Our guest today is someone who has seamlessly transitioned from engineering to operations in one of the most successful companies in the world right now! Todd Hammel is the Operations Manager at Amazon in Nashville, Tennessee, and today, he joins us to share his insights into the workings of the well-oiled machine that is Amazon. Todd fills us in on how he prepared himself for his leadership position, who inspired him along the way, and the greatest lessons he’s learned thus far as a leader. We get an inside peek into the day-to-day operations over at Amazon, their mind-blowingly thorough KPI monitoring system, and the creative freedom the company’s “two-way door” approach allows its employees. Tune in to hear Todd’s golden nuggets of wisdom about all things operations and leadership!
Our guest today is someone who has seamlessly transitioned from engineering to operations in one of the most successful companies in the world right now! Todd Hammel is the Operations Manager at Amazon in Nashville, Tennessee, and today, he joins us to share his insights into the workings of the well-oiled machine that is Amazon. Todd fills us in on how he prepared himself for his leadership position, who inspired him along the way, and the greatest lessons he’s learned thus far as a leader. We get an inside peek into the day-to-day operations over at Amazon, their mind-blowingly thorough KPI monitoring system, and the creative freedom the company’s “two-way door” approach allows its employees. Tune in to hear Todd’s golden nuggets of wisdom about all things operations and leadership!
EPISODE 29
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:02] MH: You're listening to The Industrial Movement, where we discuss the people, the processes, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Industrial Movement podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment, and the show notes can be found at our website at www.theindustrialmovement.com.
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Now, let's get on to the show.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:40] MH: Hi, folks. Welcome back to The Industrial Movement. I'm your show host, Morty Hodge. With me as always, is my trusty sidekick, Greg Smith.
[00:00:47] GS: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:49] MH: Today we're here with Todd Hammel. He is the Operations Manager at Amazon in Nashville, Tennessee. Todd, thank you for joining us today on The Industrial Movement.
[00:00:58] TH: Absolutely. Great to be with you guys today.
[00:01:00] MH: Todd, start off and tell us a little bit about yourself and you a little bit about your history. You've had some great positions at some fantastic companies in different industries. We'd like to hear that story.
[00:01:12] TH: Okay. I actually went to Western Kentucky University for my undergrad. When I got out of college there, I actually worked in the automotive industry, as a manufacturing engineer. I love doing that kind of thing. Continue to see improvement, problem-solving that sort of thing. And shortly after that, I was able to make a move into operations and got into management, and pursued that path for some time, and moved up with the company as with there, and then eventually moved into quality management, project management, and then it seemed like I kind of circled back in operations, worked for some great companies, the Eaton Corporation and Amazon, Altec Industries. Some people may or may not be aware of, it's the company that makes all the bucket trucks around the country, number one in our industry, and several other companies out there as well.
And then obviously, ended up at the last stop there at Amazon in operations. So, it's been a great ride. Operations, quality project management, and continuous improvement, and course along the way, I forgot to mention, I did get my MBA from Gardner Webb University, which is a private college outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. So, really had some great experience with some of these companies in manufacturing and it's been an awesome ride so far.
[00:02:28] MH: Yeah, I have some personal experience with Altec. They actually got into the compressed air industry. They do a lot of the landlines and like you said, the bucket trucks. And some of the guys there at Denver, Colorado is where we went to that division. They told us it's something insane, like if you place an order for a bucket truck, it's like a two or three-year waiting list.
[00:02:47] TH: Wow, that's gotten pretty huge since I was with them. I remember back when I was with them, the executives there, the CEO, John Styslinger always talked about they had this vision of raw material to rubber in seven days was the war cry back then. Essentially, you place an order and you start cutting metal and everything, and you have a product in seven days. It was kind of the stretch goal that they talked about and really pushed everybody to really question our cycle times and lead times on purchase products, that sort of thing. Our combine levels and how we run into the plant, and it really stretched everybody in the supply chain quite a bit. But it was a great vision put out there for everybody.
[00:03:27] MH: So now, your first love was engineering. Is that correct?
[00:03:30] TH: That is correct. Absolutely, love that. Not only at work, but here at home as well.
[00:03:35] MH: Great. I guess my question would be, what was it like making the transition from engineering into operations? And what were some of the challenges there?
[00:03:45] TH: So, having that opportunity to leap in operations, to me it was a little bit scary, because as an engineer, you're what's called an individual contributor, and you don't have to manage or lead anybody. You don't have teams that you're over and that sort of thing. So, you are kind of responsible for yourself and your projects, which in itself, there's a certain amount of pressure with deadlines. But then going in operations, you had the complexity to that, you have a team that you're leading, and managing and making sure that you're beating different deadlines in different departments.
So, for me, probably the biggest transition for me was I was very much I would say, a common introvert as an engineer. When you go into managing people, managing teams, you have to learn to get out of your shell a little bit and go to interact with folks. So, for me, I think that was a scary thing was okay, now I've got people are going to be leaning on me and looking for me to lead them and guide them and coach them and train them and that sort of thing, and that was a little bit intimidating.
I actually took some supervision classes, as far as learning some different aspects, as far as how to interact with folks learning people skills, leadership skills, and then learning how to train and develop my team. I also, believe it or not, read a lot of books about leadership and that was something that I was able to take a lot of nuggets away from, in trying to develop my leadership because I knew that was something I wanted to do and is very much outside of my comfort zone. But I knew that if I wanted to get to where I wanted to be at, I'd have to do the uncomfortable things to get there.
[00:05:14] MH: We have some questions later on in the show about those specific things. So, I can't wait to dig in. I know Greg is over here chomping at the bit. Tell me about Amazon. What was your role there? What was your day-to-day? What did that look like?
[00:05:27] TH: So, I actually start out at Amazon as their continuous improvement and benchmarking operations manager, and that was very much doing continuous improvement projects, working with all the managers there. So, that was where I started out, working with everybody. But it was great, because I got to learn the operation from, basically, from the inbound side, all the way through to the outbound side, and everything in between. So, I got to learn all the operations and the big-picture things.
From there, that led me into a frontline operations opportunity where I was actually leading a team on the inbound side of the house, actually at night shift. The day-to-day operation there, as you guys can imagine, Amazon's very fast-paced, very intense, very detailed on how they plan things out. So, my day-to-day there was essentially, our shift was set up on 10-hour shifts, and I would be there, approximately an hour beforehand to start planning to shift out. There's a lot of different aspects of your shift that you'd have to start planning for, as far as anticipated headcount, what’s your volume that you're planning on running, what is your staff you need to be in each of the different areas of inbound to make sure you're executing that. Is there anything that happened on the previous shift that need to be aware of that you have to handle if there's something that you've got to clean up or take care of, or catch up on.
And then along with that, kind of mapping out what the plan is for the shift or for the day. And then when my managers and team leaders would get there, it would be letting them know, “Hey, guys, this is the game plan for the day. This is how we're going to do it and this is the kind of layout the game plan.” And then obviously, we'd have a shift, most people call it shift start meeting where we kind of lay out the highlights for the bigger team, let them know where we're at, what's going on, make announcements, that sort of thing. And then we would jump into the shift and start executing.
There are always a couple shift meetings during the shift, where we would come together with the managers and team leaders, have a sanity check. Where are we at? How's it going? Are there any adjustments we need to make? Then go out and start executing for the next period of the shift, and so on. And then get through to the end of the shift, and then we would have a number of end of shift reports that we would need to basically put together, talk about what went well, and then anything that did not meet planned, and we added the expectation that we had to map out what happened and what are we doing to keep that from reoccurring in our next shift that we would have. So, that was kind of the standard cadence that we had every day.
[00:07:53] GS: With all your experience in manufacturing and distribution, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing the US manufacturing right now?
[00:07:59] TH: Absolutely. My opinion is labor. Labor availability. I mean, it's not just labor, having available labor. But it's also having people that have a good work ethic you want to come to work. Unfortunately, I think that's been a recurring theme for several years because I know that was the case when we came to Nashville here six years ago. I think if people can find a way to solve the labor issue, that's going to make for a very successful operation plus, probably if somebody has that secret, then they're going to be pretty rich.
[00:08:32] MH: What advice would you give to other manufacturing and industrial leaders?
[00:08:36] TH: As far as labor goes?
[00:08:37] MH: Just anything in general. Do you have anything that you'd like to share? If you had a younger person that you were mentoring along, what would be a couple of things you'd share with them, that would help smooth out their transition into a role similar to yours?
[00:08:52] TH: Several points there, I would number one, let them know that, that you don't have to have all the answers, that you have a team there to help you, and that the people on the ground doing the work are really your experts. If you have a situation that affects their department, or is part of their department, those are the folks you need to go to and talk to about it. Be honest and know what the situation is, or what the goal is, where you need to get to, and then lean on them to come up with some solutions and answers to do that, number one.
Number two, I'm a big believer in servant leadership, and you've got to make sure that your people have what they need to do the job right the first time. I have things that I call, it's kind of came from my quality days of if there was an issue, let's take a look and see. Did the people have the right training to do what they need to be doing? Do they have the right tools they need for the job? And do they have the right information to do everything correctly the first time? If you have those three things, typically, that individual has the right attitude because they know that they're supported, and they're getting the things that they need to do the job the first time, and those things, I think, are very critical. As part of servant leadership is making sure people have the right training, the right tools, the right information, so they can do their job the first time. I think that's very important.
Probably the third and one of the more important things is communication. I've seen in multiple companies where the communication is not there, and if you're not telling your folks what's going on and where you need help at, then they can obviously jump in there to help you figure it out. Number two, it's always good to let people know, the good and the bad, so that they're aware of what's happening, and so that nobody's blindsided, and we have that transparency, I think, that builds a lot of trust. In my experience, if you have that trust, and you can certainly build a strong team and without trust, you don't have much of a team or teamwork going on.
[00:10:45] GS: You mentioned earlier, you're an avid reader. So, talk to us about some of the books or maybe some other resources that have helped you along the way to get to where you are.
[00:10:52] TH: Well, when I was stepping out of engineering and getting more into operations management, there was a lot I had to learn as far as leading people and interacting with them and that sort of thing. One of the books I read, it's an oldie but goodie called How to Win Friends & Influence People by Zig Ziglar. I know that's kind of a classic and some people in this day and age may not be familiar with Zig Ziglar, but he had some incredible wisdom. One of the nuggets I took out of that book was, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And that was something I learned to help me with building rapport and trust with my team was that. There's, of course, a lot of other things in there that helped me with my leadership and leading people.
And then there's another book called Bringing Out the Best in People by Alan Loy McGinnis. That was a great book. It tells you everything. Find out what people's hot buttons are, and what causes them to perform. What makes them go the extra mile? What makes them want to go above and beyond? What they're simply being asked to do, and that was a great book for me to use the stuff I learned from Zig Ziglar, as far as getting to know people building that rapport and using what was in the book, bring out the best in people to find out what can I do to make these people excel, not just do the average job or just what's asked of them, but find out what is going to cause them to perform over and above what they're normally would. Those are some great books.
And then probably, to be honest with you guys, when you're in operations, when you're in manufacturing, there's a lot of roller coasters, a lot of highs and lows. You guys have probably seen that. I got to give credit where credit's due. The other book that I lean on heavily is the Bible and that's where I realize, I don't have all the answers, I can't do it all myself. So, I've got to rely on somebody bigger than me to help me get through some of the storms of life, and that certainly, my faith has helped me get through a lot of that and understand that better days are coming, and that, as long as I persevere and can keep moving forward, that everything's going to be fine. It's just how life is, it's just full of ups and downs and peaks and valleys and you just got to keep moving forward.
[00:12:52] MH: There was a book I read, I think it was Business Secrets from the Bible or something like that. I'll have to look that up and put it in the show notes. But it was incredible how relevant the Bible specifically the book of Proverbs is to modern-day leadership, development, and business. It obviously stood the test of time. So, I agree wholeheartedly with you. That is a good reference book for all leaders.
[00:13:16] TH: Absolutely. And that's the thing I love with my Bible. If you have certain something going through, you can look up in the index, whatever that subject may be. And there's usually a scripture for it, you can take a look at, and probably my favorite one is Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”, and I lean on that a lot, through my career in itself, has brought me through.
[00:13:34] MH: Todd, who are a couple of people that have been the most influential to you, maybe personally and professionally a mix of both?
[00:13:41] TH: Personally, I would definitely say my mom, because she and my parents got divorced when I was four. So, we essentially were growing up in a single-parent home. My mom was somebody that showed us an incredible work ethic. She came out of nursing school, went to work in the hospital. While she was raising myself and my brother, she put herself back through school to get her bachelor's degree, and this is back in a day and age when there wasn't online schooling. If you wanted to go to class, you got a car and you drove to class where every class was. For her at that time, it was like an hour one way. So, she worked during the day. She'd go to class at night. My brother went to go stay with a friend and I'd go through to school and I'd play in the hallway outside of our classroom while she was in night class.
So, she did that for several years until she got her bachelor's degree and that allowed her to get a better job, when she had that bachelor's degree. And then later on, she went back to the same thing for her Master's. She was very focused, and very determined and taught me the value of education. And obviously, you got to make sure it's the right education for whatever you're trying to attain.
Number two, an incredible work ethic, and just her being a single parent, raised my brother and myself, working full time and putting herself back through school. So, that would be one personally. And then on the other side of the coin there, I'd have to say my dad was a great influence me as well, because he was a farmer, and he had a great work ethic as well. I mean, you have to, as a farmer, because you're going to make or break yourself, depending on what your work ethic is. Farmers are up the crack of dawn, out there making it happen in our farm, and you're on into the night, with the lights and everything, they can keep going after dark.
So, something comes to mind with my dad bring it into harvest one year, and we had early winter, and it was snowing outside, and this is in the Midwest, and he's outside in the snow, and it's snowing and blowing. He's unloading the crops and putting them into the grain bin, and I got there to check on him. He's yelling for me to get back inside. Because it's 25 degrees outside and he's out there trying to unload the crops and get him in the grain band. But he knew that's what he had to do. So, we hung out with grandma, while he was getting the crops brought in and put away. He always was someone that was very much hands-on. I learned a lot from him as far as I learned how to weld from him. I learned how to fix hydraulics from him, how to work on gasoline engines from him, and that sort of thing. So, he's very much a hands-on kind of guy, a man who could do just about anything. So, I learned a lot about him from the work ethic to work with my hands.
And then, as far as professionally goes, I had a couple managers or bosses going through my career that are very influential on me, and one of them was man named Tom Richmond. When I joined our Altec Industries, he kind of helped to mentor me and take me under his wing, and that was actually my first step into operations management. He spent a lot of time kind of mentoring me and dealing with people and leading teams. One of his favorite sayings was, “With your team, Todd, you need to be fair, honest, consistent, and compassionate.” That was something kind of followed me throughout my career in operations. That really helped me out as far as leading my teams.
Then there's also, later on my career with Altec Industries, there was a man named Stu Green, who had come to the company and had been with Bandag and also Nissan, and we had a tough assignment at the division we're at, at the time in North Carolina, in turning it around. So, Stew had come in as a change agent, and he was our new GM there that they brought in. We just seem to hit it off and end up having a great rapport. He kind of took me under his wing and gave me all the support that I needed to help turn things around. Because at the time, I had just been promoted quality manager, and our quality was really in a tank.
Him coming from a Japanese company at Nissan, he understood quality and what that meant. So, he was huge support in me and helping to get the quality program we're needed to be, and we had tremendous success there as far as handling operationally the quality wise, and what we're able to do it that division of Altec. So, those are two guys really had a major impact on me and Stu so much so that when he was asked to open up a new plant outside of Asheville, North Carolina, he asked me to be part of his team and I followed him Nashville from Raleigh, North Carolina. So, it was somebody that was great that you knew I had your back, it gave you your full support, and you can totally trust them, and that the trust made all the difference right there.
[00:17:52] GS: As a leader, what are some lessons learned, that you've had? And what did you take away from?
[00:17:58] TH: Probably, one of my biggest lessons, I was very much coming out of college, I was a very much perfectionist. When you're an engineer, especially in the automotive industry, I mean, you want things to be perfect. So, I had to learn that it sometimes you can overanalyze stuff, and you've got to work on finding out what's truly required versus what you're going for. Along the way, I've also realized that mistakes are okay, mistakes are not fatal, and the big thing is learning from them and moving forward. Because I think some companies out there, unfortunately, have the mindset that you're not allowed to make a mistake and I think that really stifles your team's creativity when they do that. I feel that it's really important that if it's not a mistake, it’s possibly going to cost you millions of dollars, let people try something. And if they fail, it's okay to just move forward.
I came up with the mantra during that time, try, fail, adjust. Let's do the best we can. That's one thing I loved about Amazon is that Amazon doesn't want you to have everything figured out, they want you to get about 60 percent or 70 percent there and pull the trigger and go. If it fails, then adjust, recalibrate, and try again. That's one of the things that I loved about Amazon is that they're big on, let's get out there and take a chance on something, and that they have something called one-way doors and two-way doors. A one-way door is, if you go through the door, there's no returning, there's no coming back.
Two-way door, if you go through it, and you change your mind and you make a mistake, you can come back through it and it's okay. It's not a big deal. So, the thing is the one-way door is, it's a decision you make that you can't change. So, you got to think about it, is it a one-way door decision or is it a two-way door decision? If it's a two-way door decision, you can make the change with little or minimal impact on operation, then that really makes a big difference in trying something out. So, if you're going to be making a big change, it's going to be a multimillion-dollar change to how the operations running, that’s one thing to consider. But if it's simply how we're doing a process and there's going to be very little impact to the customer on that, then let's try it and see if we fail or we succeed.
So, that's one of the big things I've learned. And then also, there’s a thing, as a leader that I discovered is going back. You don't have to have all the answers. Talk to your people and find out, if you have a situation or problem, your people really are the greatest experts out there, when it comes to the process if they're doing it. Lean on your team to help you with that. Don't try to figure it out on your own, because that's going to take a long time to figure it out and it's going to drive you crazy. If you have a situation with a certain department that you're trying to work out or a new process, bring the people in and talk about, “Hey, guys, this is the situation. This is what's going on. This is where we need to get to. What ideas do you guys have? And how can we get there?” I've certainly learned that your team is your greatest asset and they have the most experience and the most knowledge of anybody in the room. It's certainly more than me, and that's where I really had to lean on the fact that I don't have all the answers, and they do, and that's where I need to lean on my team to figure it out.
[00:20:55] MH: What an interesting concept. So, Amazon teaches, especially if it's a two-way door, like you said, only get to 60 percent to 80 percent of it planned out and then go for it. Is that right?
[00:21:05] TH: That's why Amazon is so agile, and so quick and making changes on the fly because they don't have to – they don't sit there and say, “Okay, guys, we have to have this perfect. We have to have this 100 percent figured out.” They're like, “Okay, guys, this isn't, like I said a one-way door decision, let's get 60 percent or 70 percent there, and let's pull the trigger. Let’s start doing something. Let's move forward here and start making a move on it.”
[00:21:26] MH: Yeah, I feel especially in my business, sometimes we get stuck in that analysis paralysis. We're stuck trying to figure things out instead of just doing.
[00:21:37] TH: Yeah, and I think that and, honestly, Morty, I think if you guys can get to a point that you can avoid the paralysis of analysis, and your team can say, “Okay, we got 60 percent or 70 percent figured out”, we have enough of it figured out to move forward, move forward and figure out the rest of it on the fly. I think you'll move a lot faster and get a lot more accomplished that way.
[00:21:57] MH: Yeah, that's a great tip, for sure. Tell us about a typical day at Amazon in your role. What did it look like from soup to nuts?
[00:22:06] TH: So, typically a day in operations there is you get there about 45 minutes to an hour before the start of the shift. Sit down and there's multiple systems that you look at, to pull up the information that you need. There's about, depending on, what's going on that day, six to eight kind of data points that I need to have defined and mapped out for the team. And so, I'd go through the different programs to take a look at the data and see where we're at, what our plan is and kind of map that out, talk to the previous shift, see what challenges that they had, things that we need to be made aware of, and also didn't touch base with my senior ops person to find out there's any special things going on that we need to be aware of, whether it’s customer returns or things being pulled and transferred to another fulfillment center, that sort of thing.
And then about 15 minutes before the shift starts, have a pre-shift meeting with my managers and my team leaders and say, “Guys, okay, yeah, here's our game plan for the day, back through all six to eight critical points. This is what's going on. This is what's happening. This is how we're going to do it. Does anybody have any questions? If there are questions, we'll work through that.” And then basically, we're done. So, we'd break the huddle up, and then you're ready to shift start. My managers and myself, there’s one to two shift startup meetings, depending on which areas we're operating at night. And then we go through and do our shift startup meetings with our teams, and then that's supposed to be five minutes or less, and then we would get out starting executing the plan.
So, the fulfillment center that I've been a part of, 1.5 million square feet, and we operate on both ends of it. The rest of my evening is basically be on the radio, seeing where things are at, how things are going, make sure that we're mapping out things and executing things that people are aware ahead of time so that we don't have any stumbles. And then usually, a couple hours into the shift, my managers, my team leaders, myself, we'd have a 5 to 10-minute meeting to sit down and kind of map out where are we at currently on the shift, how we executing the plan, make any adjustments you need to make, and then we end the meeting, go back to what we're doing. And then same thing, me checking on everybody throughout the rest of shift, how are we executing, where are we at, making adjustments that we need to as things pop up, or things aren't going correct.
Obviously, our headcount – the headcount is a big part of that. You're making a plan for the anticipated headcount, and then 30 minutes in a shift, you're checking, okay, what's my actual headcount, and you're making adjustments and sending out with the adjusted plan is. And then and then like I said, couple hours after that, the shift meeting, then we'll have another meeting, we're sitting down, have a sanity check, how are we executing the plan? How are things going? Make more adjustments. And then by that time, we're at the end of the shift, and I'm getting together with my managers and we're basically put together in a shift report, but something didn't go to plan or we didn't meet our targets, then we're putting together, basically dissecting what happened, why it happened, and what are we going to do to fix it going forward? And then send out the initial reports, and that's usually, probably about anywhere from half an hour to an hour after end of shift, and then we're done for the day and go home, get some sleep, and then come back the next day to start over again.
[00:25:20] GS: What are some of the KPIs that are tracked?
[00:25:22] TH: Oh, goodness. What isn't tracked at Amazon? They have systems and points for everything and everything. I've never worked at a company that has more KPIs, more things being tracked, probably just some high-level ones. You’ve got your overall. You can monitor, honestly, minute by minute, hour by hour, you can monitor your productivity to your plan, you can look at your overall plan.
That's one item that I would look at and say, “Okay, guys, we're looking good. We're running at 106 percent of the plan. Great job, guys. Let's keep doing what we're doing. Hey, let's make sure we're aware of this. It's coming at us here in 30 minutes.” Or we can take a look at, say, “Guys, we're at 94 percent of the plan. Guys, we need to take a look at – we need to dive down into looking at what our productivity is for individuals, so you can dive down and run a productivity report for your individual folks and see exactly where are they landing at.” Because everybody individually has a productivity percentage they need to be at, and you can take a look at your bottom performers, and let's go have what we call, seek to understand with them, to find out what's going on. “Hey, you're supposed to be at this target and you're running at half speed. Bob? Mary? What's going on here?” Find out and work on making some adjustments to them.
You've got your productivity portion of that you're looking at. Quality-wise, we get a report every day one, when they have quality misses, or maybe they've sold something incorrectly or they didn't do something there. There could be multiple quality issues that they've gotten dinged for. And our team leaders are out there meeting with them to find out, “Okay, Bob or Mary, we had this issue pop up and you were over the threshold for it. What happened?” Usually, there’s a training issue. So, they'd go back through and they would retrain them on that particular process to make sure that they understand that, that training would be documented that they were retrained on process A, B, C.
As far as the delivery portion goes. We have loads coming in are called reactive loads. Interactive loads are loads of come in are already have customer orders on the truck. So, we have x amount of time, once that truck arrives on campus to have it docked, unloaded, and all the products stowed away, in order to meet our threshold of where we need to be at. There's a particular time limit that you have on each and every rack of load. And so, that's part of our pre-shift planning is, hey, we got this rack load coming in from Indianapolis or it's coming in from St. Louis or this center or whatever. It has this number of units on it, that's coming in at this time. We know has to be completely done by this time. So, that's something we're monitoring on his rack of loads that are coming in and we're making sure that those get first priorities as far as getting put at a dock. Those get first priorities as far as getting unloaded and stowed away.
We have different stores that are dedicated folks that work on rack of loads, because they have certain ways of doing things. It's much faster than normal stowing that we would go on and let them do. We're monitoring those racks of loads when once they land, we know which door they're going in, when they've been received, who's getting them loaded, what floor they’re going to, what people are going to stow them, and put them away. And we monitor that down right to the minute as far as making sure we're meeting that threshold. So, that's some of our other things as far as delivery goes. We also have military orders during the holiday season. Your military orders have to go overseas, and so we have a deadline of in December when they have to be shipped by in order to get to whatever military base on time. Military orders, if you get those during your shift they all have to be stowed so they can be picked before the end of your shift. You cannot leave any military orders on the table when you leave at the end of the shift.
So, there's lots, and let me say managers have KPIs for the number of coaching they have to do every week. And that's a one on ones with each of their team members, trying to think what else. How many safety huddles have they held each week, they're graded on that. So, there are lots of different KPIs that are daily, weekly, monthly KPIs that you're graded on. And that scorecard, depending what it is, you got to report on it. That's part of the end-of-shift report that you fill out and send in. A lot of those are on there and some of them come out on a weekly report from another manager that's monitoring that.
[00:29:42] MH: Wow, that is absolutely incredible. There's a lot of golden nuggets of value in there and things that Amazon's doing that I think a lot of us can learn from. I think it sounds overwhelming. It sounds like you're drinking from a firehose a little bit, but yeah, a little bit. There is a lot a lot of things, obviously, they're doing right that the rest of us can learn from.
Manufacturing leaders on here, industrial leaders, distribution, warehousing, there's a lot of things that they're doing right, they’re on the leading edge, the forefront of technology being integrated into our processes, and we really appreciate you sharing all of your golden nuggets of value today on The Industrial Movement. Our goal is to try to create a community of people. And if somebody wanted to reach out to you and maybe bounce some ideas off you or pick your brain, some value you might be able to share with them, or questions you can answer, how would those folks be able to reach out and contact you?
[00:30:34] TH: They can reach out to me through LinkedIn, or Morty, if they reach out to you, I'll make sure you have all my contact information. They can reach out to you as well to make contact with me.
[00:30:43] MH: Great. Yup. So, folks listening, email me at morty@theindustrialmovement.com, if you're interested in reaching out with Todd, and I will definitely put you guys in contact.
Todd, once again, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
[00:30:57] TH: Absolutely. Great talking to you guys today.
[00:30:58] GS: Oh, yeah, it was great. Thank you so much.
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[00:31:02] MH: Well, folks, that's it for this week's episode. Be sure to visit our website www.theindustrialmovement.com to view today's show notes and get more golden nuggets of value that we have collected from manufacturing industrial professionals in our archived episodes.
On our website, you can also sign up for our newsletter and find links to join The Industrial Movement community on Facebook. The Industrial Movement podcast is where we discuss the people, the process, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. I'm your host Morty Hodge, wishing you great success.
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