Oh The Places You’ll Go With The People You Know
It’s been said that VCs invest in the team before they invest in the idea. History is littered with the stories of unknown teams beating star packed opponents. For me, the best professional time of my life was winning national awards on teams while I was at GE. Older and more experienced now, I have discovered how hard it is to find good people and harder still to be a part of a great team. These days we are learning to be a great team from the type of projects we work on. Here is what we are working on this week:
True Kan-Ban vs. Kan-Ban Stocking Programs
This week, Kerrie-Ann asked if she could set up a 100 pc order with 10 pc Kan-Ban release. We get this kind of request fairly frequently and so I asked the follow-up question, “What is your TAKT?” Almost always I get no response. When I call to follow-up, typically they don’t answer because they don’t know. Without the right information, Kerrie-Ann might be paying more than she has to for these parts. To show you the savings difference, I need to start with some lean inventory basics.
How To Reduce Procurement Time By 95%
We had a scare the other day; a customer that we visited weekly asked us to not visit any more. We immediately jumped to the worst case conclusion that we were being phased out. The truth was much simpler. They were swamped and supplier meetings were consuming too much time. In this case, Rob’s boss said he was doing the work of 3 people and she was asking us to give him back some time. Our sales team started thinking about Rob’s issue. Instead of saving Rob one hour a week, how could we save him 20 hours a week? How could we save him 38 hours a week?
Help May Come In Different Ways
Mike, the salesman for a growing new company, stopped by this week to ask for our help. They just landed the prototype for a potential 30 unit build at one of their largest customers. It may seem small, but all of our customers start that way. This particular prototype will cost us $6000 to make, so it is small, but not so simple. The problem is they don’t have a design, only a picture of the kind of system they want us to build. This isn’t unusual for us, we help customers with their designs frequently (see this case study for an example). The unusual part was that Mike wanted his company President, Christian, to design the system instead of us.
Should We Bring Powder Coating In-House?
This week Todd and Peter approached me separately about setting up a powder-coating line in our own facility, from 2 different directions. Todd is a current customer and he is hoping we could further reduce our manufacturing lead time by powder coating in-house. Peter, as a prospect, was interested more in achieving cost savings by eliminating the margin stack-up with outsourced powder coating. We have been interested in adding in-house powder coating for some time. Why haven’t we acted on it?
Change Happens Quickly, Even At The Top
Yesterday I heard some sad news – twice. With 2 different companies, senior leadership was replaced. Elliott was a VP of Operations for a fast growing manufacturer and Peter was the President of an electrical sub-assembly company. Both good men, but something needed to be changed and they were out. When I hear news like this, the first thing I think is how solid is my own position?
“If the economy is recovering, how come I feel so lousy?”
This past week my team reported that all of our suppliers are slow. This is unusual given that it’s the end of the month/quarter, so I called around. I talked with three customers and they all reported things being slow. Dick said it was slow both at his local facility and even a little bit slow in his Chinese plant. Scott said it would be slow at his place at least until after their May industry show. Even Jaime, who had a great year last year, said that product hadn’t been moving out of his warehouse for months. Some product that we shipped them almost 2 years ago was still on his shelf. So what is all this talk we’re hearing about a recovering economy?
Good Customer Service, Part 2
In my on-going quest to find examples of great customer service, a customer of ours recommended I talk with Kevin Queenlin of Specialty Bolt & Screw or “SBS”. My customer, Tom, repeatedly comments on the lack of customer service at most American manufacturers with the exception of SBS. They have a “do what ever it takes” attitude that really impressed Tom. I had to call Kevin to find out more.
How We “Exercise” To Build Our “Muscles”
Every once in a while we have great customers who start to outgrow our capacity. This is always bittersweet; we are so happy to have helped grow this small company and we are sad to see a great customer “leave the nest.” In many cases this has helped us expand our capacity or our capabilities. Isn’t this what you want from your best customers? Phil executed on his plan to move high production to roll forming (a process we do not currently support), but he did it well by keeping us informed of the transition. As a result we ramped up while tooling was underway and we managed a planned ramp down as roll forming came on-line.
One Way We Can Help Change the World
In our business, there are only a handful of opportunities where we manufacture something that can affect millions of lives. We are helping launch a new, innovative product that does just that. Dave and Judy have developed the ICON™ clean air delivery system that utilizes air replacement technology (A.R.T™). It is a window mounted unit that delivers hospital operating room quality air to the home. For those of us who have kids with asthma or allergies or parents with COPD, the ICON™ removes the triggers that cause respiratory related problems. As a courtesy to ETM, Dave & Judy have offered a 50% discount on the first 14 units if you mention our name.