekly sales meeting on a Monday morning. And I have individual pipeline meetings on a Friday every week with each sales manager, which I never did before because I was traveling myself so much that there was just no time. We do keep in touch before, but now we have the structure in place very every Friday. They know they have to report their pipeline, and we discuss it, and we talked about it. Then we see what we can do to encourage that particular customer to come down the pipeline and eventually pulled the trigger on the purchase order. That was not the case before. So our communication improved so much to very beneficial.Lisa Ryan: Well, it sounds like it gave you an excellent opportunity to get to know the people who work for you and share feedback. They feel that they're being heard. Having that connection with the company president was probably really big for them as far as their engagement levels, and it sounds like their productivity levels because of this.Eric Schwarzenbach: We indeed had three times more new accounts last year, which is tremendous in a lousy year. I mean, sales were terrible. But just in terms of new account from it, it was an incredible year for us. Much is due to our to the changes we made in the company here, and a little bit is also because our customers to we're housebound or company bound and have more time on their hands. Maybe they had fewer business activities, but they had more time to think about what the future could bring and to engage with us and eventually place the purchase order.Lisa Ryan: That's that. That sounds excellent news and in the future. I'm sure that those new customers you have are confident that their business will also increase. Once we're through all this craziness that we're going through right now.Eric Schwarzenbach: Absolutely.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the things that are still keeping you up at night?Eric Schwarzenbach: The order intake for machines is still because it's still up and down. It's still cyclical. And that's not been the case. Before you had ups and downs - maybe the spring was good and fall was not so good, or vice versa, or some month was slow. But now it's one month is high and the other month it's really low. So we don't see that fall into the future as we used to before. That's still a while for me.And of course, the other worries political situation with the new government, hoping that they turn out to be at least somewhat business-friendly compared to the previous one and not so much because of how we operate our business how much taxes we pay. That's not really what I'm talking about. Our customers, the managers, and the business owners feel far more confident in the economy when they feel there is some support from the government there. And that is always translated into more orders for us. So whether we pay a few percent more in taxes, that's not a big deal for us, but it's more customers thinking and perceptive their perception of the economy.Lisa Ryan: And when it comes to networking with other manufacturing leaders, what would be something that you may want to learn from your other colleagues and manufacturing, and what would be some of the areas of your expertise that you would be willing to shareEric Schwarzenbach: Number one is benchmarking. The CNC machine tool industry is different for manufacturing. We pay salaries differently. We have different benefits to what the regular manufacturing company would have and being a foreign company. We often compare with Europe, which is not very good because of the two different economies to different countries. So if I could benchmark with another machine to compare salaries and compare working conditions, that will be wonderful. And in return, I would show our system: what we pay, what we give to our employees for benchmarking. That is the biggest thing that I would love to share. Otherwise, what I, what I would share is our good experience with changing our payroll provider a few years ago, for example. We've switched to ADP. I would love to talk about that and tell them how it helped us tremendously.Lisa Ryan: Wonderful. So if there was one tip you could give the people listening to this podcast, what would that be?Eric Schwarzenbach: Never lose hope. And dig deep for the opportunities presented to us. And I think one of the most significant opportunities was trying. It's given enough time to sort things out and figure things out in time to look into the future, and as a machine to build, time to find new technologies and improve the machine processes and the way the machines are assembled. Just utilize all the time that is at hand for these opportunities. Number two is to train your people. Businesses slow don't lay them off. Don't furlough them. Don't cut their salary but train them and pay the money to do that. Then pay them for the time being trained.Lisa Ryan: Well, that is a great way to end our session together, Eric. I appreciate you being on with me and sharing your insight and what is going on at Rollomatic Thanks for being here. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' network podcast. See you next time.

Connect with Laura Timbrook:Email: Laura@LauraTimbrook.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauratimbrook/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan from the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm here with Laura Timbrook. Laura is a well-being strategist, and she's also a fellow podcaster. She is the host of the Manufacturing Wellness Podcast. So, Laura, welcome to the show.  Laura Timbrook: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.Lisa Ryan: We've had several conversations over the last couple of months. Not only was I on your podcast, but you were in my summit and focusing on why wellness is so essential to manufacturers. So before we get there, let's learn all about you. What led you to concentrate on wellness and then bring it into manufacturing as your point of focus? Laura Timbrook: Yes. So for me, I come from a 15 year of management-level leadership background. I transitioned into corporate wellness coaching, and I did that for about another eight years. What I found out is that my favorite clients were manufacturers. So instead of focusing on all corporate and all industries, I managed down to manufacturing. And it's been such an adventure. I love when I leave a manufacturing facility and my cheeks hurt because I've been smiling and laughing all day. And that was one reason I wanted to focus on their workforce because there was a lot of work to be done. Often, the employees felt like they were left out, that the wellness approaches didn't work for them in their unique lifestyle. I'm a big believer that health is for everybody. And I focused on manufacturing, and I love doing it. Lisa Ryan: So share with us some of the reasons why wellness hasn't been a focus in manufacturing; and why is it even more important today? Laura Timbrook: There hasn't been a focus in manufacturing because we take that approach like I'm tough enough. We don't realize how much our bodies start breaking down. When our bodies start breaking down, we power through it. And those who don't power through it, they're considered weak. That's not really how we need that to work. We need to make sure that we're building our employees up. In the last two years, we have seen that wellness has come up in manufacturing, especially the small to mid-levels. Your big companies like G.E. and your large manufacturers, they've got those fancy wellness programs, but the small and midsize don't. And they're starting to realize now more than ever, especially with covid, how important taking care of our heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, how important that is. They decided through this whole pandemic, if you were going to get covid and how bad you were going to get it. Lisa Ryan: Addressing that issue from a small and medium manufacturer is essential because I can't tell you how many of my clients that I've talked to that their employees get sick, they go to the emergency room. It's like they don't even think about they don't have a primary care physician. It hasn't been something that's been brought up at all in their careers. And when you look at some of the expenses that go along with that, if you can start with that foundational wellness and get employees in the habit. They're bringing those healthier habits home and knowing where they are from the point of wellness, instead of going and sitting for four hours in the emergency room, which is a pain, No. Two is going to cost that company a lot of money. And in the long run, it's not practical. What are some of the foundational ways that you start or give manufacturers some of those ways to get started? Laura Timbrook: We've all seen that iceberg picture where you have the top of the iceberg. That's your health fairs, your doctor's appointments, your fitness – that's the top of the iceberg. But the bottom of the iceberg is where wellness takes hold - that's with relationships and purpose. We forget how much those relationships affect our overall well-being. Think about having good relationships with your job and your family, how it makes you feel overall. You're more likely that when you're sick, you're going to go to the doctor, you feel better about yourself. When you're in that happy state, what we want to do is we want to take a broad look at it. So the first thing we want to do is start with the employees. We want to make sure they have the health benefits that they need. We want to make sure they have health care to understand where they sit on their health. What's your blood pressure? What's your weight? Have that understanding of where they need improvement. But then we need to start addressing everything else. Stress is a big one. And mostly we know that our top three stressors work is, number one, finances, and family. Those are our three top stressors. We have to address the workplace stress, you know, and that's been one of my most significant focus is now covid.  I can't get in to talk to the employees and help coach them. But what I can do at this point is to work with leadership to create a cohesive environment where our employees are supported. We want to make sure that they're taking time off, whether they're taking time off to relax or rest, or they're taking time off to go to their doctor appointments. Lisa, you made an excellent point. Many of our employees are not going to see their doctors when they're sick regularly; they're in the E.R. They're trudging through it. And we need to make sure that we are proactive in our health. We're seeing our doctors. We're seeing our dentist. We're seeing a cardiologist. Maybe we've been making times that they see a therapist because we know right now, you know, it's we're all feeling a little kind of so we want to make sure that we're taking care of that.   Lisa Ryan: When it comes to things like health fairs, because, again, I've heard this, we try to health care one to nobody came. So what is the process? Because, also, you're changing a whole way of people taking a look and maybe a lifetime of bad habits. That's certainly not going to change in one afternoon health fair. But what are some of the steps to get started? Also, are there some virtual options that you're seeing as far as those health care health fairs, too?Laura Timbrook: Going back to why health fairs don't work, we often have a meager turnout. There are two main reasons for that. One is management buy-in. I will watch employees walk out of a health fair because who's not sitting in that health fair? So if you want your employees to be in that health fair, your CEOs, your leaders, your C suite executives all need to be in and attending those health fairs. And then the second is consistency.  If employees feel like you're checking a box off that says I get we offer health care, they're not going to take it seriously. You have to support your employees in understanding their health matters, not only to them and their family but to you as their employer. And once we feel supported, they're more likely to attend. The other key point of this is a lot of specialty manufacturing; employees are so afraid that if they attend a health fair and that data will be shared with their employer that they will not go to the health care.  So you have to make sure that you are communicating to your employees properly that their data is their data. They'reHIPPA rules still hold them we can't share. I can't share your weight or your health with your employer. I can't do it. So we need to understand that it's confidential, it's safe, and we care about you.   And going back to your question on the virtual' I'm doing virtual health coaching for employees. If we do a lot of virtual health biometrics where they can go to local doctors, local labs and get stuff done, they can meet with me for their results. One of the big things about the health fair is, not only do you want to give your employees the information on their biometrics, but you want to lead them down the path that they can make improvements.   Often at health fairs, they give you your blood pressure, give you all that, and then send you on your way. Whether it's a nurse, you need somebody to come in; it's a board-certified health coach, a nutritionist, a dietician, somebody that can help guide them to make those changes and do it practically. One of the big things I saw with manufacturing is that what worked in corporate didn't work with the manufacturing workforce.   The people you bring in have to make sure they understand the unique lifestyles of shiftwork of what they're going to be eating. Because let me tell you, corporate would go out to lunch at Baja Fresh. Manufacturing is packing lunches, and you have to let them know what to pack. That's cost-effective. There are so many different ways; first of all, you address the confidentiality issue, and that's a part of building that trust over time with your employees that can help them do that.  Lisa Ryan: But also translating the results. If somebody comes in and they say, and I'm making stuff up because I don't understand hard pressure, but if your heart pressure is one hundred and forty over 70 versus one hundred ninety over twenty-five, that's probably terrible up. But not knowing unless somebody says, oh, that's a little high or that's normal, that person may have no idea. Well, what is normal? What is for somebody that has primarily a sedentary job or they're not doing a whole lot, or they're making those repetitive motions?So taking into effect what they're doing and giving them some strategies they can incorporate through the day. So why don't you share some happy stories, maybe some before and after hours of specific clients?Laura Timbrook: One specific example always comes to mind when we talk about what they did. They had health events every single month. I have had the first time I was brought into this, there was this one woman and she drank a lot of Mountain Dew, like several cans of regular Mountain Dew a day. And she didn't work out, and she didn't care to make a single health change. She wanted nothing to do with it.  Fast forward, two years later, she is down to one Diet Mountain Dew a day. And this is huge for her. She's kickboxing four days a week. She lost weight. And you know what the most amazing thing out of all of this was? She was set to retire, and she didn't because she felt so good and she enjoyed her job, she said for the first time. And I think she was there for like 30 or 40 years.  She felt like her management cared about her. And she's like, what am I going to do? Sit home? I might as well come in here and have fun for her. It was fun. She enjoyed it. So it's such a broad change that we can make that affects everything from a person's single health to our entire organization. Imagine not having your employees wanting to leave. And not only that, but she brought her daughter in to work for the organization. So now you're attracting new generations.We're aging out of our workforce. And when we talk about the millennial and Gen Z says they want wellness, family, and purpose are their top three. So if we are focusing on wellness in manufacturing and showing them purpose. We know jobs in manufacturing have a considerable purpose. Hey, we saw it with the whole tour toilet paper shortage, and people realize that there's a huge purpose to manufacturing. So we have the perfect scenario of attracting these younger generations coming in if we set ourselves up correctly.  Lisa Ryan: So what about from a cost standpoint? Because I know you can go the gamut when it comes to implementing programs into your facility. So without spending a gazillion dollars to bring in all the high tech equipment and stuff, what can a small or medium-sized manufacturer do that doesn't necessarily break the budget?  Laura Timbrook: The first thing you want to do is talk with your employees. What do they want? We can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars bringing in experts and fancy devices. But if your employees don't want that, why waste the money? So, have an understanding of what your employees want or what they feel like they need. The second thing is to talk to your insurance broker, find out about wellness dollars. This is key because there is money available in many of your health benefits that will pay for experts like me to come in, so it's no money out of your pocket.Once you understand what your budget is, what your employees want, then that's when we start bringing in the health fairs. We want to bring in the health fairs because we need to understand that baseline. But a lot of times health fairs right off the bat, you're not going to have a large turnout. But we need to be consistent with them, letting them know, and then you can bring in experts like myself that will help coach your employees to make sustainable, healthy changes.   Often, we go way off the deep end and don't sustain with those diet plans. So we want something that's sustainable. But it's really about understanding your workforce, what they need and what you have available because especially for small to midsize, starting off with like your employee level gym isn't going to work out. But maybe you can team up with a local gym in the area that can offer benefits for them as well. Now, there you go.   Lisa Ryan: Let's take it back to Mountain Dew woman. She came in. She came in. She wanted nothing to do with it. She was close to retiring. She was not leading a healthy lifestyle, not working out, drinking all of that pop or soda, depending on what's part of the country you're in. So what was the first step to get her to buy in, to get someone like her to reconsider their view of wellness before that?Laura Timbrook: So for her, it was seeing the numbers on a piece of paper and understanding where she was. She had pre diabetic numbers, and she had a family history of diabetes. So that was key when she had those numbers and seeing that in place and knowing that's an issue. But when I was coaching her, I asked her what would happen if you didn't make the health changes? Like, what, in five years, would your health look like?   And that picture scared her and not right away because she had to think about it a little bit. But then she thought about it. And we started with one simple health change, and maybe it was swapping out one of those waters for flavored seltzer water and making small changes. She often thought of exercising that she had to go into the gym and do all these things where she would be in a yoga class, not going to be in a yoga class. So she tried a bunch of classes and found out kickboxing was her thing.You want small, sustainable steps. You don't want to take all her soda right off the table right away because that's not sustainable. She will never last but small changes. And that's what happens when we talk about it from an individual standpoint. But the more significant thing for her was knowing that her employer was supporting her and every month having myself or somebody else come in and, you know, continue that conversation with her.   Lisa Ryan: Laura, I know that you do lots of services for manufacturers in the wellness area, so you're a little bit about how you work with your clients and what's the best way to get in touch with you.  Laura Timbrook:  We work on a couple of different approaches. We can work on the individual approach, which addresses employee health fairs, working with those employees one on one or in a group format. Then we can work with leadership, having leadership understand that work-life, harmony, and how they can integrate wellness as part of a leadership approach. Then, of course, we have the larger organization where everybody is on the same page and start implementing that wellness culture.  That's when we're dealing with that holistic thing. You want that wellness spread across your entire organization, but you're not going to start there. You're going to start in baby steps. So the simplest way to get a hold of me is to go to LauraTimbrook.com and my podcast information is on there. You can get in touch with me. We can have a conversation about how to start strategizing your employee wellness approach.   Lisa Ryan: Laura, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show, so thanks for being here. I thank you so much for having me. You're very welcome. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network podcast. We'll see you next time.

Connect with Greg:Email: greg.crowley@rmgfelm.com Website: https://www.rmgfelm.com/Lisa Ryan: Hey it's Lisa, Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to today's guest Greg Crowley. Greg is President of Rockford manufacturing. Greg, welcome to the show.Greg Crowley: Thank you for having me. Lisa Ryan: So share with us a little bit about your background. What led you to where you're at now with Rockford.Greg Crowley: So Rockford manufacturing group is a small OEM with 40 to 50 people depending on the business level. I spent most of my career as an aerospace mechanical engineer with an MBA education. Four years ago, I switched to the wire fastener industry and took an opportunity to run a small company. So I'm originally from eastern Canada and have been in the States since 1997.Lisa Ryan: Nice. So what with all of this craziness has been going on for the past year. What is it that's working as far as your people your processes, some of the good things that have that are going on or have happened?Greg Crowley: Yep, it's, it's good to focus on the good things because there's so much downside these days with covid. On the positive side, we won a PPP loan, which helped us over the last maybe six, eight months. Our machinery is expensive, so people only want to buy it if they have to. But with this market what's working well is we had to downsize about 20% and that that was a little painful, but we did it only once. And since then, we've been keeping everybody in the building busy. We did reduce. So we didn't want to reduce more than that because when the market recovers. We did move to a 36-hour workweek, and all the salary people took a 10% pay cut, so that's helping us at least stay out of the red until business picks up. So the fact that we're keeping everybody busy is good. Nobody's looking for work in the building.Lisa Ryan: It's so important when you have good people to be able to keep them right now because who knows who's going to be available when covid is in the rearview mirror, which can't come too soon. Were you finding that your employees could work remotely, or were they coming to the facility every day?Greg Crowley: So most people in the office worked remotely when we're in Illinois, and it pretty conservative-run state. So when it first hit roughly in the March timeframe, that Illinois order came from the governor. We did have most of the office working at home, and we had a software tool called splash.com, which helped because people could use their home computers to tie into their work ones and do pretty much everything they do here.So that helped for maybe four to six weeks, and then eventually everybody came back in the building. So the only time somebody will be off now is if they have positive covid test results or a spouse that now can do the work from home. So right now, everybody is in the building and healthy. So that's good. We did have a wave of covid hit us, no more than a couple of people at a time. But it went through pretty much the office and the shop.Lisa Ryan: And so when that happened, did you reduce production when you had fewer people? How did you handle that?Greg Crowley: Yeah, good question. It did impact production, but luckily, not to the point where we would slow down a customer's order. It would have been rare if it happened, but we had enough buffer in this system with the schedules to keep borders on track. If we lost a complete department, that would have been terrible, but we only lost one person from one department. So it wasn't like it brought us to a halt.We did have an issue in the weld area, and to be safe, we went to outside suppliers to do some work for us. We needed to protect the schedule.Lisa Ryan: It's been interesting having these different conversations as far as how people have dealt with that, and now with my husband's company, they schedule production based on who shows up for the day. So it's interesting because a year ago, you would have thought like, Wow, this is what we're making today and now that whole flexible mindset, which I've found where manufacturers have excelled of just being able to turn and figure it out. And so that's been one of the good things that have come. I think that a lot of companies found that they were much more flexible or could be much more flexible than they ever thought they could beGreg Crowley: Yeah, our customers are understanding. Sometimes we get hung up with a supplier issue, and of course, we'll work with that supplier and try and do the best we can, but occasionally we will be hit by delays outside our control, but they haven't been significant.Lisa Ryan: Right. So what are some of the main things that are keeping you up at night?Greg Crowley: While we're small in terms of employees, we're not big enough to have a full-time HR person, so that that role falls onto a few of us in the building. That tends to be a time sink at times. And it's not so much only being profitable, but trying to get through each month without losing money. Those are probably the two most stressful parts at the moment. We're an infrastructure set up for roughly 50 to 60 people, so we normally have a lot more. We normally have 30% more business on average than we have today. So, we need to keep business flowing into the building. We wouldn't be able to jump back to normal overnight, but it'd be nice to see the vaccine giving people confidence in their businesses to start ordering capital equipment. I think that's coming. The forecast experts are saying that will happen this year, mostly in the second half. But so the ramp-up will be gradual.Lisa Ryan: So, are your salespeople still going into the customer shops? How has that your method of sales changed in the last year?Greg Crowley: So we have representatives all over the world. They're all reporting into the building. And I know a lot of them have been working from home telephone video calls. The only time customers want to see us is when there's a new machine installed. We had one recently go to Belarus which is between Poland and Russia. And it took a while. But we finally got somebody over there. When or if there are technical support issues, then customers are willing to have people from the company and visit. But in general, our customers don't want to see salespeople. We had a couple of customers come into the building recently, but we've only had maybe two or three in the last six months. Typically it's once a week. Travel is way down. Run the industry, the trade shows we support, and the industry groups. They're pretty much on hold. Our big show was postponed until this last December, and then they finally cancel that. So our next big trade shows in in the fall. It's been pushed out to the fallLisa Ryan: I've seen a lot of the bigger events have just outright canceled. Some of them have gone online. Thankfully, the technology is getting a lot easier to use as far as being virtual events. However, there's still the education process as far as letting people know that we can do virtual. It allows you to bring more people to the event than you may have been able to do if it was live. There's give and take, but there's still certainly a lot of education going on in those lines. So from a networking standpoint, if there was any support or connection that you would like to learn from other manufacturing colleagues, what, what would that be?Greg Crowley: I'm a fan of networking in general. I network with a few presidents of companies in this area for not in the industry, mostly workforce related. We help each other out. And then I'm part of the IFI group, which you've spoken to a couple of times. And that's great for networking within a fastener industry. And then the third one is a group called Vistage it's a group of companies that I network with and listen to speakers like yourself. It's good to share with them and be able to find out lessons learned on nearside so anything from leadership to HR issues to coaching senior staff. Lisa Ryan: Well, that's the nice thing about Vistage and some of these other groups when you're looking outside the industry. Instead of always focusing in house, we sometimes have those blinders on that. I'm sure that from your Vistage peers, you've probably learned a lot from industries that are completely different from yours can work equally well.Greg Crowley: Yeah, and then a lot of it is transferable. It's one thing I realized up front was our strategy was developing a strategy. I hit multiple cultures in the building. When I first got here, I knew I better work on the culture first, so I ended up selecting a program that worked well for us with networking help. We're still using it, and it takes time to change cultures, so we're on the right track there. And so that's just one. One example of finding a suitable tool for us.Lisa Ryan: If people wanted to reach out and connect with you and maybe gain some of your insight, what areas can be supportive of other manufacturing and industry colleagues?Greg Crowley: On the technical side, I'd say we're on the wire equipment, wire processing. Our machines either straighten and cut wire for dishwasher racks, concrete industry, automotive, the dog cages - there's all kinds of different needs for the wire. On the fastener side is the people that make nuts and bolts are drying machines. They're used in front of headers, a lot of headers in the Cleveland area. So anything technical like we've got a strong engineering team. I could answer questions that help out that way. Anything general, I'd be happy to help anybody who's got a company with roughly 50 employees who have a question. I'd be happy to share my view, and I'd love to be able to ask other companies questions too.Lisa Ryan: Awesome. Well, what's the best way for people to get ahold of you.Greg Crowley: And I'd say, email.Lisa Ryan: Well, Greg. It's been an absolute pleasure having a conversation with you today. Thank you so much for joining me today.Greg Crowley: Yes, thank you for letting me take part. I look forward to seeing others.Lisa Ryan: This is Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network. See you next time.

Connect with Allison Giddens:Email: akrache@win-tech.netLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisongiddens/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. Our guest today is Allison Giddens. Allison is president and co-owner of Win-Tech, a precision machine shop based just outside Atlanta, Georgia. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology and criminal justice, graduate degrees in conflict management and manufacturing leadership, and certificates in cybersecurity risk management and finance. And she still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. Welcome to the show. Allison.Allison Giddens: Hey, thanks for having me.Lisa Ryan: Now, share with us a little bit about your background about your journey, what led you to president and co-owner of Win-Tech.Allison Giddens: So it was a stumble, to be honest with you. I left college and worked in sales and marketing for a large media conglomerate outside of Atlanta. I can let you guess who that is. As much as I was learning, it just wasn't for me. The corporate world just wasn't for me. I happened to be pet sitting for some neighbors, and I knew that he was a business owner. I said to him; I want to come work for you. And he said you don't even know what I do. I said I don't care. I know it's a small business, I think I want to get involved in that. So he said, You can come in for an interview.I laughed and said, Well, I'm already working for you, shouldn't I get a job? (because I was young and stupid, and I thought, that's how things worked.) But I came in for an interview and got to know that group. He hired me on as an admin assistant of sorts. And I grew to learn a little bit about everything, and he threw me to the wolves on a couple of projects, which was good. I quickly realized that this whole manufacturing overlapped with a small business thing that was for me that was cool.Lisa Ryan: Right. Awesome. So please share with us a little bit about your culture over at Win-Tech. What are some of the things you're doing right now that are working?Allison Giddens: So a few years ago, we asked the employees what they felt the company's values were. This question was something that in the 30 years that Win-Tech had been around, we never purposely gone out of our way to figuring it out. It felt like culture was driving us rather than us driving the culture. We found that through some conversations and some Survey Monkey results, there were three words that the employees found that set Win-Tech apart and held the biggest value. And those were accuracy, respect, and accountability. Those three things speak to our group. It is manufacturing, and it's essential to be accurate. The respect level and accountability ultimately speak to the importance of integrity that employees find are important. Those types of things have worked well to highlight. That's led to better communication within the team. So, for example, the accountability aspect. You can talk all day about how it's essential to be accountable for something. Still, unless certain expectations are communicated, you can't hold somebody responsible for something. Some things that we found worked for us was that we initiated five-minute stand-up meetings every Tuesday afternoon.Granted, when covid came around, it was a little more challenging to get 30 people together six feet apart, but we made it happen. By doing that, we were able to communicate the same thing to everybody at the same time. So everyone heard the same information, and that was helpful.Lisa Ryan: So when it comes to those three words that your employees came up with, what was it about the culture that made them feel respected that made it feel like that was one of your values of being accountable?Allison Giddens: I think that the respect, accountability, and accuracy ultimately came from the founder and owner of Win-Tech. Dennis Winslow was always very fair. I mean, he's a just guy, so he would be the first person to pick up the broom and go sweep. He's not going to ask anybody on any management level to not clean or not do something that maybe somebody else would look down on. That even playing field and that respect level speaks volumes. No one feels like they're better than somebody else.Lisa Ryan: That says a lot because we know that all of those values come from upper leadership. And the nice part about it is taking that step back and asking your employees what they believed those words; because too often, companies will bring in some high priced consultant to create a vision and mission statement for you. Then you post it up on the wall, and employers are like, What company are you talking about? When you first posed the question to them to do that research, what was the reaction?Allison Giddens: So the question was posed because a large customer invited us to be part of an ethics program. We didn't have a formal ethics program here at Win-Tech. One of those steps was having values and creating a value statement. We have a mission statement, but we don't have a value statement, or we didn't at the time. And so to come up with the values, we had to seek information from the employees because, as you said, it would have been very awkward to have some third party come in and say, oh yeah, give us your favorite words. What are the hot button, things of the day, and sit down with the company's owner? It was challenging at first because it was effortless. We could have just said, okay, Dennis water, what do you see Win-Tech as let's just put that to paper. Instead, we said, all right, Dennis, give us 50 adjectives that mean something to you - pieces of bits of values you feel are important. We sat down, and we came up with 50 and Dennis, a man of few words. And so that was tough to pull out, but it was a productive conversation. And once we got 50 adjectives. Then we went back to the employees, and we said, okay, here are 50 adjectives. But what are we missing? What do you think we're missing from Win-Tech's essential values? And from there, we were able to narrow them down. Initially, I thought, okay, this is going to be too much information. Employees are going to be inundated with words; their eyes are going to cross. They're not going to be interested in this. But it was funny right off the bat. Two of the three values stuck out overwhelmingly for people to choose, and then it wasn't until we narrowed things down one more time to get that third.Lisa Ryan: So share a little bit about the foundation of the company. It sounds like Dennis knew a lot about them and like you are bringing that culture forward. So what was it like for Dennis when he was running the company? And now, what have not only you adapted and kept, and what have you added for your own personality. Allison Giddens: Dennis had a true ethic. He again would never ask somebody to do something he wasn't willing to do himself. He had the bar set very high. You knew where you stood with him. There was never a question about whether or not what he expected that remains now that Dennis has retired and thankfully stays in touch with everybody and comes back now and then. We're going to have lunch with him on Thursday. Not too much has changed. A few things that have been enhanced are some leans towards technology that Dennis wasn't too familiar or excited about and, admittedly, so. His favorite joke was, what do you get when you cross a fill in the blank with a computer, and then the punch line to the joke was a computer. He was not thrilled with how things were going in technology, just because his take was we want to make parts. I'm excited to see some of the technology us embrace some of that a little more but knowing that we always need to stay true hold to the original values. And that's what's important.Lisa Ryan: That's terrific. What are some of the things that are keeping you up at night?Allison Giddens: Some of the things that keep me up at night include supply chain risk management. So much is happening for our suppliers, vendors, and customers; those moving pieces from the pandemic fallout with supplies and shortages to work for shortages because of sick people. There are cybersecurity concerns related to those supply chain concerns. So it's all the things on the peripheral that I feel that as a type-A personality cannot control, necessarily. So it's those things that even if I can't directly control it, I can at least be aware of it. One of Dennis's favorite sayings was if you know that there's a snake in the weeds. It won't bite you. Lisa Ryan: When it came to running production and running your business through covid, were you able to do any remote work, or did you have to reschedule production based on who showed up?Allison Giddens: It's been challenging. We did a great job from the get-go. When the pandemic hit, we had a person in charge of making sure that all the common area surfaces were clean at all times. On the hour, he was walking around with cleaning supplies, making sure doorknobs and light fixtures and counter spaces and such. We're all clean, and with 30 people or so out in the shop, have a 20,000 square foot shop at any point in time, we invented social distancing. That part wasn't challenging. But yes, when certain people were a little bit nervous, you know, maybe woke up with a sore throat. Everybody was well aware that they were to stay home if they did not feel 100%. We did have to move some things around because we are a manufacturer, we were not able to do any remote work. A couple of our admin folks perhaps could have, but we found it best that everything would be okay if everyone stayed in their respective spots. To this day, we're still dealing with the occasional unexpected somebody out. Well, we have, you know, we have them scheduled to do XYZ, so it's, it's a matter of just being nimble, being flexible, and again having a backup plan. So it's not it does not necessarily have to be able to control everything. But it's having the game plan in place so that if it did happen. You can pull the trigger.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to creating this network, we want to with the Manufacturers' network; here's a two-part question. What would be some of the things you would like to learn from other manufacturers? By the same token, if somebody wanted to connect with you. What would be your areas of expertise that you'd be willing to share with your colleagues?Allison Giddens: Sure, that's a good question. Good two-parter. So I would be interested to hear from others about training resources that they have for shop floor machinists, operators, and programmers. What's worked for them? I might also be curious to know their best practices in hiring - what they have a good experience, whether it be, whether it be software or websites or just questions to be asked during an interview. Those are always things that we're learning from resources I can share. I've got a great network of CMC affiliates, and that is the cybersecurity maturity model certification that many manufacturers in the defense industry. Within the next couple of years, they'll all have to be certified. So I've been living and breathing that. I'm more than happy to share any resources I've gained over those past couple of years. I've also got an amazing virtual internship that I developed for local high school students. And trying to encourage them to check out manufacturing and see what it's all about. So I'm more than happy to share that curriculum of sorts, especially if there's another manufacturer out there. Who wants to do something similar and offer it to their local high school because that's the next generation. And those. The next people. We need to hire.Lisa Ryan: Wow, that is a terrific resource. Can you give us just a taste of what that internship looks like?Allison Giddens: Sure. So, it lasts about 15 days. But of those days, we broke it up, so this was born out of covid. Initially, it was intended to bring on a couple of high school students on our shop floor; they were going to take part in a project. Then the world got turned upside down, and I was going to have to cancel on those students. Instead of canceling, I created this 15-day internship.Instead of focusing on a Win-Tech project, we brought on 12 students. I had a fantastic group of professionals dial in and gave the students insight into their professions within the industry. So we took manufacturing, and we looked at everything.We looked at the supply chain. We looked at accounting. We looked at marketing. We looked at the shop floor and metallurgy. So we, you name it, we looked at it. We had a subject matter expert speak to the students for about 30 or 40 minutes. At the very end of the program, the students gave us a presentation on something having to do with manufacturing solving a problem in the world. And it was great because not only did they get a wide breadth of manufacturing expertise thrown at them, but they created their own network. They had all these subject matter experts; these professionals dial-in just to talk to these students and stay in touch. It was a great opportunity for not only the students but the professionals involved devoted a lot of time and energy to it, and I'm grateful for that. So happy to share any additional information that we did with that program. It was a blast.Lisa Ryan: But is a terrific way to start to change the conversation and get these kids while they're still in high school and introduce them to manufacturing as a field; so good for you. That's terrific. So if people do would like to get a hold of you. What's the best way for them to do that.Allison Giddens: Best way to do that is either through LinkedIn or through my email address: akrache@win-tech.netLisa Ryan: Alison has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the manufacturer's Network. Thanks for coming and we'll see you next time.

Connect with Roger Email: absconsulting58@gmail.com Telephone: 509-366-2953 Show Transcript:Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan from the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you today to Roger Sargent. Roger is a 20-year entrepreneur who has vast experience working in manufacturing. He's found that family-owned manufacturers have a whole set of challenges that go along with that. So I'll let Roger tell you a little bit more about his background but Roger. Welcome to the show.Roger Sargent: Thank you, Lisa. I'm glad to be here.Lisa Ryan: Well, good. Well, share with us a little bit about your journey before and after entrepreneurship took over.Roger Sargent: Well, I tried to be a professional tennis player at one time and realize that there were a whole lot more people out there that were better than I was. So I started teaching the game because I love the game so much and I realized that the pounding on the court every day was going to beat up my body. So I got into management. A few years later, I got the opportunity to become a partner in a health club, which eventually led me into a partnership in a restaurant and hotel.I realized that all of my business knowledge and systems that I had applied work for any business. About 15 years ago, I started my own consulting business, where I helped small business and middle-sized business owners and their teams with their processes and helped them get out of their own way.In the construction and manufacturing industries, you find that many of those owners started with a family-owned practice. They've let these processes and procedures that they have always applied go hand down from generation, generation from one employee to another and after a while, no one knows why they do it this certain way. They keep doing it. And so that's what I help business owners in all types of businesses, but preferably manufacturing and construction help them get out of their own way.Lisa Ryan: So, take us through the process you use when working with your clients.Roger Sargent: Well, it just starts with getting introduced in and asking a lot of questions; most of those questions start with why and then who, and if they can't answer the why, the who doesn't matter. It's finding out why they do some things the same way over and over again. And if they can spell out exactly succinctly why they do it this way, it probably means to me that it's necessary.But so many times, probably eight out of 10 times, I ask a specific question on certain procedures, I always get, "I don't know, we've always done it that way." That's not a good thing to hear when you're in a business that you don't know why you do something a certain way and so from there, once you start realizing that there's a lot of, I don't know, we've always thought that way, all of a sudden, teams start to realize that maybe we need to start rethinking these things. I help them with that process. Okay, this is how you've done it for X number of years, whatever.What is the result we're trying to get in the timeline? And now, let's see if we can work backward and make it happen more efficiently and productively.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the things you repeatedly see when it comes to these family-owned or smaller manufacturers getting stuck?Roger Sargent: Well, it starts with the first generation to the second generation and so on, that the founding member of the family who started the business had this idea and they want to keep the family involved. They put the family in there, and they let them work at the business, which is great. So they get to know all the frontline issues and procedures and systems. But what they don't learn is the why. Why are we doing it this way? How do we ever come up with that particular method? It just starts to get transcended down, but because it's always been done that way and it's family-owned.No one wants to rock the boat, but they don't take the time to teach the family. They're the foundation of the business not I'm not talking about the procedures in the process as I'm talking about why the business was started in the first place. And what's its overall goal and trying to get connected with their customers and deliver the best service possible.They seem just automatically to think by just being part of the family. That's where it all starts. And that's where I begin with getting my getting the family members together. And the key employees together and just talking that out, but it's just they make too many assumptions that everybody knows why they're doing it a certain way.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like it can come down to a simple conversation about the company's history because one of the things that a lot of manufacturers are looking at that success is that succession planning. Who's going to take over the business when I'm no longer there? And getting to the point of that why I started the business. What was it that was going on at the time? How did I figure out these procedures?Because that way, you're giving a history to the rest of the family, who then, based on that knowledge, can come up with ways that make sense to update the policies to update things and take it forward. Instead of getting stuck. Would that be helpful?Roger Sargent: That that's exactly at least. So that is very well said because it's just people just making too many assumptions, and so those assumptions get passed on from generation to generation. So what you just laid out there is a perfect format to break away from their current assumption base and went forward with maybe not a new business plan, but just new eyes looking at everything going on.Lisa Ryan: What occurs to me is that maybe that first-generation thinks that the rest of the family's going to get bored or they've heard it before, or I told him. Well, how I started this company 20 years ago, so maybe they do not realize how important it is, especially when you start thinking about transition or succession planning to let the next generations know coming in that this is what we. This is why we got started and helped them get a little bit closer to that.Roger Sargent: You're so spot on with that message and it doesn't necessarily mean family-owned business. It's just business in general. 82% of all small to middle-sized businesses fail within their first four years, and it's because they don't take the time to put down in stone, what the primary purpose of this business is and why it got started.What end result is expected and desired end result wants to look like, or should it look like they love their trade most small business owners and middle-sized businesses. They love their trade; they fall in love with their trade, and they think that the business part of things will take care of itself, because they want to be involved with the trade and that's where it stems down because they love it. And that's what makes them so good.When it is on service delivery, it doesn't necessarily translate that it's going to be a good business. We're all in business to hopefully deliver good products good service, but obviously, to make money to be able to send that business on to the next generation and hand it down to generation after generation, You're not gonna do that if it's losing money every month.Lisa Ryan: Exactly. It almost sounds like the original thought with the Field of Dreams mentality behind it; if I build it, they will come. That first generation is so passionate, and they have their way, and they know why they're doing, and then over time, that gets diluted. So it's like, well, mom or dad built the business, but why aren't they coming? Because the next generation doesn't necessarily understand that why or necessarily have the same passion.Lisa Ryan: That the founders, whether it be their parents or the people that they're working for. So after they have that original conversation as far as just discussing the wise kind of painting that picture, where do you take them from there, what would be the next best step?Roger Sargent: Well, you just said a very keyword passion. The original founder and maybe the second generation had that passion to just keep moving on. That doesn't mean that the next generation of people who have a family have that same passion, so you need to take a look at everybody and say, okay. Now that you've described the bigger vision, I love the old saying by Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you're going, how do you get there?"  Once we realize we know where we're going, we know what it looks like to get there. Does everybody that needs to have that passion. Do they have it. And if they don't, then maybe they shouldn't be considered of handing down this business to have because if they don't have that passion. What's going to mean they're going to keep wanting to improve as we move forward with that business.Lisa Ryan: That sounds like that can be a pretty tough conversation for the owner of a company to have with their family members.Roger Sargent: In, and what I have found is that it's exactly that it's a family conversation that's going to be tough to have in because this business is like another child to that original owner and so you're talking about your child, another sibling. And so what you're trying to establish here is the true commit. I would recommend that. That's where you need to have an outside facilitator make that conversation happen and not just let things kind of get swept under the carpet like it typically can happen with a family-owned and family in general. Sometimes we don't want to deal with that, so we just sweep that topic under the carpet and see if we'd ever get stepped on again to where we need to talk about it again. You need to have some of this to facilitate it from start to finish and not let it get stalled in between.Lisa Ryan: Well, and the other thing, even though there is an investment in bringing in a consultant or a third party to work with a manufacturer. The nice thing about it is that you can be the bad guy. You can tell that person exactly what that person wants to say, but for whatever reason, they can't say it. They don't want to hurt feelings. After all, they want to keep their family ties because they don't want to destroy their relationships.So having the skills and looking at it from that neutral third party coming in, you're not only able to say that, but you are perceived differently by the employees because you're not there on the day today.Roger Sargent: Exactly, yeah.Lisa Ryan: So after those difficult conversations you've explored the why you've had some of these difficult conversations to kind of reignite that passion within the company. Where do they go from there to move forward?Roger Sargent: Well, they make whatever necessary agreements that they're going to move forward with the terms they just agreed upon. Then, what you do is you start taking each one of those agreements, and you start now breaking those down to see if there things that are being done right now that can be changed for the better the company and start seeing how that's going to apply. But it begins with agreements, and then you start breaking down all those agreements into small baby steps making those processes to where everybody's body. And so it's not the father handing down more directives; it's now a team of family members or key personnel that's treated like family.To have their say and how everything looks and sounds moving forward. It would help if you had that buy in. Let them feel like they are contributing, not just what they do to pick up their paycheck, but contributing to the bigger picture and the bigger cause.Lisa Ryan: Share with us a success story that you had with one of your clients, of course, giving the information confidential. But something where you saw a real big difference between what they were doing by implementing the process that we just talked about how they were able to see success after that.Roger Sargent: There are plenty, but the one that comes to my mind is a family-owned company. They have the daughter, the husband of the daughter, and then the husband, a wife who founded the company. They all have their roles, but they were not necessarily meant to be in that role because of their particular skill set. The job came open, and they needed to put someone there. So they put a family member, even though they might not have been fully qualified to do that. And over time, even though you're a family member, you don't enjoy what you're doing because you don't know what you're trying to do. It can weigh on you and take a toll. Once we found this out, we realize that they had much better skill sets necessary in other parts of the business. So what we did was we moved them to where they had that self-injected fire that started underneath them. They were excited to come to work and help out in that particular area instead of just coming in and dreading it every day. Not being productive every day because I didn't like what I do because I didn't know what I was supposed to do. The old saying, "You don't know what you don't know." If no one teaches you, just throw you in that spot because the opening is here and we need to get that stuff done. That's not the recipe for long-term success. Once we've put the family members in the right spot that opened up the opportunity for some long-term employees who have been around with a family business for a long time to step into additional roles they were excited about. So, the company's morale, first and foremost, just springboarded greatly because they felt so good about that. But at the same time, when you come to work and you enjoy what happens that energy and synergy is going to transcend through all the rest of the employees. Without doing a whole lot of other changes to the marketing process or the sales process, all of a sudden, the company became more efficient and more productive, which means they became more profitable because everybody was doing a job that they liked. They were good at it, and before it, just good things happened without changing a lot of the operational procedures.Lisa Ryan: That's such an interesting point because our whole conversation up to that was about the owner or the leader of the company themselves sitting down and sharing their passion and their why. But having that level of not the only vulnerability of allowing that employee that family member that person is that isn't quite getting that passion for feeling safe enough to share. Well, I don't understand what I'm doing. Well, I don't like what I'm doing well. That opens up like you found opportunities for them to move into something they are passionate about. So it does go on both sides of the equation; it's up to the owner to the company's leadership to share the reasons why. But it's also coming full circle that they have to listen and be willing to listen to their employees, whatever they say, and look for ways to make it work, even though it's not necessarily the role that they thought that that employee was supposed to be.Roger Sargent: Yeah. Well, well, said what you find is that most owners when they started a business. They were so in love with their trade that they didn't take the time and effort to get to know the other aspects of running that business. So when they hand that roll off to a family member or just an employee, most of the time, they're not very well trained on how to do that because the owner himself doesn't know how to do that. So, hey you applied for a bookkeeping job, you said you have some booking experience go through the book you've been, even though they might only know how to do payroll, they might not know how to do anything else and bookkeeping, but they might have just done payroll only or just done accounts receivable only, and now they're in charge of all the bookkeeping that they have no real skill set to do that entire job. That's the problem with most businesses, primarily in manufacturing, is that we get so involved in our trade in the delivery of service that we forget that those other business components are necessary evils that need to be addressed every day to make sure that the business is going to be profitable and sustainable from you're in and you're out.Lisa Ryan: You have given us so many great tips about just taking a step back and looking at the business. But if you were to wrap it up in a nice little bow with your best tip that somebody listening today could start to implement, what would that be?Roger Sargent: Of stop making assumptions. Number one: start having some in-depth conversations with your key staff and your frontline staff as well. Start building that foundation and that environment where it's safe to say what's on your mind, obviously. You need to do that respectfully, but, you need to find out. Do you have everybody sitting on a seat on the bus right now within that organization? Are they sitting on the bus's right seat and did they knew their why; the big purpose of the business was started in the first place. If they can, if they're seeing say yes, I'm on the right seat. I love this place. I love what I do every day, and I know the why, on the bigger picture. Now start moving into the efficiencies.But first and foremost, stop making assumptions and build that environment where people can freely say what they need to say and not have any repercussions, so that way you know. Have you heard the same two heads are better than one? Well, I think ten heads are better than two. So if you've got a lot of people getting feedback, you just never know what you might find out from that frontline employee that comes in with such a different perspective. Something that might be relevant for your business today that you never thought of before give them that opportunity.Lisa Ryan: Wonderful. Well, Roger. Thank you so much for being on the show today from a networking standpoint if people would like to reach out to you. What's the best way to do that.Roger Sargent: Well, my, my cell phone. I was always on me. So you can call me at 509-366-2953 or you can reach me on my email by ABSconsulting58@gmail.comLisa Ryan: Wonderful. Well, again, Roger. Thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been great to have the conversation.Roger Sargent: Thank you very much I enjoyed it.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the manufacturers network podcast. See you next time.