The Manufacturers' Network

Connect with Steve BlueLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenblue/Website: https://www.stevenlblue.com/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Steve Blue. Steve is President and CEO of Miller Ingenuity, which is a high-tech company in the transportation space. He's also the bestselling author of five books and a speaker and consultant. Steve, welcome to the show.Steve Blue: Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here.Lisa Ryan: Steve, share a bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Steve Blue: I've been in manufacturing for 45 years and in senior leadership in manufacturing for the last 40. In the last 25 years, I've been the CEO of a manufacturing company, so I know the landscape of manufacturers.I have written five books. One of them became a bestseller. I'm a professional speaker. Just in the last year, I spoke at Harvard Business School, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, to name a few. Now and again, I'll do some consulting, but mostly it's professional speaking, authoring books, and then running my own company, which, as anybody in your audience will know, that's a full-time job in and of itself.Lisa Ryan: Before the show started, you and I were talking about company culture, and you said that you'd created a killer company culture in your company. I want to dive deep into that because with the workforce, with workers so hard to find these days to begin with, it's critical to create the type of workplace culture that keeps the people once you have them. So, share your philosophy regarding company cultures and some specific things you did within your company.Steve Blue: First of all, in my view, culture is everything. It is absolutely everything. It provides a foundation for profit, employee satisfaction, and shareholder satisfaction.And if you don't have the right culture, I can give you examples of the wrong culture. If you've ever traveled on an airplane lately, you know exactly what a wrong culture looks like. It's always amazing to me to use that example, Lisa. You get on an airplane, and the flight attendants work for the same people. They all work for the same company. They have the same benefits, working conditions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And one will be miserable, and the other will be absolutely delightful. So it's hard. It all comes down to culture. In my company, we have several tenants of culture that we believe in.One of them is community. Another is ethics. Another is excellence. Most companies should have foundational cultures, and then your company might have a few different than mine, but people will resonate with the kind of culture you have in a company. Now, if it's a crappy culture, and if it's a culture of, we'll do what we have to, and no more than we have to get along, that's going to attract a certain kind of employee, and it'll resonate with a specific type of employee.But if you have a high-performance culture, you know what I always say, Lisa, is every company should strive to have a Cirque Du Soleil culture. Have you ever seen Cirque du Soleil?Lisa Ryan: Yes, several.Steve Blue: There you go. And I'm, I bet you everybody in your audience has, and one thing you don't see in a Cirque du Soleil show is somebody going, Hey, that's not my job.I'm not catching you today. I don't feel like catching you today. They never grumble. They always come to work every day, all jazzed up with a mission to do better today than they did yesterday. And I don't know why you wouldn't want a culture like a Cirque Du Soleil culture. So a lot of CEOs tell me we're manufacturing.We're not a circus show. You can't compare us to that. Actually, you can. You can create an environment that will attract the Cirque du Soleil talent. Now you have to make sure that, to your point, once they get here, see what we do, Lisa, is we're very careful in our screening.If you let somebody that has a bad attitude or doesn't believe in the kind of things that you're trying to do, your call. Don't ever let them in. Because then they start infecting the rest of the place. And so not only do the leaders interview people before they come to work for us, but the peers and people they would work with also interview them.And so then we get a read, is this person going to work with this culture or not? And that's how we keep them on the outside. And so once they're on the inside, you must constantly promote and continually reinforce and support that culture. So I'll give you an example: our employees pick a particular value of our culture every quarter, and they vote for an employee that illustrates and exemplifies that value. And so they all collaborate on it, and we give an award every quarter to the person who won it. And they get a hundred dollars bill, and then we put a full-page, four-color ad with them getting the award in our daily local newspaper.I can tell you that people love to see themselves in the paper, and then when they do, they brag to their neighbors and friends. Look at this. This is the kind of company that I work for. And as an example, I don't have any trouble recruiting talent at all. Because the world around us in our community knows we have a high-performance culture. They know we take care of our people. And when they see evidence of that, like that one example in the newspaper, it attracts the kind of people I want to attract.Lisa Ryan: So, how many employees do you have, and what exactly does your manufacturing company do?Steve Blue: We have about 200 people, and we make everything from low-tech products that go on the bottom of a locomotive, and the bottom of a rail car is an example in passenger and freight rail. And then we have everything from the top of that locomotive to the bottom. And then we move into the high-tech space with LED highway crossing signals, where the biggest manufacturer of those in the world and our newest flagship product called zone guard.It's a very sophisticated device that protects roadway track workers from getting killed. Believe it or not, if you see these guys working on the side of the rail, they're grinding the rail. They're clearing brush, all kinds of the stuff. A bunch of those guys get killed every year because of the train, they don't know the train's coming, and it runs them down.They have all kinds of procedures and policies, so that's not supposed to happen. So our product zone guard makes it virtually impossible for anybody to get killed on a track worker detail. So we're high tech to low tech, and everything is in.Lisa Ryan: And it's interesting because, when I was, when we first started the conversation, I, in my mind, was trying to figure out how many employees you have because you make it sound like a small company, you know that you can do these things and create this Cirque du Soleil culture and pick this the person of the month based on the values.But you have good size organization. So the challenge to people is, don't make excuses that my business is too big or we have too many people to do this because no matter what size your organization is, if you bring the right people on board, that you've already talked about that screening process, and that does work.I've had a couple of different podcast interviews as well as just my clients that I've talked to about letting your employees get involved in the interview process because otherwise, you have this person come in. He's got an excellent pedigree on paper, but as a human being, he's just an idiot.You bring him in, and your employees are like, I am not working with him. Versus, they get into the process, and before you even make the offer, your employers are like if you hire him, I'm leaving. And then, okay. Not the right fit.Steve Blue: Everybody looks good on paper. You never see the warts until they're inside the organization.So your point is well taken. The thing I want to say about an organization's too large to do well, every company has, they break down. A 10,000-employee company eventually breaks down to one leader with 20 people or one leader with 30 people. So don't tell me that you can't do it in a big company.You have to ensure that your leaders are completely on board with the culture. And then you charge them with the responsibility of carrying that.Lisa Ryan: And it really does have to come from the upper leadership and from the C-suite who sets the tone for the organization. If they're not buying into it, it will not happen.No matter how much a manager or HR wants to change the culture, it's got to get that buy-in from above and all the leadership.Steve Blue: I agree with this notion. Somebody wrote a book about it once. Leadership from the bottom. That's ridiculous. Yep. You can't leave from the bottom, for crying out loud.And I, there's another book out I think it's called Leading When You Have No Authority, that's bunk too. You have to have authority, otherwise, you can't lead. If you want to lead credibly, you have to be a good leader, but you can't lead from the bottom up, and the top has to buy into it.I'll give an example. I took over a company once that had a lot of problems. The culture was not what it needed to be, and it started with the guys at the top. So I brought them in a room, and I laid it off for them. Here's what we're going to do, here's what we need to do, and if any of you aren't on board with it, you need to leave.Half of them weren't on board with it, even though they said, oh yeah, sure, boss, I got that. But then they in action, they, so I just fired him. And so when I did that, the other guy said, whoa, he's serious about this. And you start at the top, and if you got you, you train them, teach them, coach them, cajole them, encourage them, support them.But if they don't do it, you have to get rid of them. Then it resonates with the whole organization. When people see that someone was asked to leave because they didn't follow a certain value or certain trait we want for the culture, they know the boss is serious about this. So I guess I should be too.Lisa Ryan: And you think about the commitment and loyalty that builds from the individual contributors as they're looking, because the, a lot of them don't believe that management will ever fire anybody in management, no matter how terrible the manager is. So when they see a leadership team saying, we're going to change culture, and by the way, we just got rid of these five toxic leaders, it sends a very strong message to the rest of the team.Steve Blue: It really does, Lisa, because you made a good point. A lot of times upper management thinks they're untouchable. They are what they are, and you can't do anything about it. And that's why companies can't change because they leave the change, the people at the top that aren't going to change and don't want to change them.You have to take them out. You know what happens is people don't become toxic overnight, Lisa, so they become toxic over decades. Usually, you can't fix that. I've tried, trust me, I've tried to fix toxic people. I've thrown everything you can imagine at it, but it just never works. So now I don't waste any time if I encounter a toxic leader or person. I just say goodbye.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, it's funny, I just had a program this morning, and one of the company leaders asked me how do you work with companies that have toxic leadership that want to hire you. And you've probably found the same thing, Steve, that most people don't hire us because they don't see the problem and don't want to fix it. So it's somebody else's thing to do. It's the companies that are already doing things well and want to do things better are the ones that focus on things like company culture and not just the bottom line and how we're going to make the next buck.Steve Blue: Yeah. It used to be you talk culture to a CEO, and they give you that deer-in-the-headlights look. These days more CEOs are beginning to understand the power and the absolute necessity of having a high-performance culture. And so they work at it. I had a CEO once who wanted me to come in and do a little consulting, and he had a toxic team, I could tell.And I said, look, I really don't want to do this, but I will, but only if you pay my fee up upfront before I even start. So he said why would you want that? And I said, because I know within two or three days of mean nosing are on your organization, your team's going to come to you and say, you got to take this guy out.He's going to destroy this whole company because they don't want anybody to upset their nice cushy positions. So I don't bother with you. I won't bother with companies like that. I just No thank you.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. I've had the same thing where you have to fire clients because they have the intention. Or they think it's something that they should do. They've heard that employees could make more money if they are engaged. So instead of looking at it from the heart of the matter, from the actual culture, and coming at it from that, it sounds woo woo, but that heart-centered approach. If you're looking at it as just dollar signs, you will fail.But if you go in it with that heart-centered approach that I'm doing this because it's the best thing for my employees, it's the best thing for my leadership, it's the best thing for my customers, then you know what? You're going to be more profitable. You're going to be able to keep people and you're going to be more productive and all of the good things that go along with it. But we have to do the work.Steve Blue: Yeah. Most CEOs don't have the guts for the. Because it's ugly and it's messy, at least in the beginning. Now, when you get an organization as I have, they run like a top. I'll give you an example. One Saturday morning I drove into the office to catch up with some work, and I saw a big U-Haul trailer and truck at our loading dock.And that's weird because we always ship by commercial carrier and we don't ship on Saturdays. So my curiosity got the best of me. So, I walked over and into the shipping department, and there were some technicians, a couple of factory workers, and one warehouse worker.They're unloading a bunch of stuff. I said, what are you guys doing? He said we were short a couple of parts to make this certain commitment to one of our customers, and we couldn't get it. So, we called all over the country until we found them and rented a U-Haul to get them and bring them back.I'm thinking, who gave them permission to do that? The answer is they didn't need permission, and that's the kind of culture we have. They take it upon themselves and do what has to be done, but that's the end stage. Most CEOs don't have the guts to start it at the beginning, where you have to fire people.I've had people threaten me. I've had threats to my family. I've had bricks thrown through my window. And all of that is part of the process of restructuring. I'd call it the heart and the soul of a company.Lisa Ryan: What did the company look like? What were the specific things you did? You were walking into a culture that was not what you wanted. And so, how did you start? How did you cause that turnaround to happen?Steve Blue: I'll give you a few examples of mechanics. Lisa, one example, you see how people behave is rooted in language, right? And so how they talk to each other largely determines whether they can work together or not and whether they can work productively or not.When I first took over this company, the language they used with each other was just awful. It would make a sailor blush. It was really bad. And so the first thing I did was to call everybody in the factory and say, here's the deal. We will not tolerate that kind of language.I said, I'm not talking about hell, and I'm not talking about, damn, you guys know what I'm talking about. I said, there are no second chances. It's zero tolerance. The first time you use that kind of language, you're going to get fired. We'll be no warnings. It didn't surprise me, because I've been around a long time, Lisa. Within hours, they were testing me, and I fired three or four people in the first afternoon.Now people started to pay attention. You can't fire people for swearing. I sure can. And once I did that, and it took a couple of days for quite a few people to get fired, then the rest of the people said, wow, I guess we better not talk like that anymore. So I've always believed that the first place you have to start in a company if you want to build a superior culture is to examine how they talk with each other and how they behave.So that was the first thing I did. And the second major, and this is of course, over a few years, you must first find out what kind of culture you have. Then you can decide okay because you may want to retain some parts of a culture. So we did surveys that brought in an industrial psychologist and surveyed every employee.I didn't ask the managers because they'll tell you what they think you want to hear. I wanted to hear from everybody. So then we had a good sense of what our culture was like, and there were parts of it that were, yeah, this is worth keeping. And then, we made a conscious decision, and culture is rooted in values.We made a conscious decision. Here are the company's values now—these values we don't want anymore. Here's why we don't want them, and here are the values we want. And in part, the employees told us the kind of values they wanted. Now the inmates can't run the asylum, but I, you'd be surprised that most times employees, when you say, what kind of values do you want?They'll say ethics, honesty, excellence. They really do because most employees want to work hard if you're giving them the chance. So that's, that was the second major thing we did. And then we threw everything we had against it. If you exhibit our values, you get promoted. If you don't, you get fired.If you exhibit our values, you get pay raises. If you don't get the pay raises. Everything an organization has, then you have to throw it toward the values and toward reinforcing your culture.Lisa Ryan: If I were to walk through your plants and I asked your employees about your values, is that something that they know? Like the Ritz-Carlton knows their theme?Steve Blue: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of companies have their values...

Connect with Noah Graff:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-graff-b7169a1/Website: https://todaysmachiningworld.comPodcast: https://todaysmachiningworld.com/swarfcast/Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Noah Graff. Noah is the host of SwarfCast, a podcast that helps professionals in precision machining excel in their careers. For more than ten years, he's been a used machine tool dealer, or treasure hunter, as he likes to call it, buying and selling used equipment worldwide.He's also a blogger and editor for the website, Today's Machining World, directed at the Precision Machining Community. So, Noah, welcome to the show.Noah Graff: Oh, thank you. It's fun to be interviewed rather than always doing the interviewing.Lisa Ryan: So, share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Noah Graff: One way you could put it would be nepotism. My grandfather, Leonard Graff, started Graff-Pinker, our used machine tool business, about 80 years ago. My father and my uncle went into the business. In school, I was a film and history major. My dad had started this blog. It was a print magazine called, Today's Machining World. Because he had a journalism masters in college, it had always been his dream. So he started this magazine about the precision machining industry, which is what we specialize in.This was 2005, and he was trying to lure me in. He said, look, broadband is coming. We'll do video interviews, and he was right. He was about five years too early. But I went there and started working with the magazine, editing, writing, and then about 2011 or 12. Print was dying, so we decided we'd take the magazine online, and I would join the treasure-hunting business. We continued to blog, and then about four and a half, five years ago, we started SwarfCast, the podcast, which is an extension of Today's Machining World.You might be wondering why we call it SwarfCast. The word swarf is a British word. It means the chips, grime, and oil in these machines' bellies. But, of course, we specialize in screw machines or other CNC machines. So usually, they'll have a chip conveyor at the bottom of the machine, or sometimes they call it swarf.We had the magazine and then the blog. So we started calling it Swarf - Swarf was our column because it's getting down and dirty into what's happening behind the scenes and the belly of the machine.Lisa Ryan: With all of this workaround precision machining, what are some of the topics you cover? You have a podcast and a magazine. Is there that much to talk about in precision machining?Noah Graff: There's a lot to talk about. We've kept the podcast a little more niche. But with the blog, there's all kinds of stuff that our audiences would be interested in - everything from politics and economy to sports. My dad writes 50% of the blogs, and then I do a blog and a podcast every other week. But it's a springboard for things. But there are all kinds of things to talk about. Lately, the issues on people's minds are workforce development and people are always interested in technology.People are interested in company culture, and we come at it with a different slant because we are selling used machines to all of our readers and listeners. We have ears in it. We're hearing what everybody is saying. It gives us an interesting viewpoint. We like to talk about dealer stuff - people we've done, done deals with, machinery types of things that people are buying now, and trends we're seeing. Today we published a blog about how we're helping certain companies buy and sell their companies when people have gotten older and they want to sell out. For some other companies, it's better to liquidate their machines. That's another thing we do. We'll do auctions, so that's the one-minute, two-minute scoop.Lisa Ryan: One thing I enjoy about my speaking career and podcast is being around manufacturers and people passionate about something nobody else ever thinks about. There are many conversations around precision machining, and touching that niche market is cool. So when are you passionate about it for?Noah Graff: For me, it's this normal thing because it's what I've always been around. But in case it's specified. It's often metalworking that we're talking about. And we sell turned parts. We specialize in a specific kind of machine called a screw machine, and they have CNC screw machines and cam mechanical screw machines.We specialize in the CAM ones, which are great because you can rebuild them repeatedly. If a machine is from the eighties, that's a young screw machine. Oh wow. If I was alive while this machine was around, it's a cam screw machine. It's a young machine in screw machine years. Some of them we're selling might be in the sixties - that's not crazy.Lisa Ryan: So when we talk about bringing younger talent and newer people into the industry in manufacturing. You have these kids walking into the plant, seeing machines 60 years old, 50 years old, 40 years old. What can you then convey to them with all the automation and new shiny toys? What is it about that, that you can continue to use equipment that's that old or young?Noah Graff: No, you raise a good point. Getting people to use these machines is difficult. People don't realize that these mechanical screw machines are perfect for making certain kinds of parts. These are meant for parts you're making by the hundreds of thousands, and you can do a pretty precise job with them. And so, you might buy one of these machines. You might pay 30 grand or 80 grand for one of these machines.You might pay a million dollars to buy the computer-controlled version. If you're a company that needs to make a hundred thousand parts a year, you're caught in this weird spot where I need money to pay for a million dollars for a CNC machine. And these other machines are going to be too slow, these CNC machines. So if they can find the talent, they want to buy these machines. But it is difficult to find young people that want to do it. I know one of our good customers has apprenticeship programs in his shop. In the apprenticeship program, he pays more for people who want to learn mechanical screw machines.The machines are noisy. You're going to get dirty and younger people to want to push buttons and be in front of slick computers and screens and in cleaner shops that are quieter. It's a little harder, but certain people love it. It is possible to train people on these machines. Still, usually, people want to do the most cutting-edge technology, even if it may be different from the thing that's going to make the company the most money. That depends on the route these companies are taking. But you're seeing many phasing them out though they can't because they can't find the talent to run these machines.Lisa Ryan: I was going to say because that would bring up things like the knowledge transfer of taking somebody who's been on that machine who knows it inherently because they've been working on it and fixing it for 30 years. Absolutely. And you are bringing somebody in and trying to teach that. How, besides the apprenticeship programs, are you seeing them do anything else, or is it just the luck of the draw that you find the right person who falls in love with it?Noah Graff: If you want to work in a machining company, even if you've gone to trade school, the only way to learn is to be in the shop working on the machines in that environment. No matter who it is, they'll have to be trained by somebody, but fewer people will be there to train because everybody's retiring.At Graff Pinker, we will refurbish the machines and make repairs. And that's the great thing about mechanical machines. You can keep making repairs. One guy is retired and comes back just because he likes it. That's what you're up against, people. People need help finding enough workers who want to run the slick stuff, let alone the dirty stuff. It's challenging, yet you can if you know how to do it. It can still be a great living.Lisa Ryan: It just reminds me of fixing old cars and appliances versus fixing new things where everything is computerized.Noah Graff: It takes a specialist to do so that. There's some saving grace regarding the mechanical when there are no computers. Think about it. Would you ever use a computer that is twenty years old? Could you even fathom it?But these machines, some of them, some of the CNC machines, are made so well that you can use a machine from your 2000 that has a computer. But it's, and that's a skill set for the people that are repairing them. In our shop, we have a machine from 2007, and we have a guy, it's called an Emco CNC machine. We have a guy from the OEM that came to repair it. He's calling all around and trying to figure it out. It's an art to figure out an old computer,Lisa Ryan: I have barely had an iPhone for over three years. Much less a computer for longer than that.Noah Graff: And they won't repair the iPhone. They say, No, we're done.Lisa Ryan: No, you pay a thousand dollars, and it's disposable. When it comes to the workforce, what are some trends you're seeing people doing to attract or keep people once they get them in there?Noah Graff: It's important to, for the industry on the whole and for society to make the manufacturing and the machining business seem cool, seem like a good career. It's often more lucrative than doing something that you would spend a whole bunch of money at college to study. That's the first thing. I see a lot of business owners getting involved in the community. They get involved in schools, and they're gaining personally by it, and they're also just doing it as an altruistic thing. Were you asking about young people, or were you asking about all the employees?Lisa Ryan: Anybody that you have, the workforce itself. It's hard enough to find people right now, to begin with. And then, once you get them in there, you must figure out how to keep them because they have lots of choices now as far as if they decide to stay with you or ghost you at lunch.Noah Graff: This week, I interviewed somebody on Sunday who is a recruiter specializing in manufacturing. We talked a lot about this. She says that you must sell yourself if you are a manufacturing company. You need to treat these employees as though they're customers you're trying to push yourself to. So she's somebody people can go to find a recruiter that specializes in it. She also said networking, being on LinkedIn, is what she's doing.That's a big deal. Many machining companies we talk to have the best results when they bring in other people. You can't always have that, but that's something important. Regarding retaining and making your place attractive, it's a lot of what you hear in other places, too, of work-life balance and having better hours.Pay is significant, but everybody can offer that to the blue-collar industry by the hour. Traditionally, employee has little control over their hours. It was just, this is what you do and this, you work this many hours a day, and this is your overtime you can take.I interviewed a machining company. They have had a lot of luck retaining and getting employees by giving people flexible hours, saying, Oh, you coach your son's team, so you can work these hours. So you can work earlier and get off later, or you have to take your son or daughter to daycare so you can come in at x time.Or maybe they'll hire a student who can only work part-time. They're a talent, so they'll let them do that. They'll hire them even though they know maybe they'll leave. And sometimes those are the best possible people. The key is to have an open mind.Lisa Ryan: There were a couple of things that you said that stood out number one during the interview process where you are selling them, there's no way that they are selling you on their skills and everything because we must bring sexy back to manufacturing and let people know the benefits of it.There are a lot of people out there that are looking for opportunities. One of my clients, and one of the biggest signs they use, is to work with your hands. So it focuses on attracting people that get that intrinsic joy from working with their hands and getting into that.The other thing that shows with manufacturing is the work-life balance. Not only open to flexible hours, but we also have to change our minds about that. But if you think about machining, that's something other than something that can be done at home. You have your time back. You're not working from home on the weekends and nights and all of these things.It gives you a built-in opportunity to have a work-life balance while not having any student loan debt and being unable to do what you want and have a nice career out of it. It's interesting. The mind shift that manufacturers must have and the flexibility are huge.Noah Graff: Yeah. Most of the time, it still needs to be more flexible. You still have to go in. It's a harder sell to people because it takes a lot of time to go in. People are used to being at home now, so it's a shift. But, in many respects, it's healthy to go into a workforce and not see the world remotely five days a week. It's a complicated issue, but I hear so many different ideas.Lisa Ryan: We have the mom shift that I know a lot of manufacturers are talking about. Dads can do it too, but working from ten to two. The parents can get their kids off on the bus, then they go to work, and then they pick them up. The mom shift is a big one. I just spoke at FABTECH, and one of the guys in my audience said he has so many workers that get the benefits from their spouses that they don't need them. I'm not sure about all the ins and outs, but he allowed people to work fewer hours.So he's offering them thirty-hour workweeks without benefits because they got them from their spouse. They could go from a five-day week to a seven-day week because employees had fewer hours. They had more time on their own. You ask questions that you have never asked before. Your employees worked seven days a week, or he had shifts going seven days.They had shifts that he had shifts that went seven days a week instead of five days a week. So he could increase his staff by 30% and yet decrease the money he was paying for benefits. So it was an interesting concept. You think of things in ways we wouldn't have to consider before because flexibility and manufacturing usually don't go into the same sentence.No, but if you say, how can I offer half shifts? We have a shift from six to 11. We have a shift from 6:00 AM to 11:00 AM. So just again, giving people shorter shifts, looking for ways to give them their time back, because that's after two and a half years of the pandemic. So that's what we're looking for.So what, are there any other trends you're seeing regarding technology or the workforce?Noah Graff: As far as workforce, again, in technology, lots of people are talking about automating putting in collaborative robots, cobots. We're hearing a lot about reshoring and nearshoring, where work is coming back to the United States, but it's coming back to Canada or Mexico. So it's not necessarily that specific work that once was there is now here. What's more, now they're quoting jobs, and I'm getting a job that would've been there. So that's what I hear from companies.Lisa Ryan: What about some of the global trends you're seeing? So anything from across the sea, China, Europe, South America, or Asia?Noah Graff: Sure. Traditionally we've done a lot of business with Europe. Buying and selling back and forth is a puzzle right now. I hear things from places. I've heard Italy is slowing down. People are complaining about energy prices over there. Energy prices in some European countries are like seven times what they were, what they are typical. Unfortunately, some of this stuff in my world, in the machinery dealer world, can be a small sample size. I was talking to some people I knew in Germany who had this expensive CNC multi-spindle they wanted. They complained that their automotive and energy prices had been a little difficult.And then they're like, Oh, sorry, the guy can't sell the machine. Now he is got too much work for it. He's got a job. Let's see what else we're about to buy some machines in Japan. We're excited about that. Some CNC Swiss machines it's a kind of screw machine.That market is still crazy. If you can get one of these machines, that new one would be about 250,000. If you can get one that's 12 years old, you should get a hundred grand for it, which is pretty good. It is making us go to Japan to get these machines.We do crazy stuff like that. But of course, as we were negotiating for the machines, the yen suddenly popped up like 4%. So our margin is shrinking, but still, that's interesting. China is suffering because of the pandemic and different things that the government's done as far as shutting people, shutting them down, et cetera.But in the interview I just did this week, I was talking to a guy who sells Swiss star machines. This is like one of the name brands of Swiss screw machines. He said that they buy more machines in China in a month than they'll sell to the US in a year. That's how much they're manufacturing. It blew me away.Lisa Ryan: And are the machines that different? If you understand an American screw machine, is it easy to pick up a Japanese or a German model, or is it a new learning curve?Noah Graff: Oh no, the machines this guy was selling, this is a star. These are made in Japan. Okay. They are a bunch of machines. This Swiss-style screw machine, some of the main ones are from Japan. There's one from Korea. There's one from Switzerland, very famous. It's called Tonos. They call it Swiss because the people who invented this machine made watch parts in Switzerland.They needed a machine that could make long, narrow, precise parts in the United States. They have a few machine tools that they make Ho machines, which are very popular. They make them all over the place. There's a screw machine called a Davenport, one of the old-school screw machines. You could sell a machine from the seventies, and it would still be pretty good.This is also called the machine that won World War ii. Because it can just make parts, you can make one part in two seconds. If you ask anybody around the world, even European people making fancy machines, the Europeans make a lot of expensive high-end screw machines. They'll say no, this machine won World War ii.Lisa Ryan: So, talk about that. That's an interesting historical fact. So why did one machine win World War II?Noah Graff: That was the logical question. The reason it won World War II is that this is a machine. It's called a multi-spindle. These machines make a hundred thousand parts a year or more. They usually...

Connect with Jim Tincher:Website: www.heartofthecustomer.com. Email: Jim@heartofthecustomer.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimtincher/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you today to Jim Tincher. Jim sees the world through the eyes of the customers. He's a nationally recognized customer experience expert, keynote speaker, and the author of DO b2b: Drive growth through game-changing customer experience. His firm builds loyalty and B2B organizations and works with multiple global manufacturing organizations. Jim, welcome to the show.Jim Tincher: Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here.Lisa Ryan: Jim, please share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Jim Tincher: Sure. I've always been a customer and am very interested in that. In my first job out of college, I worked for a high-resolution laser printer manufacturing organization. During my first summer, I was going to visit my girlfriend, now wife, out in Connecticut. So I wanted to see a customer while I was there, just for whatever reason in part of it.It's always been a customer focus, but over time I recognized that the field of customer experience is where I gravitate towards. I didn't connect to the business, and that was my case. Once, I worked with a B2B to C organization, and it was all about the customer. I noticed that my internal colleagues needed to be resonating with them because I only talked about customers.I never connected it to the business. Since that time, 12 years ago, I've been focused on making that connection to how helping improve the customer experience creates a more substantial company. I'm especially intrigued with b2b, which is far more complex and richer than B2C. But nobody ever writes about it.They all write about Amazon. They write about Best Buy, where I spend some time. But instead, they need to talk about how creating a better customer experience creates a healthier organization in a manufacturing environment. That's my passion, and my mission is to make that connection.Lisa Ryan: One of the things when we look at engaging employees, the more engaged your employees are, the better they take care of your customers. So the better customer service you have, the better your business, which means the employees feel more connected to the organization. So it's this nice cycle that, again, in manufacturing, because they're often just making products that they don't see that result.They need to be more focused on the customer experience, according to what you're saying in your brand-new baby book, congratulations. That is a huge part of the picture. We talked a little bit before the show about your four items and your unique experience with Dow Chemicals.So why don't we start with Dow since everyone has heard of them? Then, you can share that story.Jim Tincher: You bet. First, our research shows that most manufacturing programs have a customer experience program, and I don't know whether that's doing a more substantial business when done.Your customer experience program should create an environment where customers want to buy more from you. They want to stay with you longer. They want to operate in less expensive ways for them and you, but only some programs can do that. Dow is an outlier in a very positive way. I first met the Dow team about four and a half years ago, and we were working on their complaints journey and had the opportunity to meet Dan Fedder, now their chief commercial officer.At that point, he was the VP of CX, and we were working again on the complaints journey. So when I first met him, he said, Jim, my goal is to create an enjoyable complaints journey.Lisa Ryan: That sound, it sounds like an oxymoron.Jim Tincher: Right? That caught me by surprise. And they measure effectiveness, ease, and enjoyability.They don't calculate net promoter score because they've proven net promoter score does not link to any business outcomes, and that's what they care about. They don't care about somebody moving their mouse to the right on a survey they care about. Do they create an environment where customers want to work with Dow?When there's a discretionary purchase that any of their suppliers can give, they want to go to Dow first. So that's the outcome they're driving towards. Not in that promoter score behaviors are they care about behaviors. And they have found that when customers say it's enjoyable to work with Dow, their order velocity increases.The categories in which they order go up. The genuine interest to Dow, their number one outcome, is joint innovation - a customer says, I trust Dow enough that I want to work with you to create new to the world products, and we'll benefit from that. But that only happens if they find that it's enjoyable to work with Dow.Lisa Ryan: And you look at that too, that when business is going smoothly, of course, we love the business. But most business loyalty happens when a mistake has been made, and it's up to that company to solve it. When that company acts, based on whoever messed up through that complaint process, that can completely turn that around and create that customer for life because they know that, for example, in this case, Dow has their back. So, talk about that complaints journey. What did it look like before, and how did they make it enjoyable?Jim Tincher: Sure. They started in the same situation probably many of your listeners experience. A complaint comes in, and it bounces around the organization. It's easy to convince yourself that this is somebody else's problem and send it to the organization. We see that in all kinds of organizations, not just manufacturing, but certainly in our multiple manufacturing clients.There's minimal incentive to take ownership of and solve an issue, and certainly one issue. Nobody wants that on their plate. It's very easy to commit yourself. That belongs somewhere else, and that's the situation they found themselves in. Where it comes in through, customer service goes over to the sales team or account management.From there, it goes to R&D and manufacturing and bounces around, with nobody taking ownership of it. And that is true. That's not a Dow problem. That's true of all our manufacturing clients. And what they said is that's not acceptable. So we worked with them to interview their clients; to talk about the impact when a complaint is not resolved and how that impacts the organization and the individual.Then, we brought that to Dow. They had us bring that to their senior leadership, showing how they now match. We brought in a video of their clients talking about the good and the bad of working with Dow, and they brought the data. Ricardo Porta is now their head of customer experience, and he brought in all kinds of data to show not just what people said but their behaviors and how that impacted Dow.What we then did was we worked across the regions. We went to Shanghai; we went to Tunisia in the Netherlands. We went to Brazil Rio, as well as the headquarters of Midland, to bring in the employees to talk about how this impacts their jobs. We also wanted to get the employees' ideas of making this an enjoyable experience without investing in new roles. It's very easy to say, Let's bring another 50-person department. They'll solve it. Dow was clear - we need to do this with the existing headcount. How can we do that? What they said is that what we'll do is we will carve a group out of customer service and other groups. We'll create a center of excellence for complaints, and we will work and give this group accountability to resolve complaints as fast as possible. As a result, they piloted in Latin America, and Ricardo was the one who led that pilot. They saw that complaints were handled more efficiently, which clients loved and led to greater, more substantial business outcomes for Dow and their clients. This created a positive vibe of success.Dow invests in this. They support a better complaints journey. They saw that the KPIs got better in time to resolve. For example, they saw enjoyability get better. The customers became more engaged, and then they saw behaviors improve. For example, future orders, order velocity, and order categories made Dow, a stronger company.This wonderful flywheel where investing in customer experience results in a stronger company. And that's the magic about Dow; they proved it. They didn't just say we think that once we invest, everything will be better. Instead, they proved it to help their executives reinforce the importance of the investment.Lisa Ryan: I look at that again, returning to the employee standpoint. In many places, complaints bounce around because nobody feels they have the authority or they're not empowered to take care of it. So, number one, they don't care, or they think they're going to get in trouble or they're going to have to jump through a lot of hoops.You said several things. You're empowering your employees, making them feel more connected and married to the results. I just learned about the IKEA effect: people are more connected to things they've had a chance to build. So, when you have that employee experience, and you take away that blame, that safety, you're creating a safe environment, and then these employees get to work for what's called a center of excellence. Yeah, I'd want to work for that too. So, you're creating such a win-win in such an easy way to do that.Jim Tincher: One of the other keys they did is they didn't make this a headquarters initiative. We're talking with one client of ours for who 20% of business happens in the US, but the US is where they are headquartered. So, all the ideas are focused on the US first, even though that's a smaller organization. But, again, this is not Dow. It's another group. Dow is very deliberately saying. We're going to involve all four of our regions. We're going to interview all four regions. So, we sent our team, for a second time, out to China, to Rio to involve the customers, talk to them, and understand their experience. Then the customers, because one of the things that Dow did that was effective is they went back to those customers and said, Thank you for giving us your feedback. This is what we're going to do about it. So many programs need to remember to do that.And Dan, the chief commercial officer, is very articulate. He went back and recorded a video sharing, here's what we're going to do differently. But also, their sales team deliberately reached out to everybody who participated, saying, Thank you again for being part of this. Here is what we're doing. They were closing the loop with clients, which makes them stronger advocates because that's more enjoyable. You get that feedback that we are your partner, and the sense of being a partner is a crucial part of enjoyability. Dow is not just a vendor. Dow is there to help my business be stronger.Lisa Ryan: That feeling is vital to Enjoyability and feeds into that immediate feedback in closing the loop. That also sounds like when you're doing employee engagement surveys. You want to ensure that you're getting back to the employees. Hey, this is what you wanted. This is what we did.And then employees, next time you reach out to them, they're not going to say that was a waste of breath last time. It's Holy cow; they're doing stuff. So just getting back to the customer and let them know that what I shared made a difference. And again, you're building that.We've spent quite a bit on number two: that emotional North star in the complaints journey. Let's go back to the other three steps in your book—tying the customer experience to business outcomes.Jim Tincher: Yeah, that's so important and rarely done that most programs. Our research is very clear. Most programs say, oh, we should do customer experience. They create a group over on the side somewhere. We should do net promoter scores. Let's do that. Okay, now do your survey work. Let us know what happens. That's where the most end, where they, if they do any analysis past that, they'll say, Okay, last year our detractors, those who give a low score, they churned at 7% versus our promoters, those who give a high score churned at 2%. Interesting. Many manufacturers, by the way, don't have a churn issue. It's more about a share of the wallet. But that's hard to measure. And so most customer experience programs don't even try, and they'll look at attrition at, what's that?Lisa Ryan: Can you define Share of wallet? What do you mean by that?Jim Tincher: That's a great point. Share of wallet is in a category in which they operate - of all the dollars spent in that category, how much goes towards us? So, LA Grand is another manufacturer, and I spent some time over the last eight years we've done programs with them, one of which we measured customer experience. We asked customers, who are your top two providers in this space? We worked with the AV division. Who are your top two providers, and how much do you spend with each? To get a sense of how much of their discretionary, how much of their spending is with that division. And we found for them that confidence in LA Grand was a great predictor of that.So, we're connecting the customer experience to outcomes to how much you spend with us versus our competitors. Very few programs do that. They believe that by improving the survey scores, they probably score better behaviors happen. But that isn't very compelling. We met with a $2 billion manufacturer the CEO of a month ago, and we shared one slide that talks about how we measure the customer experience, which is four categories.Yes, we have transactional sentiment surveys and net promoter scores, what they use, and that is part of it. But we also talked about behaviors. For example, how many complaints are opened? How do customers order? Do they order digitally? Which did many manufacturers want to drive? Do they order the old-fashioned way instead?How often are they ordering within lead time windows? Because again, if we have a better experience, they're more likely to come to us earlier, which means they're outside of the lead time windows, which we want, or before the lead time windows. Then we look at operations. What is the on-time delivery?What is the perfect order for Dow users to get it right? What is, how often are we getting the orders? Perfectly on-time product, no issues. And then so we, and the fourth category then is financial. Are we getting it now? A higher share of wallet is hard to measure because it's hard to know how much your customers spend with your competitors, but a good proxy is how many categories of products they are ordering from us. There are specific products for many of our manufacturing clients that they're the only ones who can offer, and that's not where the competition is. There are also several categories of products that their competitors also offer.That's the battleground. Do you earn the right for those more discretionary orders by doing a great job on the unique products? And so, the financial is another key part of that order. Velocity is another part, but by bringing in those financial metrics, we measure the customer experience into a combination of sentiments, but behaviors are key. Maybe 10% of your customers respond to your survey. But what percentage of your customers have behaviors? All of them. Univar is a distributor. They work with Dow and others clients outside their distributor of chemicals. They looked at it and said that 90% of our customers must complete a survey.Can we predict those who are happy and unhappy based on their behaviors? They look at the operational behavioral data and say this client seems like they're unhappy. I haven't failed that survey. They haven't told us that but based on what we're seeing in maybe order velocity dropping or more complaints open, they look unhappy.Hey, account management team, can you reach out to them to see if that's true and what's happening? So they create a synthetic NPS. Because for them, they know NPS matters because they can use the data to do that for them. So coming back to, again, how we measure behaviors. We calculate the operations or impact, and we measure the financial outcomes.That's how you measure customer experience. The sentiment is not a score; it is diagnostic. To help explain things. We have a conference; it'll be over by the time this comes out where Ricardo's going to speak about how he was asked a question. And let me bring up the actual question right here. How do I see the impact of inventory on my business, and how does customer experience help me explain that impact?Most CX programs would say, I don't know, but he went and did the math to show that when inventory drops for a specific time. Customers have no confidence. Therefore, they order less often because they'll order from somewhere else with enough inventory that they are confident they will be fine. So he can draw that connection between the inventory levels and future EBIT.Lisa Ryan: Okay. Amazing. Only a few programs do that. Yeah. You have moved nicely into the third act of bringing the business data into the analysis, where you deal with your inventory levels and customer confidence. For those of you keeping notes, the first one we discussed was tying customer experience to business outcomes. Creating an emotional North Star, the enjoyable complaint journey brings the business data into the analysis. So tell us a little bit more about that before we move to the fourth step.Jim Tincher: You bet. And that's where that's how you should be measuring the customer experience is based on. If I had to wrap the difference between what we call a hopeful organization. They might be doing good work, and they're doing customer experience work. Still, they need to be connected to the business versus a change maker driving an improved business through customer experience. And again, that's less than one out of four.If I were to sum it up in one sentence, it would be that hopefuls report on sentiment. This is how people feel. Changemakers study and change behavior, and that's all in the data. Both the manufacturer's behaviors as represented in operational data and in the customer's behavior as such things as future orders or the velocity complaints that are ordered, bringing those together.For example, if you look at your business and speak to the listeners, I suspect there is a direct link between complaints and future business. There is some threshold between either number of complaints or the length of the complaint where customers change their behavior. There's an issue open past a certain length of time, which will vary by industry in manufacturing.Let's say it's a month. If the complaint is open for more than a month, future behaviors change to order from you less often. So if you can look at that data and find that linkage, the survey is only there to help explain why it happens, but the critical thing is linking behaviors and using that data.What we find is that we're a Qualtrics partner. Qualtrics is a survey platform, popular. We did not plan this, but we found that every one of...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. Our guest today is Julia Goldstein. Julia is an award-winning author and business owner on a mission to make manufacturing more environmentally responsible. Her company, J L F G Communications, helps manufacturers connect business environmental action and effective communication. Julia holds a Ph.D. in material science and began her career as an engineer in semiconductor packaging before migrating to writing and consulting. So, Julia, welcome to the show.Julia Goldstein: Thanks, Lisa. I'm glad to be here.Lisa Ryan: So, share a little about your background and what led you to do what you do.Julia Goldstein: Yeah, it's quite the story. I started my semiconductor industry career, which made sense based on my education. I did a Ph.D. working on solder alloys, and so as said, it was a natural lead-in in working in semiconductor packaging. And then, I was always the engineer who wrote articles for publications, trade magazines, and reports for government contracts. And when I look back in college, we had this fantastic program called Engineering Clinic, where teams of students would work directly with a company on a project. It was my senior year; I was the team lead.I was also the one who wrote most of the. And my other team members did most of the coding because I did one that involved software. After all, I wanted to get over my lack of interest in doing software. So I'm like, I'm going to make myself do it. I'm going to write some code. So they wrote most of the code. So we got lots of great people writing code.That's not what I want to do. So I then ended up working for a trade publication. It was one of the ones I had written for when I was an engineer. So again, I did that for about a decade. Eventually, I started this version of the business I founded in 2011. I initially focused on content writing, white papers, blog posts, and articles for trade magazines because I've been on both sides, and I can understand what the magazines will want.And I was then moving much more into consulting for companies and bringing that teaching background. So I've always wanted to do teaching.Lisa Ryan: Okay. And how did your early experience in production control help you in your career?Julia Goldstein: Yes. That was a job I got right out of high school. It was the company my dad worked for, so I had an in, it's who you know. But the following summer, they hired me back with a raise. So that was on me because of what I did. When I first became an engineer, I sometimes worked with the people in production control, and I understood their frustrations.I understood that they had to do something on the back end when we would change something about a design. And so, it's helpful to work in different areas of the business and to understand what it looks like for people sitting in some of those other places in a company.Lisa Ryan: And it's also where you are focusing right now on sustainability, which is huge for all industries, particularly in manufacturing. So talk a little bit about that. What you got, what got you interested in it, and why is it important for manufacturers to pay attention to?Julia Goldstein: Thanks. I am a materials geek. Since I decided to pursue graduate education in material science, I have become fascinated with all these amazing materials that engineers could invent. You could tailor materials to have these particular properties. I became more concerned about these fascinating materials' health and environmental impact. It coalesced around when I decided to write my first book in early 2017. I said I wanted to be about materials because that's my interest, and I also want to make materials better. How are these materials? People don't; many people are not aware of it. Where plastics and metals come from. More people are right now. People know, Oh, plastics come from fossil fuels.But I thought even five years ago, people had no idea, and I wanted to bring that in. So the more research I did, the more people I talked to in developing that book, the more I became convinced that it was truly the way forward. And I remember thinking that 2018 is the right time to bring forth this message.And it was almost too early because not many companies were willing to listen to it. And today, they are. And companies of all sorts can improve their sustainability. For example, if you have office buildings, you can think about whether you are keeping the lights on. Do you have reusable coffee mugs instead of disposable ones?That's nice. The companies making products have a long supply chain and must deal with all the energy and resources used to make these products, package them and ship them around the world. So we need all sorts of manufacturers to think about how they can improve what they're doing to use fewer resources, serve energy, and not produce as many greenhouse gases.Lisa Ryan: What do you find are the biggest reasons why manufacturers are going into this kicking and screaming? Why don't they? Why are they fighting sustainability in some of those cases still?Julia Goldstein: I think a lot of them, they still seem to think of it as something that's going to cost them more money today depending on where they are in, say, the supply chain, right? Who's buying from them? Who are they selling to? Their customers may or may need to prioritize this. What they may be hearing from customers is, we need performance, we need cost, we need fast delivery. So, therefore, that's what they're going to prioritize, and they're looking at those short-term, quarterly earnings and keeping those customers happy. What they are often not thinking about as much is the long-term repercussions, the long-term problems in that eventually those customers may say, Oh, we need you to show us your greenhouse gas emissions. What are you doing about being environmentally responsible? Are you polluting our waterways in our cities?And if so, we don't want to do business with you anymore. So, it's more of a long tailpiece of things. It requires longer-term thinking, and it's. There's also a psychology that says if I have an immediate problem that I need to solve in the next hour, the next week, or this quarter, that will demand my attention. If I have an issue where I don't do things right, I will have problems in two or five, or ten years. So it's harder to feel the urgency.Lisa Ryan: And so when it comes to the costs involved, because there are some, but what are some simple things that manufacturers can do to get started?Julia Goldstein: It's about looking at what you are doing now. It's that audit of your processes, your supplies of your suppliers. It's looking for; there may be opportunities where you can save resources. So we can save here by investing a little bit there. And a simple example is stuff like changing out lighting. There will be a capital expense to change to more energy efficient. But it will pay off. It's good to involve employees throughout the company.Those on the manufacturing floor making the products may see opportunities to reduce waste. Sometimes consultants can come in and give a solution that would seem almost simple and obvious and will reduce scrap. It will help efficiency, and they just haven't thought about it because they're used to it. This is just how we do things.We have this process, this stuff goes over here, and then it gets shipped out of the building. And I don't know what happens to it, but if the employees ask those questions, what happens to it? And how much scrap are we creating, and how can we do it? And empower all the employees to have a say based on what they are seeing and experiencing so that they can make suggestions.Lisa Ryan: A lot of times in workplace culture, it's creating a safe environment, to begin with, where employees trust management, not only trust management, but they like them well enough to give them ideas that can save them money and make more profits and all that. So again, when we're looking at starting that very process, if management doesn't have the best relationship with their employees or they are going to try this time, what baby steps could they take to get started with that?Julia Goldstein: The top management needs to decide that they want to make those changes and admit where the communication might be breaking. One option, and again, depends on the company's size. Say you've got a company with 500 employees and have a town hall where the C-suite is giving a presentation saying, here's where we stand.Here is what we want to do. We want to become more environmentally responsible. We know that we need to do something. We want to listen to you and take questions without dismissing them to make it. Okay. We are going to listen. And how are employees going to know? Okay, they said it before, but they're not going to listen.Something needs to change in terms of the set where yes, they are going to listen. They're going to let people know that they heard them. People want to feel heard. They want to think that they can bring something up without being dismissed. They feel like they might lose their job if they complain and say, this isn't working right, because that's a real fear, and sometimes employees might remain.Because they don't want to be the whistleblower, and if you can create a safe environment within the company where employees know, who should they talk to and what can they say? And hopefully, they can be open about what's going on.Lisa Ryan: It reminds me of a couple of years ago. I was speaking at a conference, and they had chosen, I believe it was 4-Water for their, to make people aware of environmental impact, where they showed those guys, those two guys who started surfing. It was supposed to be this beautiful area in the world and wholly cluttered with plastic.So they started this whole movement. I had never heard of it; I had never had any exposure. So, there's something to that of making it compelling and interesting and allowing employees to understand the impact we humans have on the planet. And like you just said, reinforcing that with the company mission that comes from upper leadership and that employee.They are open to their feedback and ideas because those employees know their job and understand what they're exposed to more probably than the C-Suite does.Julia Goldstein: Yes. And they might learn about something that affects employee safety. There's usually a great mechanism for that. They can work with EHS and say, Okay, we'd better get some better protective gear or better filtration or something like that to make a safer workplace. They can also bring in an environmental benefit by asking if we handle hazardous waste better. Not only are the employees safer, but that's a less hazardous waste to deal with and determine how to dispose of and pay costs.And suppose you need to pay the cost of your accidentally releasing something. In that case, there are severe consequences to that for the community that often, I don't know, companies don't always think about that, but I think it's also important to go in with an understanding that yes, you can't just easily and quickly solve all these problems.Lisa Ryan: And that allows the employees to feel a part of a bigger mission too. This is the difference. This is the amount of waste we save from going into landfills because of your efforts. This is what happened. Going to the airport and one of the things I look for when I'm filling up my water bottle is I want to see how the water bottles were saved.I want to see that. And it's just these little things that I know. And then my online thrift store, thread up that will show how much my purchase, how many gallons of water it's saved because I'm using, what I say is ops other or OPC other people's clothing. But it's just these little things that employees look for, and they can feel better just by knowing these little differences that they are making and the bigger difference that they're part of an organization that's now making too.Julia Goldstein: Absolutely. And to start those kinds of initiatives before. Okay. We're going to shout out to the world that we've saved this many gallons of water; having those metrics within the work is great. Because, as you said, that tracker that says, How many plastic bottles has this device saved? Okay, let's see what we can do. And that some of what gets measured is what matters. If all the company measures are quarterly revenue, then that matters. And if it costs 10% more per part to change something out, there's going to be that, Oh, no, that can't happen.But it can make sense if what's being measured is more than the revenue piece. And there are all kinds of different ways. So, for example, if something supplies cost more, there are various ways to work around that and figure out how to absorb those costs.Lisa Ryan: So, do you have examples of companies that you had worked with as far as a before and after or some of the things that they did to put together a successful sustainability project?Julia Goldstein: Some of the examples that I have seen are where, They offer a challenge for employees to come up with ideas that can help with, and some of them are for environmental, some of them also might be social issues. They might be dealing with DEI in the workplace, so they can. There's sometimes overlap because one of the essential pieces is employee retention.And attract. More employees, especially the younger employees, right? The new graduates are getting jobs or want to make a difference. So by including them and saying, Okay, we're going to have this challenge, and we're going to give feedback to everybody who responds to let them know we heard your idea if they can't implement it or not, to let the employees know why.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, it reminds me of, I worked with a golf course several years ago, and they would pay $5 for every idea. They didn't care what the idea was. So if the employee had an idea as far as how to make money or save money, like one thing in the snack shop, the employee thought that they should use the over-ripe bananas in banana splits so that they could cover them with whipped cream and people wouldn't know that they were over rip. So they got five bucks, then at the end of the year, they would pick the best idea, and that person would win like $250 or whatever. But it was such an easy idea. It made the company tens of thousands of dollars in those $5 increments.So it's not like you have to shell out money, but if you are having fun with it, not taking yourself so seriously that hey, and then I had another client. What they did is they would have on a whiteboard in the office, they would have what you wanted on one side and what we did. So when it comes to integrating those two of getting the ideas from the employees. And, as you said, you can only act on some of the ideas out there. But if you let the employees know that they're being heard, you reward them for their efforts, having some fun with it along the way, it's tough, and the employees see that they're being recognized for those things. So that can make a massive difference in the culture again.Julia Goldstein: Yes. I'm starting up a new program, an assessment about where companies find out how well they're communicating their sustainability initiatives and strategies, and policies throughout the company where there's a questionnaire for employees to answer.There are individual interviews where employees can use one on one share what's going well and what isn't. What do they care? And say, Okay, are there disconnects? Are there mismatches, or are there areas where the company is doing well, and they should celebrate? Because on a scale of one to five, a four is fantastic.Many companies have yet to arrive. Five is the best. And do you want to get to five? Here are some ideas. And again, and if they're scoring, that's maybe a message. There are some quick wins to just something as simple as that town hall, which might be new for the employees.We had no idea that our company wanted to do this, and we appreciate it.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And going into that town hall meeting with only a thank you for sharing. But, yes, as I've seen this. I just had an audience member last week that was doing stay interviews. He decided that he had heard about them and thought he'd start it.But unfortunately, when employees were giving him honest feedback, he fought with them. He tried to justify it, and he admitted in front of a room full of people that he messed up because it should just be, Thank you for sharing, even knowing that some employees are going to use it as an opportunity to vent. There could be a seed of something, an idea you can use going forward. So, no matter what employees say, remember that. Thank you for sharing.Julia Goldstein: Absolutely. It can be a tough thing for all of us to be able to take criticism without getting defensive.Lisa Ryan: Exactly. You have your newest book out, Beyond the Green Team. So what are some of the main takeaways that you cover when it comes to sustainability?Julia Goldstein: It is primarily about communication, and the book is aimed at manufacturing companies. We discussed earlier why manufacturers are the key to making a difference here. So there's a chapter that's about that internal communication piece; why it's crucial and critical to start within your company, and then moving to the external communication because the marketing team is already talking about what you're doing, what the products are, this initiative, that initiative, what are they saying about sustainability?Is there a reason to pause and rethink what you're doing inside? Then make sure that your outside messaging matches. It is a very tricky thing to do. Also, talk about the issue of greenwashing, which has become more of a buzzword. I don't know if you're hearing it where you sit, but what is it?What does that mean? So greenwashing is where a company will brag about its green credential, saying, we are saving the planet because we are packaging your product in a cardboard box instead of a whole bunch of plastic. But it needs to tell the story about some of the other things the company is doing to the detriment of that. So it's overselling those green credentials. Ooh, we better talk about being green and sustainable and eco-friendly. Or here's our new eco-friendly product, and all the details about that and what's behind the scenes is that's five or 10% of their portfolio. What's going on with the other 90%?The trick is to be honest about it. But not open it up so that people say, " Oh, 90% of your products are terrible for the environment. Oh goodness, that's awful. So it's a tricky mix in terms of figuring out what to say when, and again, humility, that being able to admit if you had a misstep in that area without getting defensive, is going to be a critical path forward.Lisa Ryan: So, as we're getting to the end...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Jim Huebner. Jim is the founder and CEO of Huebner Integrated Marketing, a 33-year-old firm dedicated to helping companies become more relevant to their customers and more profitable. From the world's leading recreational and emergency vehicle manufacturers to specialty baked goods and high-end power equipment makers, the firm has guided dozens of companies to more meaningful positioning, messaging, and relevancy since 1989.He recently published his first book, The Irrelevant Old Brand, about why businesses fail and how to avoid becoming irrelevant. So Jim, welcome to the show.Jim Huebner: Thanks. It's an honor to be here.Lisa Ryan: So, share with us a little bit about your background. I know you have an extensive manufacturing background, but how did you get to do what, doing what you're doing?Jim Huebner: Yeah, that's a good question. I always wanted to have my own business. I discovered in college that marketing was going to be it. I had some marketing positions before I started my agency in 1989. And about six years into it, we worked with many local clients, banks, doctor's offices, and insurance companies.But they're all local, and we had a large manufacturer in our town. So I got an opportunity to do some work for them. One of their divisions was an RV recreation vehicle division. So it was fun doing marketing for a company that, in a vertical market, was selling products all over the country, even around the world, as opposed to just doing some local things.So that was fun for us and more challenging and exciting. And we ended up in the late nineties just focusing on manufacturers in vertical markets selling their products worldwide. And that's all we've done since then. And yeah, that's how we landed in manufacturing.Almost all of our clients are manufacturers of some product, and they all have the exact needs. So that's to understand how they're most relevant in their marketplace and how they can be more appropriate. And we help guide them through that and then help them communicate that to the world.Lisa Ryan: So, what are some of the biggest mistakes manufacturers make regarding their brand?Jim Huebner: I don't want to overuse the word relevance too much, but everything in my book has some kind of connection somewhere.They're not all the same industries and things, but they are from many of our real-life stories. But often, manufacturers will find they got a good foothold in the marketplace with a great product. Over time needs change society changes. There are all sorts of changes.And unless there's this intentional methodology to determine how relevant you remain in that marketplace. They tend to drift a little bit. Sometimes it ends up just being a messaging issue.They're just saying the wrong things about themselves. So instead, they must focus on what is most meaningful and relevant to their customers. That's a more straightforward fix than sometimes when a product becomes completely irrelevant. Think blockbuster, or there are many situations where our society changes so much that a product is no longer relevant.But that's what tends to happen. They sometimes need to catch up on what their message should be or how their product works. There's some innovation with their type of product that they should have included. And they sometimes need to retool and figure out what else they could be doing differently that's more meaningful and relevant to the customers.Lisa Ryan: What would be some signs they may need to address relevancy? How would they know that they have some updating to do?Jim Huebner: Yeah, in the book, we outline our process. There are a lot of different ways to skin that cat. Our process is undoubtedly the way we do it. We recognize there are lots of different ways to do it. We start by doing some research and having a lot of conversations and a lot of surveys and things going out to find out why those customers are doing business with us in the first place.And why don't they do business with us? How critical are you to their success? How important is it that you're selling them what you have for their success? Because a lot of times, if you're just a commodity, that can be a considerable challenge. Suppose you're just a commodity and have yet to find a way to differentiate.I wrote an article once on how to not sell on price. But, of course, it would help if you were not a commodity. A CEO of one of our clients called me in because he wanted to discuss how we're getting commoditized.What do we do about it? And that's where a relevancy report comes into play. In the relevancy report, our goal is to uncover where those opportunities are. Where can we be more meaningful and more important to our clients? And it's sometimes about more than just the product.Sometimes it's just about how the service is delivered, the product, or the relationships. For example, we had a client and the manufacturing space, and they talked about a client like them in the book that sells. They manufacture self-storage units.It's all pre-engineered, still packaged, and delivered for the contractor to put up as a self-storage unit. And one of the things they found over time was, or through our research, that those contractors weren't doing business with them because their steel was better and their delivery was better because of all the traditional things. It was more fade-resistant. It didn't have anything to do with the product. It had a hundred percent to do with the people. It was because they built great relationships with them and hired salespeople who were great relationship builders.Those contractors knew they had their back and that in thick and thin, no matter how tough times were. This particular manufacturer was going to have their back. I remember one time, there was an employee of that company that I went to church with. I saw him at church one morning, and I asked what you would do this weekend.And he goes, Oh, I was sleeping all day yesterday Saturday. So then, Thursday night, we got a request from one of our contractors. He needed a bid out by Friday morning, and the only way I could do that was by pulling an all-nighter. And I got it done at seven in the morning, went home and showered, and returned to work for the rest of the day.That's why they say they do business with you because of your relationships because people are doing that. They're pulling all-nighters to meet the needs of the customer. So that's how they were so incredibly relevant to those contractors because they always had their back.It's only sometimes we have the best quality product. Sometimes it can be just the way you do business. Getting back to your original question, that process you need to ask, do the research and find out, and that sometimes honestly sounds selfish of me, but it's best to use a third party. It's best to have somebody from the outside ask your customers these questions because customers don't want to be uncomfortable or make it awkward in their relationship with you. So they'll tell you what they want to hear instead of a third party. They're like, I don't know anything. They don't know who I am, so I'm just going to let them tell them what I think. But it's finding those things out, finding out what they think you don't do so well, and finding those differing opinions about the brand.Some people might think back to that one manufacturer I just mentioned. Some of the people thought they were doing business with them because they had this special e-coated steel, which is why people were buying the product. And other people recognized. Now it's probably our relationships, but it's just that process of discovering all these differentiating factors and then what we call value indexing those and saying, Okay, here's all the differentiating factors about our company, our brand, our products.Which of these is most valuable? Which of these is the most meaningful and makes us the must-have one we've got to do business with? All things aren't equal. All differentiators aren't equal. You can have the steel. You can have a certain kind of steel or certain kind of treatment that you put on any product and or certain screws that you use or whatever it is.But that might be less valuable in the eyes of the customer. It would be best if you got to the bottom of what is most valuable and meaningful to them, and that's what we want to hang our hats on. Not that the other things are ones that you ignore. You still mention those in your messaging, conversations, and marketing.But as far as how you're going to separate yourself from the rest, it's got to be that one that is most valuable, most meaningful.  Lisa Ryan: How would a manufacturer decide who to connect you with? Do they hand you their customer list, and you go to town? Or do you call other people in the industries who are potential customers to find out about their reputation and why they may not buy from them? What does that process look like to even get started?Jim Huebner: Yeah, generally, they'll give us their list of customers, non-customers, people they've been trying to get as customers. Sometimes depending on the relationships, we've been able to talk to their competitors: really good resources or other vendors in the industry.Sometimes you can get what their accurate perceptions are of the brand you're working with from those other vendors. They'll say, Yeah, those are the guys everybody likes to do business with, or why is that? And then they'll extrapolate on that. But our four steps, or the four ways we do the research, is that we do interviews with key personnel is essential. I always say, this is just a gut number/ I haven't measured this, but I think probably 80% of the things we find out, they already know it's that extra 10 or 20% that is like, Oh wow, people perceive us this way, or they think this about our product, or they, that's where all the value is.You find that out. You don't necessarily find that out with the critical internal personnel so much. So that's where you find the baseline. But then we also do interviews with key customers, either in person or on a Zoom call. We'll do interviews with other key stakeholders, which could be anybody from their attorney or insurance people to anyone associated with or connected to the brand.Again, that's where the vendors come in. In the book, I give an example of a vendor that works in that same industry. And he provides some great insight into the main character in the book. And then we'll do a broader swap with email surveys and those kinds of things to get where it's going. They're rating certain things to give us a general feel.But it's the specific comments, I'll be honest, the specific comments that, that people will make in these interviews that end up shedding light on where they truly, where their real opportunity is. And sometimes they're nailing it. So it might be a slight messaging issue.Other times again, they might need it. And need to refocus on a sure thing that they're doing instead of what they have been doing.Lisa Ryan: What would be an example of a big aha when you were working with the manufacturing and presenting them with the market survey you found? As you said, 80% of the time, they know what's happening or realize it. But what would be some examples of some aha's that the manufacturer did not know that's how they were perceived? Or, could it be something that they were doing well or something that they were doing poorly?Jim Huebner: Yeah, one of the examples is the one the book is about, and somebody that's in makes a product. That is used in underwater sea exploration and anywhere with high pressure and a harsh environment. And they'd gone through 30 years of success, maybe even 40 years of success selling these products. They started getting beat up on price by some knockoffs and those kinds of things. So we went in and did this study, and we found out that they were trying to compete on a lot of the low-end stuff, and that's not your bread and butter. That's not why people buy your product.And it all came down to one conversation with one engineer. This happened. And that engineer said. You got to understand when I'm putting one of these units on a robot that will be skimming the ocean floor. The last thing I'm going to be worried about is that I spent five extra bucks on the most dependable product on the market because I have too much to lose.I have a million-dollar robot down there. I'm not going to screw around with some untested product, or I don't know how dependable it is when this one is 40 years of never failing. So that was the light. It was like, okay, so we've been sitting there talking about quality all along.The problem with the word quality is everybody says it. It's an entirely subjective term. What's quality? For, in their case, the quality. Yeah. It wasn't that it lacked. It needed more quality. It was high quality, but it was dependable. That was the word. That was as simple as that seemed. After doing this for 30 years, I'm telling you that people get so close to it. I'm the same way in my own business. I get so close to things I can't even see them. And that's the beauty of bringing in outsiders.What you probably heard it described is that when you're on the inside of the bottle, you can't explain what the outside of the bottle looks like. You lose that. For them to hear this engineer say, " Wow, " we got to focus on dependability.And then the beauty of that is so all of a sudden. It gives you this new lens of how to look at HR, production, and who you're buying some of your raw material from. All these things, and ensuring that, okay, if we're going to be the most dependable product on the market. We've got to ensure that everybody we're doing business with and internally is in line with that.That is our that's our battle cry. We're going to be more dependable than anybody else's. So how do we do that? That particular manufacturer had a person that was, and this is the example I talk about in the book, is they go through, and they hand test every single piece that comes through off the line instead of batch testing.So why is their product more expensive? That helps explain that they're hand, individually testing everyone that comes off the line as opposed to batch testing. And there are other reasons their price is higher. A lot of it's because they're the most dependable on the market, so that they can command a higher price.And so the result is they can get rid of the bottom feeders to people who want the cheapest on the market, and they can say, with great confidence, then you should buy this one because it's cheaper. But, if the one lasts forever, you need to talk to us. Did that answer your question?Lisa Ryan: Yeah. Because it reminded me of there are many times that people chase these bright, shiny objects. If you stick to your core values and why customers do business with you, something new comes onto the market. But we are taking that third party and getting the accurate information because too many times we either make stuff or listen to people who are making stuff up.Jim Huebner: Yeah. Versus having the basic information that counts. We have a give acronym, G I V e. E is endless quest. It's about keeping your finger on the pulse of how relevant you are. And that takes some work, and it can take either somebody internally doing it or an outside firm doing it. But it is essential to ensure that you're periodically making sure that our messaging is on track. Our products are meeting the needs or exceeding the requirements. In a constant evaluation of where is there greater op, where are there more opportunities for us to become even more meaningful and vital to these customers we sell to?Lisa Ryan: What are the other three letters, then? We started at the end with E.  Jim Huebner: So the G is, and you could probably appreciate this, G is a grateful and generous is grateful and generous. I believe, and I've heard this before, gratitude is the attitude that sets the altitude for living. You have to start by being grateful. To give, to pour out, and be a giver instead of a taker. It must begin with gratitude. And it's interesting. As I was researching all of this, I came across a study by the University of Oregon, and I quoted it in the book.It was a study done by a neuroscientist who studied people who are generally more grateful than the mainstream. And they found that as a result, and it's all chemistry-related. As a result, more grateful people tend to be more generous. Yeah. And I love it. I would've always thought that in my gut, but it was cool to come across an actual study that proved that was true.And I say, A life that, or a brand that gives, is a brand that lives. And what's it take for a brand to give? It's just like life; a meaningful, relevant life pours itself out, not one that takes. And a brand is the same way. A brand must give in some unique way that nobody else is to thrive. And that starts with you got to want to give. You must be, you have to have a generous, you have to have a kind of this sense or spirit of generosity. And then the second, the "I" is inspired difference.It's not just about being different. I threw it in giving because it's inspired because it's different in a meaningful and relevant way that helps make you valuable to that customer that makes your product valuable to the customer. So it's not just about what we were talking about before. It's not just about being different. It's about being different in a meaningful and relevant way and helps them get further down the path to success. So that's I, and then v is the value that exceeds the price. And that stems back a little bit to Warren Buffet's quote of price is what I pay, value is what I get.The more significant discrepancy there is between the value and the price, the more relevant or meaningful that product or service must be. The example I use in the book is Ace Hardware. With Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, and Menards for people in the Midwest, you look at that, and you think textbooks would say there's no way a store like Ace Hardware could survive. I have some connections. Ace Hardware, my buddy, owns five Ace Star stores where their family does. I have an affinity for Ace, but it's always dumbfounded me how well they thrive in that market. But it's because they're the value of going in and somebody tell you how to take the thingamajig and fix it with the do-hickey.All of a sudden separates them from everybody else. You walk into the big box, and maybe you'll find that person, but it's not guaranteed that you will find that person. And yes, YouTube helps. Things have changed, but at the same time, there's something about being able to ask that person, Okay, so if I'm going to do this, is this what I would use?And they go, no, I'm not handy at all. And I have to depend on those people. I can't tell you how many times I've gone there just because I want to know if I was doing this right, and I had no problem paying the extra buck or two or...

Connect with Tracy Wieder:Email: TWieder@med.miami.edu LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-wieder-a8a65a12a/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Tracy Wieder. Tracy has worked in the field of biomedical research for 30 years, starting as a lab technician, then moving into lab manager roles, lab director roles, and finally into her current role overseeing all research labs at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. In addition, she's a recognized expert on disaster preparedness and safety. So, Tracy, welcome to the show.Tracy Wieder: Thank you so much, Lisa. I'm glad to be here.Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background and what led you to do what you do.Tracy Wieder: Absolutely. I started just in college, getting a biology degree and going into research laboratories as a laboratory technician. And I minded my own business until one day when I lived in Houston. We experienced a tropical storm in 2001 named Tropical Storm Allison, and it wreaked such havoc on the Houston metropolitan area that I saw it in the laboratory setting. I saw entire careers destroyed by this event, and I have now made it a passion of mine to help out.With disaster preparedness information in any setting that I can get my hands on to help people understand that really disaster planning applies to everybody no matter where.Lisa Ryan: So what caused them to lose their careers in that?Tracy Wieder: So, in this particular instance, because it was laboratory research, they have very valuable samples that are irreplaceable. They're intellectual property, and they store these samples in liquid nitrogen. So at a freezing temperature. Around a hundred and minus 190 degrees Celsius. So even colder, it sounds even colder in Fahrenheit temperatures. And because of this disaster, we couldn't get the samples, and all of the power was out.The backup generators were out, so the elevators didn't work. And we couldn't get the liquid nitrogen supply up to the laboratories, so their liquid nitrogen evaporated off, and all of their samples were lost because of that. And on top of it, there was no power. There was no air conditioning. And in that particular event, we also had the morgue down in the basement of that building.And so there were that had not yet been embalmed that were also part of that there was a large flood, which made the area biohazardous so nobody could reenter for about three weeks when they let us go in to remove some samples. But we were out of the lab for about three months while they were trying to clean up the biohazard zone and dry things.Lisa Ryan: Wow. And I can't think of a time in our history over the last couple of years and actually, the last couple weeks with the hurricanes coming through that disaster preparedness is such a vital issue. But first, we're dealing with all the shutdowns and turnarounds from a worldwide pandemic that we haven't seen since 1918.And it was interesting to see how some companies could turn on a dime and go from manufacturing metal stampings to making masks, and they're making Yes of respirators and stuff. Tracy Wieder: So some companies were able to turn around. Others just weren't. Lisa Ryan: And then, of course, with Ian Hurricane Ian going through in the last couple weeks, you know, that devastation. But I also think that with the hurricane, not the people in Florida are used to hurricanes, but it would seem their disaster preparedness would be a little better than most because, I don't want to say they're used to that, but they get it more than we do in Cleveland.So talk about a few different types of preparedness when you have something unexpected like a pandemic and expected like a hurricane.Tracy Wieder: Exactly. I'll use this opportunity to mention the different types of disasters and answer your question.So as you said, there's the expected, and there's the unexpected. I always categorize it into severe weather events - like hurricanes. In other parts of the country, it can be mudslides, blizzards, and tornadoes. As you said, all things are not natural disasters, so a hurricane, we have some notice. An earthquake, you don't. It's just going to happen. A blizzard, you have a little bit of notice. And tornadoes are pretty sudden. But then there are fires, floods, and power outages. We had a disaster just in the last year involving a plumbing contractor breaking off a fire sprinkler head and instantly flooding the entire building. With that, there's so much pressure behind those fire sprinkler heads. So if you break off that head, you'll flood that whole building.And then, of course, there are epidemics and pandemics, which in the past I would've said, I would've often asked, say if I were speaking to people on this topic, I would ask how many people have been through a disaster at work? And now we've all been through a disaster at work and in our personal lives because of that pandemic.Yeah. So what's most important is just always to be prepared. Because if you prepare in advance, you're not worried about whether it's a fire that you can't predict or something that maybe like a blizzard that you know is coming, right? If you're just prepared, then you have your plan, you're prepared, and you'll be able to recover.To some extent, as opposed to trying to scramble around last minute. There's no big difference between whether you know it's coming and you and a sudden disaster because the best way to approach either scenario is to plan. Lisa Ryan: So, how does one get started even thinking about putting if somebody was starting from ground zero to put together a disaster plan? Where do you start? What does that look like? Tracy Wieder: Yeah, it can seem a little overwhelming and, in some cases, a lot overwhelming, right? So, the first thing anyone has to do in any setting is to determine your vulnerabilities. So in some settings, we might have toxic substances that, if released into the environment, could be hazardous to public health.In other settings, we might not have anything toxic but some very expensive equipment. But if it were lost, it would result in significant financial hardship for the company. And then, in some cases, we might also have intellectual property, meaning any inventions, anything that's unique to that particular company or organization that they have copyrights on, that can't be replaced just by going to a vendor and saying, Hey, send me another one.So everybody needs to sit down. Think about what they do on a day-to-day basis and what you would do if your computer, your records, and all your assets were gone. And when you think of it that way, I think it's pretty easy to come around to, okay, like I can replace this, I put my data on the cloud but this specific thing I couldn't replace, or it would be so expensive to replace it, that sort of thing.And then, so it's really about identifying those vulnerabilities first. Once you know those vulnerabilities, then you can work on them. What can we do to protect these items? The first thing will always be taking pictures because, for insurance purposes, you'll need that documentation. So especially if there are any assets involved, like equipment, you're just going to take pictures of all of it, and you don't have to spend a lot of time on that every year.The first time you do it, you get all the pictures, and whenever you replace equipment or bring something new, You take its picture and make sure you don't store it on a hard drive, right? Like we want that data to be stored in the cloud, where you would still have your data if you lost this particular computer.And the same goes for any standard operating procedures, protocols, or necessary documentation that your business requires to survive. The data you need, like your customer database, for instance -anything that needs to be stored on the cloud where you're sure it will be safe in case any individual computer is ever destroyed.And then from there, other things can be done too - depending on the vulnerabilities. But that's where you start. It's sitting down and saying, if everything were lost, What would be the most difficult to replace? Can we replace it, and what would it take to replace it? And then going from there.Lisa Ryan: So, thinking of what's going on with the cloud. I've had experts on the show in cyber security because that could be a disaster too. My husband's company was gotten into by ransomware, and they were shut down for about three weeks. It took that long to get their data back.Thankfully they had some backup. So yes, they still lost a week or two worth of data. So is there a happy medium between what you can keep on the cloud and how you ensure that you keep that data? Tracy Wieder: Yeah, that's an excellent point because you're right. In the cyber security world, it's hard to imagine anything safe. But again, I advise people to keep it on the cloud and a thumb drive for anything that's super critical. I don't want people to feel like disaster preparedness is. Oh gosh, now, I have to transfer things from here to there every day. So you want it to be manageable for people.So again, have to be like all of your data, but for anything that would be important, it's worthwhile to put it on as an external drive, another backup source. Lisa Ryan: So we've taken a look at the vulnerability standpoint. After that, what are some of the critical things that manufacturers should do to prepare for disasters at their workplace?Tracy Wieder: Yeah. And this question has evolved now after having gone through the pandemic, right? So I used to think much more about physical, animal, and equipment chemicals. And these are all still very important, but now we also need to consider our staff and how we can keep the business continuity going with a business continuity plan. So for organizations where they can send their staff home to work, even if you've called everybody back at this point, we must continue to cultivate that as an option when needed. I recommend that everybody who can do that, who can send staff home when needed, do work-from-home drills like twice a year where you send everybody home, you say, We're going to have a day where we work from home, and what are your problems? For example, Bill couldn't make his printer work. Sonya couldn't make her camera work. You go through all these things because these can change from month to month. The last time we did the drill, everything worked. Now this time, Tracy can't make anything work at home. So work-from-home drills are super crucial for those sorts of things. Taking pictures of anything that's a tangible physical asset is essential. I lived through that event in Houston, and it is incredible what the insurance companies will say. You can have a room where it's clear that the roof has fallen in, and they'll say how do we know it didn't look like that before?It's essential to take long shots of the warehouse or your work setting and close-up pictures of the equipment itself. And it's not that this will keep you from losing that equipment, but it will make it much easier for you to recover.When you're making insurance claims, also, as we said, store things on the cloud, and have backups on external drives. It's imperative to keep updated contact information for all of the teams that you work with. Because at the end of the day, we must take care of each other and look out for each other. But in addition to saying Hey, maybe I have power at my house. You guys don't have power. Oh, come over here. It's two degrees outside, come to my house. Other than that, it's also how you stay in touch about what your organization has made announcements about coming to work or not coming to work.And it's just vital to have that contact information. And then, if you have anything on an alarm, often high-end equipment can be on alarms if it goes out of its operating range. So, make sure you test those alarms regularly and that they're working and making contact in the way they're set up to do.That's important. I've seen cases where people have a freezer go into alarm and need updated contact information. Or something needed to be fixed with the connection for the alarm monitoring system, and it's only when they come in Monday and find their freezer thawed, and everything inside of it lost that they realize that their alarms were working.So testing those alarms is essential. And if you do have anything that's intellectual property that if it's something that it would be possible to distribute, like with collaborators or other branches of your company, it's a good idea to have everything in a variety of places.Whereas if that place were lost, it's all just gone. Where maybe you have other locations. Again, it's very broad with manufacturing, so it's hard to speak precisely to any particular environment. But that's the general gist of it. And then also being able to move things if you see the need.So having a plan in advance, like if we know something is coming, do we have a location that we could contract with in advance where, say, I'm on the first floor, maybe we get these things up to the fifth floor? So depending on the disaster, if it's something you can plan for, moving equipment, assets, or intellectual property around can be helpful.But you have to think that through in advance. If needed, you must have the right electrical in place—the proper utilities and space where this is coming from. I'm going to move these items. And then, as you had alluded to, it's different in the sense if you know it's coming, and you don't know it's coming in the way it hits us, but the way we prepare for it would pretty much be the same. Just plan and understand what you're going to do. Lisa Ryan: And one of the things that I never really thought about before, which was brilliant, is the go of the work-from-home drill, just sending people home. I know that some companies are all bent on bringing everybody back to the odd, back to the office 24/7, bring everybody back, which is a mistake because I did too.Yeah, people were perfectly capable of working from home for two years and getting the work done. Does it matter where they're working? It's nice to get people together and have some core hours or days. Yeah, but the thought of Just like you have a fire drill. Which is always a bummer when it happens in front, in the middle of a training program,Just tomorrow's a work-from-home date, with no notice except for the night before notice to see what does work and if we need to do that. So I like that. And then the other thing, when you talk about getting dated contact information, that goes hand in hand with workplace culture because you have to create a workplace where your employees, especially your hourly employees, trust you enough with that information, with their home phone number, with their personal email address. So you can get ahold of them when needed. And even that example you said of, it's two degrees outside, and we find out that one employee doesn't have heat and somebody else does. So we can start connecting people and making it about the people because they are your greatest assets. So those two were good, simple tips for people too.Tracy Wieder: Yeah. And at the end of the day, we must take care of each other. So I hope that in most work environments, people trust that they understand. But, of course, if people aren't comfortable sharing their home contact information, that will probably make it a more significant issue.Yes, it's probably a bigger issue going on there. They need to look for a better work environment because these are really how, other than just being a humanitarian and wanting everyone to be safe and well. This is how companies show the employees they care: keeping them safe, saying to them, we're going to prepare for a disaster so that you don't have to be without a paycheck for longer than is necessary if something happens. And some employees who, if the work shuts down, are without a paycheck. And so that's another way of showing that we care for our employees is to say I'm going to prepare so that we can recover quickly and get you back to earning money. If there were a fire or the worst were to happen. Lisa Ryan: And so yeah. It's really, it's part of the culture, too, of does the organization care enough. Because we think about, again, in disaster planning, our intellectual property, our machinery, our equipment, but when things happen, And I think that we saw it during the pandemic, the importance of empathy, of reaching out to employees and saying, Hey, are you okay?What do you need? How can we support you? How can we be of assistance to you? And sometimes just making the call. For example, as a member of the National Speakers Association, I was on the task force that we reached out to every member in the state of Florida after Hurricane Ian. It was amazing that people said, Wow. I'm in four different associations, and nobody else called, and they're in the middle of the state. They're not affected, but we don't know if their loved ones are. So it's reaching out to people in times of need and seeing that there are people on that other side of the equation because, really, you don't have a lot without those assets.Tracy Wieder: And it just means a lot. I'm in Miami, and although it looked like Ian was going to hit us at one point, it turned, and it didn't. That's common with hurricanes. So we're okay, but our heart is breaking for our neighbors just north, right? The pictures are horrible. Some people say it's the worst hurricane that ever hit Florida.So I agree with you. But, again, just showing some empathy and concern. And even if we go back to my example, which you referenced, you like how easy it is to say open your doors to someone who doesn't have power. And maybe it's 115 degrees outside, perhaps two degrees outside, but I got power.You don't like how hard it is to say, Come over and stay safe. Don't freeze. We're in this together. Let's get through it together. And it's important to form cultures like that in the workforce so that people feel they are a team and a family.Lisa Ryan: Exactly. And as we end our time together, what is your best tip regarding disaster planning? Whether you're getting started or just. Make sure you have some plan in place. Tracy Wieder: Yeah. So the best tip is just what you said, is to have a plan. That's the number one best tip. So once you're there, you're in really good shape. But yeah, and as I said earlier, but I'll emphasize it again, as you're making that plan, think about it. What are your vulnerabilities, right? What are your most vulnerable? Or sometimes, for some organizations, those vulnerabilities are going to be, what are your most critical functions?How can we shuffle people from here to there? Cross-training has become vital for this. What if you have a team of six, and five...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, and welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Jason Azevedo. Jason has had the heart of business development since an early age, starting a very successful apparel company that grew from humble garage beginnings to annual gross billings of over a million dollars at age 15.By age 18, Jason was doing millions in business with Starbucks, Nike, Disney, Marvel, Volkswagen, Audi, Lucas Films, Dodgers, and countless NBA teams. Jason, welcome to the show.Jason Azevedo: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: So, I know you had an early start, so share a little about your background and what led you to do what you've done. Jason Azevedo: Yeah. I'll tell you a story about what it is. First, I've got to set the stage. It was February of 2007 when we started our first company. I'm 15, my brother's 20, and we came from a household where our father worked in a factory, where he worked the graveyard shift for 28 and 29 years for the same company. In the last six or seven years of working there, he got laid off about that many times because there were so many changes in ownership.My brother and I were watching what the most profitable plant in the country for these companies was. That's why they're able to keep on selling the plant. But they had messed up the relationship between the management and the employees so badly that the plant was almost impossible to own. So we got to see it from the employee side and what that does to a family. There's a person's dynamic when there's all that turmoil going on within manufacturing. So we launched our first company at 15, believing we could do something special for the people. And really, it didn't have to be that toxic environment in a manufacturing plant.We started with t-shirts of all things. And because it was February of 2007 when the market crashed, about a year later. So we took a left turn, went with the most complicated production possible, and got ourselves onto the cutting edge of that industry.What ends up happening is a ton of clients are available because companies are going out of business left and right. So it left very strong clients that needed cutting-edge work to stand out in a tough market, which launched.Lisa Ryan: Besides t-shirts, what exactly, what were you doing when you saw the economy taken a dump, and all these companies were looking for help? What were you doing for them?Jason Azevedo: We started in t-shirts, and that, frankly, that great of a business. As I said, the market fell out, and at that time, a lot of what we were doing was for a 15-year-old kid, and it was family reunion shirts or giveaway shirts. All those budgets disappeared, whether it be on the personal side or the corporate side. We cut and sewed the shirts, doing the craziest things possible. Also, there was a massive push to switch to more environmentally friendly inks. We were helping develop those with the ink companies on how to use them worldwide.It became a movement into the current apparel cycle, and we even got into doing cup sleeves for coffees made from denim. So just making anything based on apparel or textile and trying to develop it in a more modern, more cutting-edge way throughout the product's life cycle.Lisa Ryan: What were you doing with Nike, Disney, Marvel, and all of these? So just so talk a little bit about this. Why did they reach out to a 15, or maybe by this age, 18-year-old kid to do this for them?Jason Azevedo: So interesting things happen when markets crash. Prominent players will start having cash flow issues, which we saw happen in 2008. A company servicing Disney, Nike, and Adidas will typically be this massive conglomerate in the space. Those guys started having problems and couldn't keep the doors open because of cash flow. Suddenly, a company like Disney of the world or a large organization like that they don't have a place to go, and they're searching for somebody to take something on.The other part is it has to be somebody that, when you've got your marketing budget. There are two schools of thought. There's either spending way more on fewer items or less on more things, and it's a volume versus a quality issue. Many companies realized, hey, I can't give away a hundred thousand shirts a year anymore. I can't give away a hundred thousand pieces of apparel.But what if I can give away 10,000 that makes an impact? And that's what we are going to people and selling them is, hey, the those free the ugly chintzy things that you were doing that doesn't work anymore.I'll give you an example. We worked with a prominent cybersecurity company and helped them develop their trade show booth. And when you would walk into the booth, they gave out shirts with the company logo on them, and it was okay, whatever. And they told me where the shirts are, and we'll give you a giveaway or some of that. So people would walk into this trade show booth wearing this piece of apparel they were given that looks like a cheap giveaway. As soon as you walked into their booth, we had embedded photo chromatic inks into it. And suddenly, all these cybersecurity terms would start showing up all over the clothing you're wearing has the company sitting there going, See when you're with us, you can see all the problems. Wow. So that's what we were doing. We were selling way more than, Hey, this is cool. We were trying to ensure those marketing budgets were going as far as possible.Lisa Ryan: Oh, that is so interesting. So then from t-shirts, where did you go?Jason Azevedo: We ended up moving into the retail display, another transition point. We got into producing the in caps in all the major box stores and Best Buy and Fry's Electronics. And this was really during that time when everyone called the retail apocalypse.But really, it was a change in the market and how you market in-store and what you were looking for and embedding a lot more communication between the client and the display, whether that be buttons or integrating control systems that turn on lights and interact with the person that's looking at the display.What ended up happening is we started that display, that company largely assembling components bought by other people. So we would design them, send them out to somebody, they would make our sheet metal, or they'd make our plastic, or any other combination of people couldn't hit the standard that we were looking for regularly.We started buying or building all of those sub-companies, whether a button manufacturer, sheet metal company, injection mold or print division.We started honing in on all these different manufacturing types to build these displays. You went out, but you weren't finding the quality of the needed products, so you just started buying from companies.What did that buy or build the companies? And it wasn't necessarily the quality as we were in the marketing sector. Marketing's a very fast-paced industry, and we noticed that American manufacturers we were talking to in our local area are quoting 12 to 16 weeks lead times. In the marketing world, 12 to 16 weeks is insane. That that there's just, that, that timeline doesn't exist. We couldn't get the responsiveness we needed, so we started building the companies ourselves.Lisa Ryan: What were some things I know we talked a little bit about before the show that you are working with legacy manufacturing companies and helping bring them to that next level? So what are some of the things you've done that have set you and those companies apart to get them into a different way of thinking?Jason Azevedo: What we do nowadays is we buy legacy US manufacturing companies. Usually, they're going to be second, third generation companies with no planned-out succession plan. So they're giving away to make sure that the company stays safe in the community that it's in but also adds that energy level that, and new processes that we develop whether that be real new age automation and how we have robotics or automation or computer systems control more and more of the pro the process or just modern processing in general?During the late nineties, the big one was kaizen and all these buzzwords. There's a new age of mixing that with technology, and how do you work with that? And because many of the companies we purchase from are second or third-generation. They haven't gone through that transition to becoming, to use a buzzword, a lean organization, or focused on how we bring the production size down or up as much as we want but not have it affect our internal plan.Lisa Ryan: There are so many things you said regarding succession planning because when you pass that second or third generation, who will you give it to them if the kids are no longer in or the grandkids are no longer in there? And then, of course, there's always the fear of automation of people coming and what jobs will replace, or how will that modernize us? If somebody listening to this show is in that space where they don't know what the next thing is, what are some of the things that you've helped these manufacturers do, or I guess look at it differently when it comes to creating that legacy that they worked so hard to build?Jason Azevedo: Yeah, so you hit on something that I like to take on head-on, and it's something that we have to take on head-on when we go into companies. It is a fallacy that automation removes American jobs, right? On the contrary, it gives them because automation and innovation are why the competition from low-wage countries is fading quickly.That tool allows American manufacturing to grow and fulfill its need; if manufacturing companies do not automate, there is a considerable problem—why we're consuming products three to four times faster than we did in 20 years? Yet have the same manufacturing force. If we cannot produce three to four times faster, we cannot have the products that the industry requests. So we always take that head-on if automation is not something to be feared. On the contrary, automation is the tool that allows American manufacturers to compete with anyone in the world because now you can pay a good wage and get products.Lisa Ryan: Not only that, but many younger people also coming into manufacturing have this idea of it being dark, dirty, and dangerous, and now you're showing something clean and modern. Somebody walks into a plant, sees a robot, or sees automation. It brings a whole new level of attraction to manufacturing because it busts what they thought it would be because you have to have a clean environment to have robots.Jason Azevedo: You hit on another thing that's near and dear to our hearts because of that mentality that people have stuck in their heads that Charles Dickens dirt floors, machines throwing grease everywhere. That's most people's picture of a manufacturing plant. That has directly caused an issue with succession planning in the space. An entire generation of kids was told to do anything but go into a plant, whether from the leadership side or the floor side.They were told about any industry on earth other than manufacturing. I was told that my brother was told that. We didn't listen very well, but we were told that. So that is causing this gap: not a large class of people coming into the industry. And we're trying to get as many people into plants as possible and show them, Hey, this is not what you used to think about it.If you look at the Tesla drone footage going through their plants, they look like dealerships, not plants anymore. They're white floors and bright lights like they're gorgeous. And if we can get people to break that stigma, now you've got a strong industry brewing around you.Lisa Ryan: If you look at it from a parent or guidance counselor, the kids' thoughts begin regarding what they will do with their career here. You have a great job, good money, and excellent benefits, and when you leave work, for the most part, you leave work. It's not so work-life balance - not that there's ever any balance, but work-life integration is a lot easier if you're looking into some of these types of jobs in manufacturing for that reason. Plus, you're making good money without a lot of student loan debt because you don't necessarily need to go to a four-year college.Jason Azevedo: That's where the beauties of manufacturing are. Throughout the manufacturing industry, pretty much every job will pay you to train you on-site. This is not a, Oh, get an education, hope you get a job.They will walk into most manufacturing companies and say, " Great, let me show you how to help me. Let's do this. And that's a massive step in the right direction. Also, I think you've talked about it a little bit, but the technology and connecting these new employees with the mission.Lisa Ryan: I often run into this conversation about these people saying these kids don't have a work ethic. They won't pay their dues. Nobody is paying their dues anymore. We're connecting differently than we had, knowing they see the world differently regarding technology.So there's a lot of this old mentality that we have to, little by little, start to get out. Because if we're looking at 3 million manufacturing jobs going unfilled and not enough people to them, to begin with. It's a cleanup job. We have our work cut out for us.Jason Azevedo: We've got a generation that was told to stay away from the industry, and if not two generations, unpacking that will take time and what it's created. This is somebody who was told not to go into this industry and that it was a horrible place to be. So it takes showing that it's not an awful place yet. There was a period when it got really ugly because we had a sudden issue competing against low-wage countries, but Americans did what Americans do, great. They innovated their way out of it. And that understanding is from craftsmen who have been in the manufacturing industry.For 40 years or a new person coming in, you need to convince both of them that the times have changed, and if the second you can do that, the two can learn from each other. Huge. And one of the things that we run into is there. One of the significant parts of automation is that it's taken away many painful jobs that destroy your body. So any plant should first consider getting rid of those jobs with automation. So that whole pay-your-dues side is part of its running away because there isn't a machine to stick the young guy inside and make him turn a wrench all day on it. So it doesn't exist anymore throughout a lot of these.Lisa Ryan: The other thing we have to consider is workplace culture. You said at the beginning of your career that there were a lot of toxic companies out there, and believe me, there still are, but creating the workplace type of culture brings people in where they feel valued, acknowledged, and depreciated. And I know that you have also explored the opportunities of ESOPs where not, you're not only getting people to buy into their mission, but you're helping them to become owners of the company, which would create that loyalty. Can you talk briefly about what you're doing from a workforce standpoint to make that great environment?Jason Azevedo: Yeah, so every, because we buy legacy companies, you also purchase legacy attitudes, legacy quality, let you buy what this company has Been. So we purposely do look for companies that have a better culture than most because it, frankly, it's easier to start from there. But one of the biggest things you put on you went to the ESOP. We, the general partners for MRCA. When we got together to build this company, we promised to give ESOP 100% of the share in under ten years. So the entire national portfolio, if you work for MRCA, you're getting the share, which was the promise we made to everybody. And frankly, that goes a long way with culture when people feel they have a piece of it and are part of it.But I'll give an example. We're very fortunate. One of our heads of manufacturing was one of the early Tesla people. He came in the other day. He says I want to put plants on the shop and the plant floors. Okay. Why? Because working in a concrete bunker isn't, it's not comfortable. So why doesn't the shop floor get plants if the office gets plants? Excellent point. Okay, let's get plants on the shop floor. And so it's simple stuff like that. We have a company of ours that we just took it, that all office engineering, and all other employees, now sit on the shop floor.There are no offices at all. Because the question came up, why is one different than they have to take phone calls? Great. Then we've got phone meeting rooms, but you're in the plant the rest of your day. And so stuff like that goes a long way. A couple of years ago, 4th of July, we're an American Manufacturing company.The 4th of July is a big day for us. So we were running for 24 hours. And we could not because, and this was, there were still some covid rules going on. So the only way we could do a barbecue for everybody was for the owner personally do the barbecue for 24 straight hours and individually package everybody's lunch that day.Lisa Ryan: Wow. You can't replace that. We talked about paying your dues as ownership. You got to pay your dues. People must know you're willing to go to any portion of the company, and the culture starts building itself. You start getting people that genuinely believe in what's going on. And it's funny because it sounds like that takes a lot of time to do something like that. Would you instead spend time connecting with those employees by having something fun like a barbecue they've probably never experienced in their career before?Or would you rather spend your time interviewing new candidates for jobs because you keep losing them? So when we build that strong culture, it gives us the time and the creativity to do new things because you're not spending all of your time trying to recruit and attract new people in a market where they're just really hard to find.Jason Azevedo: There's a famous Richard Branson quote that I, that we live by, and it's, people, ask me what if you invest all that money and time in people and they leave? What if you don't, and they stay? But it is a lot of work. Culture is a lot of work, and the reality is that manufacturing, specifically in every industry, loves to say we're in the people business. No. We are in the people business. We use more person-hours than pretty much any otherindustry. And the reality is manufacturing companies sell person-hours. So if you don't realize that your number one asset is the human, you'll be you won't get how the industry runs.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. There was another Richard Branson quote that I love, and I'm probably going to get the words wrong, but basically, he said, train your people so that they can leave, but treat them so that they won't.Because, like you just said, you're investing in your employees. You're giving them the tools and the resources to be better tomorrow than they are today.And when you treat them well so that they feel connected to...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Jonathan Klane.Jonathan is senior safety Editor for Lab Manager Magazine and has been in the field of environmental health, safety, and risk for 35 years in many roles. He's also a Ph.D. candidate in human and social dimensions of science and technology, where he studies in two large areas risk perceptions, cognitive biases, decision making, and storytelling, how it affects how we see risks, and its many other valuable benefits. Jonathan, welcome to the show.Jonathan Klane: Thanks, Lisa. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Jonathan Klane: I started in Maine as an environmental geologist and an industrial hygienist. My undergrad is in geology. I got hired to do industrial hygiene, which is just exposure science. Your listeners in manufacturing would know processes generate vapors, fumes, et cetera, and someone has to know how to measure that and figure it all out. So I did that and gradually ended up doing training. Then taught college for several years and enjoyed that, exposing me to different clients.And from there, I got back into consulting on my own. I did that for a few years before finally migrating to Arizona, where I worked for Arizona State University as a safety director. On my card, it said bald-headed Safety guy. That was my title. People would say, How did you get that on the cards? And I would always say, Oh, I figured out how to hack the system. But it was that no one cared. So it was a nice joke. I did that for ten years and a couple of different colleges of engineering.And then that eventually took me to this wonderful role I'm in, where I finally write for a living, which I enjoy doing for a lab manager magazine. It's a great place, Wonderful people. And we write about all sorts of stuff dealing with labs, Senior safety editor. So I write primarily about lab safety, about risk. And, of course, as part of the Ph.D. program, I write a little bit about storytelling, or I engage in storytelling as part of it.Lisa Ryan: Both are important to the manufacturing office audience because the risk is inherent in working in a plant environment. And what you said earlier with the fumes, you want to ensure that you're keeping your workers as safe as possible. But that also brings us to storytelling, where you can convey to your employees the importance of what they do and how you care for them. What is the reasoning behind why what they do is so important?So let's start with risk. That's what you want to avoid the most in manufacturing. How would you describe risk and some? What are some of our perceptions as far as risk goes?Jonathan Klane: Risk is a much better concept than just safety. In safety. We always say you're safe or not safe, and it's such a binary concept that it's not usually helpful. There are so many nuances to it, but risks. I'm sure a lot of your audience is familiar with this. You can look at it as two factors or three factors. So, the two in particular to start. What is the probability of something happening? Basically, what are the odds, right? And then, of course, how bad will it be?What's the severity of the consequence, right? And so, besides processes that generate vapors and fumes and dust and all of that stuff, or maybe it creates dust that collects. And then the worst thing that could happen is they could have a combustible dust explosion. That has occurred across many industries.It could be guarding issues, so the worst is someone can get devastatingly injured or even killed if they bypass the guards, if the machinery doesn't have the proper guards, or if someone starts up equipment, et cetera. So, we can analyze things by severity and probability.The third factor that I like to use, and others don't, is exposure. How exposed are we? An operator, let's say of a system that's got product moving past them, has to check if they're within touching distance of the operation. So they have a significant amount of exposure to that risk, probability, severity, what can happen, et cetera, et cetera.And as opposed to someone much further away, they have far less exposure to it. And thus far less probability. And some people embed exposure into the probability part of the equation. So perhaps the better analogy, and I'll use some risk perceptions for this as well, is biking, or the better example that many of us can relate to.I don't know. Do you bike by chance, or do you know how to bike?Lisa Ryan: Yeah, and I make, I wear a helmet, and I make my husband wear a helmet. Much to his dismay.Jonathan Klane: I wear a helmet. I have no protection except the helmet. And in my skin, as we said. I've been hit by a car I've wiped out on my own. I don't know how many times my head has hit the pavement. I don't know how many times with a helmet on. It rings my bell, but I can always walk away because I've got that protection. So I perceive the risk, and I've taken the step where I think I have the most critical exposure to the hazard.Here's a good way of looking at it, Lisa. When I used to work at Arizona State, it was about a nine-mile bike commute. And one night, on the way home, on a major drag, a very big road university drive, I got hit by a car. So the police officer responded the guy drove away and never found them. And the police officer said you had the right of way, et cetera.So sorry. Glad you're okay and all. And the next day at work, I told a buddy of mine, Rick, and he said, John. You got to get off the major roads, right? There's just too much traffic, right? You're exposed to a lot more traffic at a lot higher speed. They're not paying attention. So you said get on the side roads where there's less traffic. They're going slower.Follow me home. I'll show you the way. All of a sudden, by changing my route, I could reduce all the risk factors, right? Exposure, probability, and to an extent, severity. Getting hit by a car going 45 is different from getting hit by a car going 25, right? Odds on. This how do I recognize the risk factors, and then how do I control them?Plant managers do health and safety. People do supervisors online. Maybe the maintenance crew does. I used to work with many maintenance crews in all sorts of manufacturing and other facilities, and one person will perceive risk differently from another. I live in Arizona, and we get dust storms. We had one last night. Now our shingles have been upset by the winds. Our shingles are going to be replaced. And the roofer was on the house, right? The guy was inspecting it, and we were joking back and forth, and he said it doesn't bother him in the least, right? But he's got a brother-in-law who is in law enforcement and has been shot twice.To each or their own, how do we perceive the risks? And we're, and the science speaks to this very clearly. We're very comfortable with the chances that we know that we take on ourselves willingly, not forced upon us. If I want to wear a mask for Covid, I feel okay about it. If someone makes me wear the mask and I'm resistant, I probably don't feel good about it. And if I'm doing it willingly, I don't see it as a considerable risk. If I'm being, if it's being forced on me, I'm probably going to assign it a negative. We call it a valance, but a value. And therefore, I think that there is a much greater risk. So the risk is about our human perceptions, which are incredibly subjective and vary tremendously.Lisa Ryan: When you said at the beginning, you're either safe, or you're not, that's black and white, where with the risk, there's a lot of grays thrown in there. And in the manufacturing, and I don't remember if this was an audience member or a podcast guest, but what they had implemented, I think they called them "gotcha" cards, something like that. So if they saw somebody participating in risky behavior, they called him on it. They said, Hey, you're at risk. The funny thing is the person I was talking to was the manager who implemented this program, and one of his employees busted him because he was unsafe on a ladder reaching for something and could have gotten in trouble.He could have gotten hurt as a result of it. And the manager was like, Yeah, of course. Give me a part because you legitimately caught and perhaps prevented me from getting hurt. When we look at the maintenance environment, we must create a safe environment where people don't feel like they're snitching. It's if nothing terrible happened, nothing bad is going to happen. There's this little, tiny chance that it's going to, And then are you going to feel bad because you didn't quote-unquote snitch on that person? But we're looking at keeping everybody safe.Jonathan Klane: And our brains are great, but they create heuristics mental shortcuts because our brain is about 2% of our body weight, but it consumes 20% of the energy we use. It's an energy hog. Fuel hog, but it's our brain. It needs it. Part of the way we've evolved is to create these mental shortcuts. They're called heuristics. And all sorts of stuff, right? And it's very subjective to us. So, it might be that a heuristic might be this operation has never hurt me. Therefore, it is safe. And not addressing the fact that odds have a way of catching up. I would bike and go through neighborhoods instead of on the major roads.I live on a grid system. Everything is 90 degrees off, but there are neighborhoods that I could cut through, so it lowered the risk, and I might drive dozens, hundreds of times. I measured it because of the nature of what I do with risk and studying it that on like the 500th time, all of a sudden, there's a car coming in this place that there's never been a car before.But I might have been hit if I was not paying attention to it because I didn't expect the car. He didn't expect the biker. But after doing it hundreds and hundreds of. It finally happened, and I remembered my dad telling me his story. So I wrote long-form creative nonfiction about it.My dad said, Hey, Johnny, now that you've got a ten-speed bike, I was a kid. You got to remember something. I said, What's that, dad? He said there's always someone coming. And it's like gun safety. The gun's always loaded, right? You're biking around neighborhoods; you're not paying close attention. There's always someone coming. And the other one my dad would use. I don't know where he got all these things. I'm pretty sure he didn't come up with them, right? But they were good. They lasted with me over the decades. Lisa, he said, Johnny, there's a lot of people in heaven who had the right of way. And it's just such a great, powerful metaphor, right?Lisa Ryan: And that's the thing. It only takes that one time. I think about what we just went through with the devastation from Hurricane Ian, and there were a whole bunch of people that evacuated who were probably mad because they evacuated and didn't need to.And then there's a whole bunch of other people who didn't evacuate, who wish they would've because they lost everything. So that's a thing we never know when that. An incident is going to happen. That changes everything. Or, like you just said, it causes us to go to heaven.Jonathan Klane: And it's about our consistent behaviors, habits, and even so, think that work teams are rituals. Like sports. . Sports figures, right? Like Nadal and so many different, different sports, right? Whether it's tennis, baseball, football, or whatever, they have rituals and excellent science.I just read another paper where rituals help our brain in putting us in the right frame of mind and preparing for what we're trying to do rituals. Don't mean anything. They don't have a physical construct, meaning they haven't changed something that's going to occur, but they have so much meaning to us.For instance, a wedding. A wedding isn't a legal mechanism. There's paperwork and legal stuff, but the wedding itself is a ritual that has tremendous value and meaning not just to the couple but to everyone involved. And they've even done studies to look at oxytocin levels, human love, and bonding chemical, and the closer people are to the people that matter the most.In the case of a wedding, a bride and a groom. Or two brides. Or two grooms. And they did oxytocin levels, and the closer they were to that, The higher the oxytocin levels. I think the quote was the bride's level was just off the chart. Her oxytocin level was like through the roof, so these habits that we got into my habit of biking on side roads helped protect me. But more significant than that, my writing that long-form story about biking risk, about conversations with my dad in episodes I had or witnessed, including my crashes and others that I helped take care of or tried to avert, caused the behavior change in me.That the writing of the stories and the meaning of the stories, and how powerful they were, caused me to reflect on whether I would wear earbuds and listen to music, which I loved to do. I remember it fondly, but because it was so meaningful in such an emotional way to write those stories. I realized I was driving up the risk by having earbuds where I couldn't hear traffic and by trying to see how fast I could get to work and time myself and see if I could beat my times.Those are risk-increasing behaviors, right? And so it was only through this self-storytelling that I could eliminate those behaviors. So we're back to the power of stories, which can be used for health and safety purposes.Lisa Ryan: And that's what I was going to do now because when I think about storytelling, and I think of manufacturing and specifically attracting people into manufacturing, opening up as a viable career path, part of that is bringing employees in, with the story.So what are some of the things you see regarding companies using stories? I know you've talked to many people in your Ph.D. research, but how are companies using accounts to attract new people and use them as an engagement tool to keep their people?Jonathan Klane: Absolutely. In so many ways. It's amazing to me how much I'm exposed to this. And it's a great question, Lisa. So just one example I've seen for several companies, including ours, LabX Media Group, that we have, instead of an employee handbook or manual, it's a playbook. And the playbook is about culture.You've probably seen this with a lot of your clients. I saw this with another local company here. I read through the entire playbook, and it tells the story of the culture because an employee wants to know what it will be like there. I understand the job because I've done similar jobs, but what do people like?What's the culture like? And the same thing goes for the company. They want to know about that person. So a great way of learning is to ask someone, so there's the usual question, Tell me a bit about yourself or whatever. And you and I were chatting a little bit before, and I shared the advice I had gotten, which I think is great, which is if you want the truth, don't control the answer.It's scary. You get the truth, and sometimes that's helpful. And there's good research on vulnerability, how we can bond and relate, and how people connect. So, a good question, instead of telling me about yourself, is, tell me a story.Tell me a story that has meaning for you. And stories are just such an excellent way to create meaning-making. Researchers consider them as meaning-making and sense-making tools. They allow us as the storyteller and the story receiver, listener, reader, and viewer to better understand the world around us as described, whatever that world is. And that story, real or fictional. It could be middle earth like Lord of the Rings, right? It can be outer space—Tattooine with Luke and Leia and all that stuff. And we have the willful suspension of disbelief where we're so wired for stories, Lisa, that we're willing to give up the reality and let ourselves be what's called transported into this story. The best thing a storyteller is looking for is that the viewer, reader, or listener feels like they're part of this story where time has a way of slipping away. So stories can be a great way for work groups.To better relate stories can be a great way for different groups to understand each other and for different people within a group, to understand their diverse perspectives and perceptions of the same situation. Maybe it was an incident. Perhaps it was a close call. What was going on? What was What were people doing at the time? So thinking and stories can be a great way. People can collaborate on a story. People can tell different stories about the same thing and tell each other, and then there's so much wonderful relatability to it and context and meaning-making that it can help make teams much more effective. If it's done well, it can also be done reasonably quickly. And I know this is something that you and Scott discussed to build psychological safety because stories are a great way to express one's vulnerabilities, which we all want to relate to. I think it also makes it easier for people to remember.Lisa Ryan: If you're, trying to share numbers and statistics and all of these things with your employees, they don't care. They don't remember it two seconds after they leave the meeting. But if you show them specifically a story that ties into what they're doing, the difference they're making, and what the increase means over something else. One of my favorite books is Bill Bryson's, a short history of nearly everything, and he talks about the size of the atom in a molecule. And he said that if you put a piece of paper next to the Empire State Building, that is the neutron of the atom compared to the size of the rest of it. In my whole life, I would never think of the size of an atom, but it was the story that he told me, and I read that book years ago. I just reread it because I like it so much. But yeah, that's the thing that makes a difference, that we remember stories, we don't know numbers, we don't remember percentages as such.Jonathan Klane: Oh. Yeah. You're getting it. So much of the research is almost as if you could be teaching this stuff, Lisa. ? It's been studied since, God, I think, the seventies. Eldon. Tell that we have all sorts of different memory aspects, but a couple includes semantic memory, which is, like you were saying, facts, figures, data, and statistics, which we, the brain, is not wired well to recall, easy to forget type stuff. And then we have something called episodic memory, which is obvious. It's about episodes. What's an episode? An episode is what life is. Life is stories. That's how we're wired, right? And stories are a wonderful way to get people to remember things.I did a study with others when I was at Arizona State, and it was whether or not humor or stories worked better in safety. And so in manufacturing, you got to do a lot of safety training, right? In this case, it was biomedical engineering students, and we had to do fire safety, lab safety, and biosafety three courses in seven class sections. So that's 21 courses every semester. That's a long, And I told the faculty person in charge, I. I don't know what's working. And she said they...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. I'm here today with mark Lilly. Mark is president and CEO of Lilly Works, and he helps manufacturers to solve the late problem. I'm going to let Mark explain a little bit more about that. In the meantime, Mark, welcome to the show.Mark Lilly: Thanks very much, Lisa. Appreciate you inviting me on. Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background and what led you to work with manufacturers and create Lilly Works. Mark Lilly: Sure. We've been doing this for a long time and referred to the team behind Lilly Works. It's a family endeavor.My dad started several manufacturing E R P systems, including one in the 1980s called Profit Key. Another called Visual Manufacturing in the nineties is currently owned by Inform. They're both designed for make-to-order high mix-manufacturing types of companies used by thousands of manufacturers.And they both also had very strong, traditional finite scheduling embedded in them. However, despite this great functionality in either of these products and what we've since learned, any E R P system has this traditional approach to scheduling and managing production that most manufacturers struggle with for several reasons.So a few years ago, the team got together in the 2014-15 timeframe, and we started a third manufacturing ERP system up in the cloud. And as we were designing it, recognizing that while that scheduling functionality was good and the previous folks struggled with it, we said, what can we do differently?We came up with an entirely different approach to managing production. So, from a material and a scheduling standpoint, we called this approach, or the software part protected flow manufacturing. The process is the dynamic production method.And we would go out into the marketplace and show folks the E R P liked this approach to managing production, but they didn't necessarily want to replace their E R P right now. So that's because that's so much work. So we extracted that part of the software. We made it its own product offering called protected flow manufacturing that ties into any E R P system, whatever you're using today.So what's nice about that is we can go into a company and help them in very short order. We're talking six to eight weeks and solving the late problem, right? Give them visibility and production of their true priorities of when and if the material is here or not to execute the prior.And so everybody can see and know what they should be working on for future visibility. So that is when my customer will be able to get their order based on my capacity and material availability. Lisa Ryan: So what exactly is the late problem, and what is the extent of the problem you're seeing?Mark Lilly: Sure. Many companies are struggling with this today, and very simply, it's not being able to get their orders out on time when they want to. I did a presentation at IMTS in Chicago last week, and I pulled together some macro data. In reality, there are over a trillion dollars in unfill fulfilled orders across American manufacturing in July. That was the latest statistics that came out of basically the fed. And that's about half of the entire manufacturing GDP. To put that into context, the manufacturing GDP is approximately just over 10% of the national GDP.So there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. And I think anyone who works in a manufacturing company realizes an experience is this, whether it's for material or the supply chain issues we're having. Internationally, whether it's the workforce or not being able to find people, most companies are struggling because they would be able to ship if they had the capacity. If they had better management of what's happening in their production environment and better visibility of what's happening.Lisa Ryan: Sure. I think about this, the late problem, and the first thing that came to mind was, okay, supply chain, everybody's struggling with the supply chain. We can't get parts. They're sitting in ports in LA or whatever is go that whatever we've been seeing the last couple of years.How can people turn that around when many think that's just part of the process? It seems that if somebody could turn around, that would make them stand out from everybody else too. Mark Lilly: Yeah. I think it's making folks look because even before all that happened, folks still struggled with getting their orders out on time.People realize this. So I think it's just bringing the shining a light even more. A lot of it can be helped internally. If they genuinely had visibility of when materials are coming in or even if they had the materials right now and also what their priorities should be based on the dependencies of what they're manufacturing and what jobs or work orders are through.Most are in danger of being late rather than trying to schedule things based on a due date. However, this is one of the things we find in a high-mix environment, and most scheduling programs or tools will attempt to prioritize your work on the due date, especially in a high-mix environment.You will have jobs that are due earlier. But that is less in danger of being late, just by how much work needs to happen on a job and whether it needs to go outside or back. So you could have a job that's due two months from now. That's much more in danger of being late today than if you don't get started on it than a job due even a week from now. Lisa Ryan: So how would you even figure that out?Mark Lilly: That's a great question. And that's what we do. We work with whatever data they have, whether in an E R P system or not.And we bring that into an approach where we create an execution plan for every work order. So you can see how much work needs to be done or for the quantity you're making when the due date is. And then there's actually, and whether folks realize it or not, they're using a lot of buffer time.So when you ask somebody, Hey, what's, what lead time are you quoting your customers? They may say six weeks. And then you ask this, the follow-up question to that. Okay. Of that six weeks. How much time is actual production time, right? Touch time. That will be on a machine, or somebody will be explicitly adding value to it.And that's typically their estimates of the routing from this operation steps that need to get done. So you often find that on a six-week lead time job, the actual touch time is a fraction of that. Sometimes only a week, sometimes days. Sometimes even hours. So companies are using a fair amount of buffer time between the actual time that's going to be needed and the due date.So we consciously look at that. We work with the clients that say, is that, say, five weeks of buffer time? Is that working for you? Is that, is it too much? In which case, maybe we have an opportunity to reduce that, or perhaps it's even too little, and maybe you need to expand that a little bit, be conscious about how much buffer time you're putting in there.The dynamic is then that the execution plan will flex based on quantity. Which lead times, don't lead times a static type of information but should be flexing based upon the quantity. And then that also designates when you need materials upfront. And when that job should start.Okay. Now when the job should start is important because what the other thing we often find. Manufacturers have this idea in production that, you know, gee, as soon as we have material, let's get it out into production. Because then it'll come out the other side as quickly. And no, you don't want a flood WIP with too much work.There's a principle called Littles Law, which says that there are more things or items in a system. So the longer the time, any of those items will be in the system. A good example is simply a highway. I live in the DFW area. And as you can imagine, we've got certain five-lane highways during rush hour, and you come over the, over the on-ramp, right?All are brake lights. And, you're going to be on that strip of highway, say it's, for five miles for 20, 25 minutes because there are so many cars on that highway. The flip side is you come up in the middle of the day or at night. And everybody's flying by you these fewer cars; you're going to be on that strip of the highway for five minutes or less.The same way in a production environment. The more work orders, the more jobs, and material you send into production. There's so much traffic. The longer the wait times are going to be on each of the work centers. A more extended period each it's just going to take to get through. That's why there's a lot of expediting at the end of the month.So you don't want to starve production, but you want to control how much you send out. And when you do that, whatever is in production has the best chance to flow through its work centers as quickly as possible to shorten your lead time and get out faster. Lisa Ryan: So that certainly sounds like some of the struggles manufacturers have with that traditional method of managing their production. But what are some of the other struggles that you're seeing that they're having when they're doing it the old way? Mark Lilly: Sure. So one of the things with the traditional scheduling model is that you are running a computer program. So you have to run a computer algorithm to get your plan.So you try to set up your parameters as best you can. You run this computer program that you, some folks, may understand precisely what it's doing. Others may not. And then you get this list then of priorities from the program. And even if it's, there's no such thing as a perfect plan, but let's suppose you have a good plan. That gets to the reality of production, especially in a high-mix environment where things constantly change. Then something does change. Whether a customer calls and changes a due date, a tool breaks your best setup person doesn't show up.The beautiful plan you had now doesn't make sense anymore. So it's probably not worth very much, so we realized there needs to be a dynamic production method. It recognizes, acknowledges, and anticipates that change will constantly happen in a production environment.So instead of devising a plan and executing it based on that, we do what we do and use those. So an individual execution plan for every work order and job also calculates a real-time priority. And it's very simple using where we are today.And how much is remaining on the execution plan, whether it's all the work or just a portion? And then, how much time protection or buffer do we have left to our due date? We call that a threat level. So based on that ratio, How much in danger of being late is each one of your jobs?And we publish that in real time, out in production, so that everybody in every department and every work center on every machine can see and know precisely which job they need to work on. So what is the top priority regardless of the due date, right? Like because, as we described, there may be jobs that need your attention now that are due later rather than other jobs.Lisa Ryan: So how much do you think this is costing the average manufacturer to have this late problem happening? Mark Lilly: That's a great question. As I mentioned, it's in the trillions on a macro level. When you ask most individual manufacturing companies, and if they're being honest, most will recognize that.Maybe in the eighties percentile in terms of on-time delivery. And many struggles with being in the sixties or seventies, even lower. So it's not easy, but you can imagine. And actually, we can pull their data in and show them what it would mean.To be able to ship, on the extreme, if they were, and they could do this math as well, certainly by looking at their backlog, if they were able to ship everything on time, what that would mean from a revenue standpoint. But knowing that they're not going to be, that 30% or even 20% of their orders will not make that deadline mark, they're going to fall into a later period.What is the financial impact of doing that? So you can imagine there's a tremendous opportunity if you can shift the bar even a little bit, so if you can go from 70 to 80 90 percentile, that change. So you're now shifting when you're going to be able to recognize that revenue, and it's a tremendous financial impact. Lisa Ryan: So when manufacturers are shifting and going to that dynamic production method, what are some of the results they're seeing? Mark Lilly: That's a great question. So there are three components, and I've touched on all of those in different ways. One is anticipating the variability. So have to make sure there's, you're acknowledging you're using a buffer today and talking about that. Where should that be? In terms of when we start jobs and when we need materials. So anticipating that variability using the proper priority.So instead of using the due date to schedule, use a risk level of how much in danger of being late. Or of having a stockout, if you're a make-to-stock tech company, are you that's the second one? And then the third is controlling WIP. So how much WIP do you see is once the method is in place and you're doing all three of those things, there's almost an immediate reduction in work and process.So if you are in a situation where, you know, and many manufacturers do just by walking out on the floor, they realize we've just got too much whip out here. Just so much an immediate reduction happens in just a few weeks. And that's a tremendous cost saving, right?So you can go to the cost accountant or the CFO of the company and ask them how much WIP are you carrying right now. And with this approach, we can reduce that in very short order. So do the math 30%, even 40% of your whip gone within a few weeks.That's a tremendous cost saving. But the bigger part is getting work out faster with the resources, the machines, and the people you're already using or paying for today. And now that becomes a contribution margin in the equation or some call that a throughput dollars equation. With our toolset, you can see this as well. Financially. You can see if I was, if I'm doing things the way I'm doing, now I can see how many dollars I will be able to ship. But if I could make these improvements or get things out faster, how much more in a given period would I be able to ship boats from a revenue standpoint, but even more powerful contribution? The neat thing about contribution margin is that any additive contribution margin you can bring in a given period goes right to the bottom line. So it's a direct profit increase for the company. So it's a very powerful lever to help a company grow and improve its finances.Lisa Ryan: When you have a high mix manufacturer and face it, nobody has enough time to do anything today. Everybody's plates are overflowing. So how would you even start prioritizing as far as figuring out your most significant risks and knowing where to start? Mark Lilly: That's a great question. And companies are in different stages of being able to implement something like this, right? So we go into some companies that already have an E R P in all their routings and data or are pretty, pretty accurate. So they reflect how production is happening, and we can tie in, but they may still struggle with its scheduling components or material visibility.We can tie in very quickly. And within a few short weeks, they can get those priorities. We talked about other companies in the future, and I've been in several of them even recently where they don't. They may have a system, but whatever data is in there, they don't believe it either. So here's how production happens.Maybe those routings were set up from a costing standpoint, accounting used, but when you get out to the shop floor, that's not how material flows. So they need to rework those. And then there are dependencies, often manufacturers who make the complex product where sub-assemblies are involved.So are those sub-assemblies specifically for a parent? So they need to be aligned very tightly, or are they common parts, common sub-assemblies that maybe even need to be stocked, in which case they also need to be aligned, but a little bit differently to make sure they're going to match whatever the first parent is, that's going to need them.So, that does need to be looked at. The good news is. Now we can't create data out of magic, but most folks have it in their heads or often have it on spreadsheets. That's what we usually see where folks have struggled with the traditional scheduling model. They have scheduled in their E R P.They may have even purchased a bolt-on. But, unfortunately, they've just struggled with it, and they revert to spreadsheets. So the good news is we can use those spreadsheets as a data source to help them move forward in this direction. Is there some trigger or sign or something to pay attention to that? Lisa Ryan: Wow. This is an issue that we need. Take care of it right away. Is there a timeframe or anything again that would be like that siren that, Hey, this is something you should be paying attention to right now? What does that look like? Mark Lilly: Yeah. If companies aren't already monitoring or measuring, they're on time delivery percentage. So they're not formally doing that. There are likely a few folks in the company who know how good or not that is undoubtedly sales customer service. And that's where the issue arises with customer relationship management, whether it's an existing customer complaining about not meeting the due dates they had established. Or not being able to win new business because of the lead time. If you're being honest and quoting a lead time, it may be longer than some of your competitors.Lisa Ryan: And face it, nobody on the planet likes change. So if you're bringing this kind of change into a manufacturing plant, how do you get buy-in from the employees to let them know that this isn't one more program, that it will fail in the next couple of weeks, or that this is going to help them? How do you incorporate the system so everybody sees the value and benefit? Mark Lilly: That is a great question. And a critical question. So typically, we don't get to the point where there's a financial commitment from the client to move forward without at least introducing this to production and getting some in that regard.But to your point, We have encountered situations. For example, we've got a modern machine shop article about keeping schedules on track. About that, that very point. We implemented this. We got management's buy-in. We had the big screen TVs and the workstations in production, showing the real-time priorities.Everything was wonderful. And eight weeks went by, and management said nothing had changed. We're still on time. Delivery is the same. Our WIP seems to be the same. So we did a deeper dive and realized we hadn't gotten buy-in from the production folks.They were still using their old message on a piece of paper,...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Jim Ver Woert. Jim is an enterprise solutions executive with tooling-U SME, a Society of Manufacturing Engineers division. Jim travels the country and collaborates with world-class manufacturers to develop workforce performance and training solutions. Jim, welcome to the show. Jim Ver Woert: Thanks so much, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here. So share a little bit about your background and what ultimately led you to Tooling-U SME. Jim Ver Woert: Sure. I began my career in manufacturing, working for a very small industrial distributor out of Moline, Illinois. Unfortunately, they're no longer in business.They've been acquired like many industrial distributors have in the past. The company was called Deion Thompson, and my territory was central and Western Iowa. So the John Deeres, the Vermeer, and the Scour Dan Fosse, Dan FSEs of the world in my territory, and we supplied metal cutting tools and metalworking fluids to our customers.And it was interesting because this is, coming up 15 years ago, I would get the questions like, "Hey, Jim, do you know any good lathe operators? Do you know any good mill operators? Do you know any good welders?" And my answer was always the same back then, "I do know some of those people, but they already have a job."So even back then, I saw a significant need for a skilled workforce because help was hard to find. So along comes at the time Tooling University. As a workforce training and development tool, our company's management connected us with Tooling University. And that was one of them. I called bullets in my holster.It was one of the lines we represented, and it was a great marriage because of that tremendous need I kept seeing. Fast forward to about six and a half years ago. ToolingU SME had since been acquired by SME, this Society of Manufacturing Engineers. About six and a half years ago, they gave me a phone call, and here I am today and happy to do it because that need is as prevalent as it was 10, 15 years ago out in the middle of the cornfield of Iowa. I see it everywhere. I go coast to coast and border to border.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And that's, it's such a huge aspect right now because you look at not only have we had the pandemic for the last, two and a half - 10 years is what it feels like. We had lots of baby boomers retiring beforehand. But now, there's even more of a mass exodus as we reassess our priorities. People are thinking, do I really want to end my career, or keep doing what I'm doing, or do I want to go and play with my grandkids and enjoy the rest of my life?So I'm sure you see that from both a training and an employee attraction standpoint, but let's talk first about how you see manufacturers retain that brilliance - the industry knowledge, the expertise, the skills that are walking out the door so that the next generation of workers can get a jumpstart.Jim Ver Woert: Great question. They are doing everything they can to retain them. But like you said to the worker, that's been, on the floor or in the office, 25, 30, 35 years. They're ready to play with their grandson and go fishing off into the sunset of retirement. Some of those employers don't retain them completely, but they will have them come back on a part-time basis as consultants.So they will retire yet have a gentleman's agreement, if you will, that, Hey, if we get in a pickle on the floor, and Bill was the only one that knew how to finish this part or to run this machine or to fix this machine when it went down, please be on call, and you'll agree to come in and help us out.Lisa Ryan: When we look at the flexibility, that is an expectation of employees too. We look at flexibility from younger workers coming in. That sounds like such a great way to take advantage of our more tenured employees, our skilled employees still keeping them relevant while giving them some money. But then again, addressing their need for spending time outside of work. So do you have examples or specific stories where you've seen that work? Jim Ver Woert: Yeah, I have one, I won't mention the name, but they're down the road from me here. They, I call it the Monday morning factor. They offered a bunch of early retirements because COVID really put into warp speed. A lot of these practices gave employees early retirement. Let's cut the budget. Back then, no one knew what was happening and then what the long-term effects were going to be.But they found out one of the immediate effects. They had let the wrong person go on Friday. And literally, on Monday morning, they were standing there trying to figure something out. Nobody knew how to do it because the person that knew how to do it was already retired. So that's, that's just the reality that we went through.Now, one thing that we have started helping customers with is, first of all, raising that awareness. And look at your pipeline of your employees. And look at that retirement pipeline - who's coming up in the next six months, year, two years? What is their skill set? What do they do? Are they in that a department of ten people that all do the same one person with that specific tribal knowledge that's getting ready to retire?But I've literally gotten those phone calls three or four years later. Hey, Jim, we got so and so retiring at the end of October. Can you folks get in here and help us capture as much as possible from this person before they walk out the door? Lisa Ryan: And it makes them feel relevant regarding the knowledge they're bringing, but then they're, you're really cutting down the learning. From the people coming up who don't necessarily know the history of why that job is being done that way, they're getting to hear it from an expert. Jim Ver Woert: Absolutely. You just hit on a very critical point - the whys behind something. We do so many things in our daily lives that become second nature. But, not knowing the whys behind things, why are we approaching this part at this certain entry angle? Why are we changing the tool at this point and not going another ten parts, all these things? And that's something that can get lost in a black-and-white world. There's AI. Robots and all these things are fantastic, but there's still that human element.Some parts are just irreplaceable until you do that mentoring or that one-on-one O J T or that training of the whys and the tribal knowledge to fully comprehend and understand and be able to produce a good part and continue. Lisa Ryan: So mentoring is another big area to do that where you're putting together your tenured employees and maybe your new kids on the block coming in and have them build those relationships and learn from each other. There could also be some reverse mentoring going on, with the younger folks being able to share their thoughts about technology and apps and the things that they're seeing. So again, let's look at and talk about mentoring for a couple of minutes. What are some of the best practices that you are seeing manufacturers do?Jim Ver Woert: Yeah, that's a great question. And you hit on a great point, too, that multi-generational mentoring, there's sometimes the more seasoned workforce, if you will, is not as familiar with technology as the younger workforce is. And if they could learn just a few little tricks or implement just a few things and apply them to their job, it would make their job much easier, faster, and quicker.But they've never had anybody they've been able to talk to and develop a relationship with. And the same goes the other way where, the whys, why do I have to manually do this when I can just punch a couple of numbers on my phone or punch a couple of numbers here?Certain things must be done a certain way to explain that and develop those mentoring relationships. And not only that, it's a passing of the guard, if you will. It's cultural, on a more personal level, to develop that sense of pride and that sense of workmanship and craftsmanship that so many of our seasoned workforce have developed. I call it the good old American know-how.Let's try to try to define that in one sentence. There are examples all across the country. I'll never forget one time, in my former job, there was a foundry that I called on. They made castings for the aerospace industry and the US military, and the guy kept telling me these are handcrafted castings. And I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean they're handcrafted? So he said they poured the castings and cut off the risers and the gate. So they do all this stuff but then take it to their shop. And by hand, they sand it here, and they sand it there, and they do this, and they do that.And then, there are different kinds of wood and various places in the castings and all these processes that took years, if not decades, to perfect. And that has to be a mentoring environment to pass that kind of craftsmanship onto the next generation. Lisa Ryan: And it works when that person shares the passion for it. You could hear that passion coming through just in you relating that story. It's castings, for goodness sake, but there was so much pride in what went into that process that a newer worker is coming when somebody is mentoring. And conveying some of that, listen, I've done this.You can do it too, and it will not happen overnight. So we will work together, and I will try to shortcut the process but let you experience some of that success. I think that too many times in manufacturing, we don't give people enough. Enough credit for their pride and what they do because they're pieces, parts, and components.We think they're doing the same thing every day, but it's magic when you find the right people, and they love what they do. Jim Ver Woert: It really is. And it becomes a family. I'll never forget a shop on the west side of Des Moines that I used to visit. This was a group of guys and gals whose number one goal was to be able to do things that all the other shops in the area could not. That was the work they wanted so that they could carry that banner higher than anybody else.And pat themselves on the back and fist pump and high-five each other at the end of the day. And it was a magical place to be in sometimes because when they got the secret sauce and cracked the code, I tell you what it was. So it was quite a special moment.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And that's the thing, and you can feel culture. You can walk into any plant just by walking there and feeling the energy. Do people like working here? Do they not like working there? So not only from a customer standpoint but if you're interviewing applicants with a culture that doesn't feel good, there's no way they're accepting your job offer.Jim Ver Woert: Exactly. Exactly. And people pick up on that. People pick up on that. Lisa Ryan: So we've talked a lot about the more tenured workforce and the fact that we're losing them. But we also have to look at the opposite end of the scale of attracting more people into manufacturing, changing the conversations so that parents, guidance counselors, and the public generally realize what a great career path is.So when it comes to the training solutions, what do you see that world-class manufacturers are doing? What are some of the things that they're implementing? Jim Ver Woert: Yeah. Great question and great point. You mentioned parents and guidance counselors. That's precisely where it was at another large aviation company. The vice president said, if we don't get them at the junior high level or before, we've already lost them, and that's just critical, and it's literally retraining our culture.Here in the United States, and with all due respect to college graduates, that's great. We need them, but I think everybody could agree that not every single person that's drawn a breath of air is queued up and ready and a good fit to go to a four-year college. So just being able to give them options and letting them see different career pathways at an early age is critical. I sit on a board at a local high school with a great shop. They have about eight welding booths. They have a lay of the mill and a plasma cutting table. And when I go to those meetings a couple of times a year to listen to those instructors, talk about their students and the things that excite those students where they got their first small 3d printer.And they let them pick whatever they wanted to print, like a small airplane or a small guitar pick or whatever their passion was, go ahead and do that. And boy, those kids were walking up and down the hallways of the school, showing them off to all their friends, saying, Hey look, what I made I had, of course, had to program it, had to get the machine set and do all these things. It really energized him. I think it's that energy, that spirit we were talking about before. Capturing that and generating that in the younger generation is essential. Because again, and excuse me if I'm going on and on. I remember going to Southern Wisconsin for training in my former job and hearing about all the shop classes, high schools, and community colleges closing left and right. And that's such a heavy German, industrial part of the country. So many German tool companies are headquartered there in the Milwaukee area. And to hear that it's just really a cultural blow to our country.So I think the good news is you're doing things like this. Those conversations are happening. There are people like Mike Rowe talking out there on a higher, even bigger stage, maybe just raising this awareness and engaging anybody and everybody that'll listen. We need manufacturing for security, safety, and services that our people are accustomed to.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. In high school, I took both wood shop and metal shop. Primarily because I didn't want to take home EC, it was just fun, and you're right. And then, for years, all those programs disappeared, and it is so nice to see them returning. Our community college here in Cleveland, Cuyahoga Community College, has a whole manufacturing technology Center.We're starting to see the schools that are opening up. But, still, you made a significant point that if you don't get them by junior high, you've lost them because that's the generation that's coming into the workforce now that by the time they graduate high school, they already have an idea of what they're going to do.So using things like manufacturing day, the first Friday in October, and trying to get into the schools talking to people, talking to parents, doing plant tours. I was just at a facility a couple of weeks ago. And when I was pulling into the parking lot, they had all of their signs, join our team, great hours, great work culture. And the thing that, of all the signs, the one that gets the most action is, "work with your hands." So they have a billboard that says if you want to work with your hands, join us. Because there's something that immediate gratification of being able to create something of being able to see, this is what I made. And you're right. Why go to a four-year college if you're not cut out for it and come out with all that student loan debt and flip burgers? Jim Ver Woert: Can I share some stories from the road? Lisa Ryan: Absolutely. Jim Ver Woert: To highlight this. And again, it's to, to no fault of their own. I always joked about myself when I started in this industry. I didn't know the difference between an end mill and a windmill. Cause you don't know what you don't know. And it's not your fault. But I'll never forget. I drove through South Carolina four years ago and listened to one of the local radio stations. The University of South Carolina studied high school students in the state and concluded that around 80% of high school students did not know how to change a light bulb. Why? Because they've never had to do it before. I'm sure their parents love them dearly. I'm sure they would do anything for them, but I think sometimes parents might do a little too much for children.Go ahead. How do you think we should change that light bulb? What do you think? Maybe turn it off. Let it cool down for a little bit. So when you touch it, it's not hot going back to some of that tribal knowledge to some of that mentoring, you know why you have to do this. So there's one story.The other story is that I got this in many places. One of the first things they would do when they were looking to hire an applicant is to give them a tape measure and ask them, "Show me five and three quarters." They didn't. They had no idea what they were saying because they'd never held to take measure in their entire life.And the last one was the screwdrivers. They had some new maintenance, younger people, and they were talking amongst themselves, and they said, oh, that's not the minus. That's the plus screwdriver. Wow. That's a description for Flathead and Phillips. Lisa Ryan: Wow. That just highlights what we were talking about earlier - the need and opportunity ahead of us. The good news is that the only place we can go is up now.It's just so funny you say that because my dad had his wood shop in the basement while I was growing up. I can't tell you how many hours down there. I'd be down there watching him look at the tool, work with the tools, and stuff like that. And just things that you take for granted.I had one of the guests on my show a while ago, Miranda Martz, who I actually met at ToolingU. Her dad fixed cars, and she would go and watch her dad, and fix cars along with him. And just that little thing is what decided her whole career. So that's a thing. Maybe parents aren't necessarily changing their oil and stuff, but getting your kids involved in your hobbies, what you're passionate about, looking for ways to introduce them, changing a tire. Now, mind you, I know how to change a tire. I just have AAA. So I choose not to.I think about light bulbs. It's like these things blow out once every ten years. So none of us are really changing light bulbs that often. But it's the point of just knowing the necessities and exposing kids at as young of an age as possible because there's going to be a small percentage of them that are going to say, that's what I want to do.Jim Ver Woert: I will say the good news is the, I think, what is it, the gen Z this latest generation is taking the bull by the horn. There's some really good interest being generated. So maybe we're already generating some interest and lighten that spark and thank the good Lord that's happening because manufacturing is so important and critical to our country. Especially in this day and age, you don't want to depend on other countries.I won't name any names for things that are just important, medicine, food, shelter, energy. There's so much that goes into us. Just being able to live a good life comes from the manufacturing industry. I'll never forget one of the best t-shirts I saw "And on the eighth day, God created tool and die makers."There you go, just let that set and sizzle for