E23: Mark Potter - Patronus Consulting

Our guest today has been in manufacturing for 30 years, predominantly in the food industry, and has a passion for stepping in and turning businesses around by improving their efficiency and productivity. Mark Potter joins us today to talk about his impressively dense career and his new consulting company, Patronus. In this episode, we cover everything from overcoming supply chain issues and setting expectations and incremental targets, to what Mark views at the first port of call when evaluating a company’s efficiency. He fills us in on why he thinks manufacturing is simple and the basic principles he employs to ensure success. Tune in to hear some tips on attracting and retaining talent, what to keep in mind when considering automation, and why COVID can no longer be used as an excuse for poor productivity!

Transcript

EPISODE 23

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03.3] 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 show notes can be found on our website at www.theindustrialmovement.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes.

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[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:40.8] MH: Hi folks, welcome back to the industrial movement. Today, I’m flying solo without my trusted sidekick Greg Smith. He’s off playing golf, folks, I’m going to go ahead and out him right now, we’re recording this episode on good Friday, which we took the day off. I came in because I’m dedicated to the show and Greg bailed on us because he’s dedicated to golf. No, I’m just teasing. Everyone deserves a day off and Greg’s good for it.

Today, we have Mark Potter. Mark is a consultant and expert in efficiency and productivity in manufacturing. He has decades of experience, he started up his own consulting firm called Patronus Consulting. I’ll let you put the connection together between the last name Potter and the word Patronus. If you know, you know. Mark, welcome to the industrial movement.

[0:01:30.3] MP: Thank you.

[0:01:31.9] MH: Mark, tell us a little bit about Patronus, why did you start it, what do you do and who are your customers?

[0:01:39.0] MP: So, I’ve been in manufacturing since school. So you know, I started very early on in my career, I was an electrical engineer working for Sharp Electronics and I got very into continuous improvement and actually, had the pleasure to go to Japan and present on continuous improvement project that I completed and from that day on, I have always based everything I do around efficiency, lean techniques, trying to drive the best output from the departments or the factories that I’ve run.

For many years, I’ve been… I worked my way up through the ranks and for the last few years I’ve been director of manufacturing or regional director of manufacturing over at one site or multi-sites. I decided that I wanted to make a step and go out into the big wide world and try and use some of the skills that I’ve developed over the last 30 years, I hate to say it but it is over the last 30 years and help some of these companies really look inwardly at what they’re doing and how to improve their processes, their techniques and really go out and help them set a strategy to make them more successful one to deliver the results that they want to deliver.

[0:02:54.1] MH: I want to get back to it and I want to dig into more about Patronus and what you specifically do to help companies. But first, tell me a little bit about you and your 30-year career. You can give us the reader’s digest version but follow us or help us follow your career path.

[0:03:10.9] MP: I started off as an apprentice in the UK, as you can tell, the accent is not a Georgia accent. I started off as an apprentice so I did a four-year apprenticeship in electrical and electronic engineering. Wasn’t particularly good as an apprentice electrical engineer. You know, I enjoyed it and I did okay but I really got a passion like I said, like I just said, for the continuous improvement. I really got a passion for people and for driving processes.

I think I was – I was with my first company for about seven years and I did a lot of work up to team, to improve the team running, used to do projects every six months and I got really involved in that side of the business. What I decided was is that’s what I enjoyed. I enjoyed working with people, I enjoyed trying to help people and look at problems and change processes and make them more efficient so I decided I would strike out and find and sort of go into more of a supervisor type role.

So, my next role was I moved into the food industry and I did a sort of crossroad, I was sort of an operator maintainer, line lead type role, making yogurt in the northwest of the UK, we were owning and maintaining machines, running 24/7. It’s sort of like a mini business, you owned a process from start to finish, had a team of three people and we went, that was our job to make a million pots of yogurt in 12 hours.

At that point, I really then decided that I wanted to go into management. I really wanted to become a manager and I went to a fruit for a couple more roles. I’ve worked – I went to work with pasta and bread making. I was a supervisor in that role and I was really – my main focus was daily and hourly reporting of results and understanding where the losses had come from and what drove it and going back to the teams and explaining, “Hey, here's where we could have done better yesterday, what are we going to do tomorrow?”

And then got my big break from there and I actually went for Unilever as a shift manager. One of their sites, unfortunately, the site’s no longer there, closed down maybe 10 or 15 years ago but we were making frozen fish, fish fingers or fish sticks as they are known over here, and also veg, we’re making frozen peas, et cetera. That was my first really foray into management of that level that was, “Hey, this is difficult and I’ve got maybe 40 staff reporting to me, I’ve got targets to meet, I’ve got to do this every day, deliver the results to the business.”

I spent a couple of years with Unilever. Then, went into – oh, now I’m thinking, where did I go after Unilever? Unilever, I went to work for Pepsi Cola. Again, as a shift manager and they sort of said to me at that time, “So, where do you want to go? Where do you want to be based?” and I said, “What’s your worst performance plant, and what’s your worst-performing shift?” and they went, “Oh, you need to go to Coventry.”

We’ve got a big plant in Coventry and it makes all the snacks side of the business, the Doritos and all of that type of stuff so it was like, “Hey, you need to go to Coventry and we’ve got a real problem there, we’ve got this shift there that’s really not performing.” I said right, that’s where I want to go.

I joined and we went through the normal process of storming and arming and all of that type of stuff and we turned that shift around and that site around, from being one of the worst performers to being one of the best performers. Great team of managers on my team and really great opportunity to sort of – to improve and drive the performance. 

Again, got itchy feet, promotion wasn’t coming fast enough, wanted to try something a little bit different and got the opportunity to go and work for a company called Warburtons, American listeners may not know but actually at the time, it was the biggest brand in the UK. Warburtons makes bread, 17 sites at the time across the UK, and I went to work as a production manager for their flagship site at the time in the east midlands and I loved it. 

It was really – it was a blank canvas, they come in, how do we make this the best site in Warburtons, how do we put in the right tools, how do we make sure people are doing the right thing each and every day. I spent a couple of years there really, really, really focusing on driving performance from the shop floor so empowering the supervisors, empowering the guys on the floor who make the product to do the right thing and take it forward. 

We had huge, huge success, we did a number of projects or maintenance management and improving the outputs and making sure that we got the right PM processes in place and I think we won the company trophy for the best plant two years running and again, got itchy feet. The promotions weren’t coming fast enough and somebody come in and offered me another job and that’s when I joined CSM as a manufacturing manager. 

Now, CSM is a worldwide bakery company. At the time, it was the biggest bakery company in the world, making pretty much anything and everything for the baking needs. In-store muffins, donuts, scones in the UK to icings, fillings, toppings, frozen cookies. It was huge. I was with them for I think nine years in total. Spent a lot of time at their head office in the UK and then got my real first opportunity to become a plant manager with a couple of sites north of the UK. 

Again, they weren’t a performing site, it wasn’t performing very well. We’d had some failures in the company and my job was to go in there, reignite the team, get them back on track, really, get them focused back into what we needed to do. About two years into that role, we got the opportunity to do a brownfield project where we would amalgamate those two sites into one and we did a phenomenal job. 

In about eight months, we actually took a brownfield site, renovated it, made it fit as a food manufacturing site, brought the two sites into one, and then went from there to open the site without any impact to customer service, et cetera. First pass on all of our audits, it was a huge success, it was a real, real huge success and that’s what opened the door for me to come to the US. 

The CEO of the company come down to have a look and he was, “Hey, what’s your next step?” I said, “Well, I don’t know, I want a bigger site, I want a bigger site and a bigger – another problem to go and solve.” He said, “Hey, I’ve got a problem, I’ve got two sites in Atlanta, the biggest site in the business and 400 million pounds of product a year opportunity and we’re not running anywhere near that, and hey, will you come in and sort it out?” and the rest is history, really.

Came over, brought the family over for a month to see whether they would like it and we made a decision. We came over here what, seven years ago now. Best decision I ever made to be perfectly honest. You know, we did the project there, which I really, really enjoyed. We got from running around about 250 million pounds a year to almost 400 million pounds a year. Got from running six and a half days a week, down to only five days a week.

Yeah, then I did my first stint in consultancy following that. Using some of the tools we’d used there and go into different companies around the US to sort of try and drive productivity and improvement and then I took a stint back as a plant manager in another factory and then recently, it was just, “Hey, I want to start up my own business. I want to go and use these tools and go and do this every day.”

That’s where Patronus Consulting was born and it’s still only in its infancy. It’s been live for the last three weeks and that’s what I’m going to be doing going forward, going into businesses and helping them on understand where their loss is, where there are efficiency improvements are and how to help drive them to get the results that they desire.

[0:11:21.9] MH: These are the things that you’ve been doing over the last 30 years, you’re just using this opportunity to, in a short amount of times, go in and help out many more factories that you could, if you were going job to job, very interesting. Let me ask you, when you do go into a factory and you look at – where’s the first place that you start looking for efficiency and productivity issues?

[0:11:45.5] MP: First place you look, first place I look and I’m different a lot of companies in this case is, I go and look at the management teams, the leadership team that is running that company, the first and foremost. Do they understand what their job is? I know that sounds a little bit, “Hey, you’re a little bit up yourself there, Mark. Of course we understand what our job is” but do they?

In my experience is, you go in and you sit in that morning meeting where you look at the days, your previous day’s performance, and the wrong questions are being asked. Everything is always backward facing. Everything is always looking back. What I like to do is I like to go in and the first question I’ll ask is, “How do you know whether you had a good day yesterday?” You would be surprised about the amount of times that people cannot tell me.

How many units did we make yesterday? “Oh, we made 500.” “Well, is that good or is that bad?” “Well, what do you mean by good and bad?” “Well, what’s your budget? How many units should you be making a day?” “Oh, we should be making 600 units a day” “So it was a bad day?” “Well, no, it was actually was quite good” “Well why?” “Well, you know…” and asking those questions, you know? We’ve all heard the five why. Well, five why isn’t just about looking at a problem on the shop floor, it’s about understanding your business as a whole.

First and foremost, it’s about getting that management team to understand its goals and I mean, senior management team, I mean, from the leaders down because if they don’t understand their goals and they don’t understand the expectations, why would we expect somebody on the shop floor to? Why would we expect somebody on the shop floor to know whether they’ve had a good day or a bad day?

So, usually, the first three or four weeks is putting people under quite a lot of pressure to come to those meetings with the knowledge of whether they’ve had a good or a bad day. Have they hit their efficiency targets, have they hit their waste targets, have we given the customer what they want and what they ordered, and if not, why not? Then from that, you can then start to build and you can start to then say, “Okay, what drove that miss yesterday? Why didn’t we make enough product yesterday?”

“Oh well, it was a labor issue or the machine broke down” or “Okay, right, now we’re ready to step down and go and look on the shop floor as to what’s going wrong.” So, it’s a slightly different approach but there’s no good bringing me in as a consultant and going, “Hey, I’ll go down in shop floor and I’ll change your list and I’ll say, this is how it should run and it will save you X.”

If the people above, then don’t – aren’t bought into that process because as soon as I walk away, that will fail, it will stop. It won’t continue because the people who were driving that had set in the cadence on a day-to-day basis, they’re not interested. We’ve got to get those people interested first and foremost.

[0:14:42.4] MH: What are some things that you would recommend to our listeners who are manufacturing leaders of things they can do, maybe some tips or lessons learned or that you’ve learned over your years that they can implement quickly in order to make an impact?

[0:14:57.5] MP: First and foremost, like I say, set the expectations. What do we expect on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis? “Hey, we need to make X number of products, this is our waste, acceptance or target, these are our safety and quality targets, what are we going to do to sell against and how is that linked into the budget?”

Because the thing here is we got to ensure that we set targets that are smart, that are realistic, that we can achieve. If we’ve set a budget that’s really stretching, we cannot expect everybody to go and hit that budget from day one, we’ve got to set those incremental targets. First and foremost, what does a good day look like and how are we sure we can get to that in the current setup, and then if we can’t, what are those incremental targets we’re going to look to?

Hey, I know you cannot get from 4% to 1% waste next week but you can get from 4% to three and a half percent in the next four weeks and three and a half percent to 3% in the four weeks after that. What are the processes, what are the targets that we’re going to set? What are the projects we’re going to work on to get there?

You need to get alignment and you need to get accountability. There’s no good somebody coming into that morning meeting when you’re looking back at your results and then not having the data. You’ve got to make it a little bit uncomfortable. It’s about repetition, you’ve got to make it a little uncomfortable. If somebody comes in and they haven’t got the data, hey, I’ll stop the meeting and wait for them to go and get the data and I’ll keep everybody stood around ‘till that person goes and gets the data. That’s uncomfortable.

Hey, we’re leaders, we should be a step above. We should be driving the agenda. We have to, as leaders, step up. We have to be the people at the shop floor and the supervisors are looking up to for guidance and help and support and if we can’t do that and we’re not in – we don’t have the knowledge or we don’t have the data, how can we go and drive performance at a shop floor level?

[0:17:02.8] MH: On the same lines of information you could pass along to manufacturing leaders, are there any books or resources that you think could help them along the way?

[0:17:14.0] MP: See, here’s where I depart from what a lot of people – you know, everybody says, go and read a book, yeah, books are great. I’ve read a number of books on efficiency, I’ve read a number of books on the goal was the book that I was told to read very early on in my career and it was a very good book but it’s about, it’s very basic for me. 

It is very basic, don’t get hung up on all of these tools. Don’t get hung up on DMAIC, don’t get hung up on six sigma. Most businesses I walk into are not ready for six sigma, are not ready for DMAIC. They’re ready for basic lean manufacturing, seven wastes. I talk about seven wastes, if you ruin your business off seven wastes, nine times out of 10, you’ll improve your efficiency, you’ll improve your output exponentially.

We can get too wound up in all of these fancy books and fancy expressions, et cetera. Go in and understand where your seven wastes are. Have you got too much inventory? Are you moving, is your motion excessive? Are you moving products around that you don’t need to?

Are you overproducing? Am I making too much of something that I can’t sell? Am I not – it’s very, very basic. I think a lot of people get too bought up into this, “Hey, I’ve got to go and look and go and do a six-sigma project” or “I’ve got to go on.” No, you just got to stand in the middle of your production floor and go, “Is my line running?”

If it’s not running, why is it not running? Because 90% of your problems is unaccounted for downtime. It’s lines not running when they should be. For whatever reason, I haven’t got the labor or it’s broken down or “Hey, I’m just not running it at the right speed” I go in, I look at a line very often and they say, “What’s your spec speed?” “Oh, it’s – I don’t know, say, 42 units a minute.” “Well, you’re only running at 38.”

How are you ever going to hit your number if you are only running it 38? So keep it simple. Go stand, look, challenge and be open to have those challenges. In answer to the question is, yes, I’ve read a lot of books. There’s a lot out there but don’t get too bought up into that. For most businesses and I say, most businesses, pretty much all the businesses I go into, it’s just very basic. 

Go understand your numbers and know your numbers and then go on and try and understand why you’re not hitting those numbers, where are your losses occurring and that will help immensely.

[0:19:54.5] MH: You mentioned, one, that process or philosophy that I’m not familiar with, it started with a D.

[0:19:59.4] MP: DMAIC.

[0:20:00.1] MH: DMAIC, explain to me what that is?

[0:20:02.2] MP: Well, that’s just where you define the problem and you go through the process. It’s a big thing in six sigma. You define it, you measure it and then you put control systems and place to control it. It’s just one of those tools and it’s just a very – there’s so many different ways you can do it. You know, you can say plan-do-check-act, PDCA is very similar but DMAIC is just a little bit more defined and a little bit more – it drives you down that route to get you to the root cause. 

I mean, there’s so many of these tools out there. Again, I try to keep it very basic, a five why or a root cause of on material machine method and do a fishbone and just look at what’s driving some of these issues. It’s nine times out of ten is all you need, you will hit 90% of that improvement that you need to hit. When you get down to that level where you’re going after that last 10% then that’s where six sigma and DMAIC and some of those tools come into play. 

[0:20:58.3] MH: That makes a lot of sense, so the bulk of it can be done with the seven waste sand I’ve never heard it categorized as seven wastes of lean but it is defects, waiting time, extra motion, excess inventory, transportation, overproduction, and over-processing. 

[0:21:14.8] MP: Yeah Tim Wood is the way I always remember it. If you remember Tim Wood, that’s transport inventory, just like you said emotion, waiting, all the way through Tim Wood and that would account for 90% of your improvements if you could address those buckets. 

[0:21:31.3] MH: Mark, have you ever studied Henry Ford? 

[0:21:34.3] MP: Not in depth but obviously in college when I was doing some of this stuff and looking to some of this stuff that was always what was looked at, you know, the first real production lines, and yeah, I mean, we’ve all looked at there and we’ve all know where it came from, yeah. 

[0:21:51.3] MH: He was obsessed like you with efficiency and I think that you would really enjoy if you dig down deep into his philosophies and the things he was obsessed with and kind of moved the needle for him. It is a lot of these things and you know, wasn’t categorized like it is now but he took it to almost a crazy degree but he was obsessed with efficiency. He couldn’t, he literally couldn’t stand or stomach any type of waste. That drove him crazy. 

[0:22:19.7] MP: Well, yeah and he is absolutely right, yeah. Why have waste? What is the point in having waste when we can eliminate it? Why give it away? I mean, give away is my big thing. I hate giveaways, especially in the food industry. You know, the customer is asking for a Chevy and you are giving them a Porsche. You know, so I always try to say to the guys every day, it’s like you ask for this and you are giving them this, why? Why are we doing that? 

It’s free money, so yeah, waste is – to the point it winds me up I would say. I get annoyed about it, I see it and I go, “Hey guys, come on. This is just so obvious” I’m looking at a check way or this reading two ounces over target and I am saying, “Why are you even allowing that?” stop the line, fix it, stop and back up again. Hey, you just saved $200 in the last hour and that’s how easy it is. In a lot of places I go into, that is how easy it is. 

[0:23:14.7] MH: Where do you see manufacturing specifically in the US in the next 10 years where is it headed? 

[0:23:20.4] MP: It’s struggling, it really, really is struggling and I am sure anybody that you speak to at the minute is there is not enough people coming into manufacturing. It is seen as a poor option so to speak. I don’t think it’s pushed in schools and colleges, I think everybody wants to come out with their degree and go and do some fancy office job somewhere and to that end, we’re struggling. 

We’re struggling to get good tradespeople in and we’re struggling to get good managers in, people managers and unless something changes, it is only going to get harder. There is not a company I have been into in the last two or three years that’s fully staffed and those that are close to fully staff might not have the right skillset. Electrical engineers are difficult to come by and these are the guys that are keeping your economy running. 

If these lines don’t run we don’t make food. If these lines don’t run, we don’t make cars or et cetera. We need to think about, hey, we’ve got to start promoting these types of jobs a lot more. We’ve got to get people to understand that these are good jobs that pay good money. Every company has marketers, every company has accountants, every manufacturer has engineers and supervisors, and managers and senior managers. 

These are good jobs to have and I think a lot of people don’t see manufacturing as a career when they’re in college and I think that is where we have to promote not enough promotion on apprenticeship type schemes and getting those tradespeople in. It really worries me what I see in the business at the minute in the amount of good candidates coming through. I’ll give an example, I interviewed an electrical engineer maybe six, seven months ago. 

He’d done a four-year degree course apparently, he’d done a four-year degree course, he had done a masters in electrical engineering and I sit there in the interview. You know what it’s like when you’ve got a little bit of background. You can ask some of those pertinent questions, so I said, “Okay, tell me what Ohm’s law is?” Now, for those people that are listening, Ohm’s law is the basis of all electrical engineering. 

Vehicles at times are, I mean, you can’t – he didn’t know. He didn’t know, so what was that? Did he have a master’s in electrical engineering or was it just something made up that was part on a piece of paper and you know, I am trying to get a job. We’ve got to get into really understanding and making sure that we bring the right people into these businesses that are capable and that can help us deliver going forward and we’ve got to as a country, as a nation, we’ve got to really start to drive the importance of these types of roles and start to get people. 

It comes back a little bit I think to this and it was a shock to me when I came over here is, “Hey, I had a great guy on the shop floor but I wasn’t able to promote him to a supervisor because he didn’t have a degree.” Hmm, hold on, this guy comes in every day, is exceptional, is a line leader, people love him, people work for him, people drive performance, we’ve seen the numbers improve week on week but I can’t make him a supervisor because he hasn’t got a degree? 

That’s mad. That is absolutely crazy and I see that in many, many companies. We have to get away from that. People have to be able to work their way up and become some of the best managers I’ve ever met that don’t have a degree. They are people who understand people and understand the values of hard work and dedication and drive and commitment to get there. I got this guy, a supervisor role, it took me six months and it took me having to get him on a degree course to do it but he turned out to be one of the best supervisors I have ever worked with. 

We’ve got to get away from that mindset, you don’t need a degree to be a good manager. What you need is passion, drive, commitment and if we can start looking at that and taking some of these, you look at some of the best people in the world, you know, some of the biggest earners in the world didn’t necessarily leave college with a degree but they have turned out to earn a lot of money and run business, run multimillion-dollar businesses. 

So I think there needs to be a shift in the way that America in particular looks at manufacturing and looks at people and looks at skills and just start trying to drive people to go and do some other things other than go into college and getting a degree. Go and learn a trade please because you are going to be the most needed people out there in the next five to 10 years. 

[0:28:00.7] MH: Have you seen any of these companies do anything creative to attract talent or retain talent? 

[0:28:07.4] MP: I think every company is trying something to attract and retain, attract as a lot of companies are offering sign-on bonuses now, “Come and join us and we’ll pay you this.” Training was a big one for me, when I was a plant director it was, “Hey, how can I improve you? How can I help you get better? What training courses would you like to go and work on?” and I always made it very clear that, “Hey, if you are going to do so it is going to be so that it’s beneficial.” 

So if you are going to go and learn lean manufacturing techniques and you’re going to go and become an expert in OPEX, hey, I am with you. We will support that. So I think there is a lot of that. A lot of companies are working very hard on the induction, so what you find is especially the lower level ops, you know, the operator jobs, et cetera, there is a lot of high turnover in those first few weeks or few months. 

I recently closed the factory here in Atlanta and it was very, very difficult for us in the last year to bring anybody in. We would bring people in and we would turn them over in the first day. So we would bring 20 people in and we’d be lucky to keep 10 or even five. So again, I think a lot of companies are focusing on that induction, making people feel wanted, making people feel important, giving them the right skills, the right time, and attention. 

I implemented a full-week induction plan where every day at the end of each day they could come and sit and give feedback to the management team about how the day had gone. That was very, very successful because we were getting real-time feedback as to, “Hey, what was going well? What wasn’t?” “Well today, I didn’t know where I was working. Nobody told me this or nobody told me that and I felt a bit awkward.” 

So I think it is about, it comes back to people and it comes back to how do we treat them and how do we make them feel important because let’s not forget every single business out there needs the people at the shop floor level. Without them, nothing happens. We don’t make products, we don’t make anything so we’ve got to make sure that they’re well looked after and I think companies are now coming around to that. 

They are getting a little bit smarter as to, “Hey, our biggest asset is our people.” We need to treat them well and we need to make sure that they feel like they are an asset to the company and not just somebody that we pay a wage to each week and I think that’s the biggest thing that we see or the biggest change I’ve seen especially through COVID is there’s been a lot more focus on how do we bring people in and how do we retain them and make sure we’re doing the right thing. 

[0:30:47.4] MH: How do you think that automation will impact the labor situation over the next few years? 

[0:30:54.5] MP: It is like anything, with automation, there is a place for automation and a lot of companies are moving forward with automation and I love automation but it’s got to be the right automation and the right place at the right time. A lot of companies say, “Hey, I’ve got to automate that process.” Well, hold on, is it the right thing to do? When you automate that process you take away X, Y, and Z. 

You take away that touchpoint where an operator is looking at the quality of a product or X, Y, and Z. There is a place for automation and it’s very, very important and it helps drive headcount out of the business and make it more efficient but it also hinders it sometimes and unless you’ve – when that machine goes down, have you the ability to continue to complete your process? So let’s say I am going to put a packing machine in and I am going to take out six heads. 

Okay, that’s great. I am paid for that, it saved me a million a year or whatever but how does it then impact downtime? Because when that packing machine goes down unless you’ve got the ability to pack offline or ability to keep in line on it, you know, what is that impact? I all too often see that’s not taken into account when you do that cost-benefit analysis of implementation but it is going to happen. 

We have seen more and more and more automation coming in and it is getting better and better, robotic packing. I have seen a lot more of that in recent years and I think a lot of it is coming from the need for it because we can’t get the people through the door to do the jobs to be very, very honest. I think companies are beginning to realize, “Well, if I can’t recruit and I’ve got 40 or 50 open positions I am having to rely on agency labor all the time then I am going to drive and see if could take that headcount out of the business.” 

It’s a fine line between how fully you automate and how much you keep the business based on having headcount in the business to keep it running. So I love automation, I think it’s going to play a huge part moving forward. I just think businesses need to be conscious that hey, we can – if we fully automate a process and that process breaks down, we’ve got nowhere to go until it’s fixed again and if we don’t have those people who could fix it then we’re going to have really stopped really, really quickly. 

You know, we’re talking about when you automate a line, we’re talking about PLCs, we’re talking about very advanced robotics. We are talking about things that are difficult to fix. If I have a packing line with six operators on it and that packing line breaks, it is usually a baron, a shaft or the bells broke and I’ve got 10 a penny maintenance guys that can fix that. I’ve got a robotic system that goes down that needs an expert PLC, they’re difficult to find. 

Unless we put those people in, we could find ourselves in some very, very difficult situations moving forward where we cannot move once because we haven’t got the right skilled people to fix them and keep them running. 

[0:34:00.7] MH: That’s a good point. I think everybody is looking at automation to solve all issues and you’re right it can’t. It is not going to be able to solve every issue. Sure, it would be good for some things but probably not most. Talk to me a little bit about the supply chain issues everyone is experiencing now and what are some ideas and thoughts you can suggest that we can implement to overcome this? Even on a local level, national level, where do you see this supply chain heading? 

[0:34:29.6] MP: Well, we’ve all experienced it and I think COVID has been the backbone of everybody’s excuse not to be able to deliver good quality on time in full and I see it and I’m sorry that I might upset some of your listeners but I think people need to start using COVID as an excuse and a crutch and they’ve got to start getting back to good service and delivering on time in full. 

I mean, I have so many issues over the last two years trying to get raw materials in and make the products I need to make, and for me, it seems like sometimes it’s an excuse and sometimes it is down to not having the labor and we’ve got to get people back into work and doing these jobs. I mean, what happened when COVID hit? COVID hit and everybody stayed at home. You know, we all went to work. 

We all have to keep making food. If we hadn’t, we would have all starved but then you’ve got 50% of the population that are sitting home saying, “Hey, COVID is here and we can’t leave the house” because of the fear of catching COVID but think about all those people that did have to leave the house, all of those people that were making your pizzas and your canned goods and all that stuff that you may stockpile. 

I mean, they went to work each and every day to keep those lines running. I mean, they run the lines probably with 25% less people because they were struggling to get people through the door. So we’ve got to get people back to work, we got to make sure that we are paying them the right rates for what they are doing and I think that COVID has helped in that area. It’s allowed us to increase wages and get people properly back on some level of pay that they should have been on right from the start. 

Some of those low-paid jobs are now being paid a little bit better but we’ve got to think more efficiently. So hey, I was running lines with 28 people pre-COVID and I was making let’s say 100 units an hour, I am just putting numbers out there. Go back a year or a year after COVID, I am running the same lines with 22 people and I am still getting the same outcome. So hold on, how did I do that? What did we do? Well, we have to go back. We have to look at our process and we said, “How do we streamline it?” 

How do we make it a little bit better? Some days, I would take the whole management team and say, “Hey, no meetings today. You put in your work on hold, we’ve got product to get out the door” every single manager is going to be on the floor and we’re going to fill these gaps and we’re going to get this product out of the door and it was like, “Oh, you’re asking me to go to the shop floor and work?” 

Yes, I am because we have to give this product to the customer. We’ve said to the customer we will deliver this product to you this week, we have to do that and I think companies have to think a little bit more but it will be amazing how much work you cannot do in a day that you don’t have to do, how many meetings can you go to in a day that you don’t really need to go to and still everything happens and still stuff goes out the door and still, we still manage to meet our targets. 

You’ve got to push yourself, you’ve got to say, “Hey, what do I really not have to do today to allow me to go focus on delivering to the customer because that’s what we’re here to do?” so I think we have to say, “Hey, this is the reality now. This is what we’ve got, we have to find a way” and you know what? When you really put your mind to it and when you really think about how do you do it, you can do it. 

We ended up, everybody in the management team doing two hours a day on the shop floor to support doing a break relief. Hey, there is a way. There is always a way. We get through it, we’ve got to stop using COVID as a crutch. We’ve got to stop using these, “Hey, I need to spend three million automating this project and then automating this process and this will go away.” No, go and find a way. 

Go and think outside of the box, go and stand shoulder to shoulder with those people on the shop floor, show them that we’re all in this together and you will be amazed at how much productivity increases when they see that the plant manager or the plant director is willing to go and stand down there and wash trays or put product in a box. 

[0:38:44.1] MH: One of our goals is to create a community of manufacturing leaders that they connect with. How can our listeners connect with you? 

[0:38:52.5] MP: They could connect with me via patronusga@gmail.com, that is my business email address. 

[0:39:01.1] MH: Can you spell Patronus for the non-Harry Potter fans? 

[0:39:05.5] MP: It’s P-a-t-r-o-n-u-s, patronusga@gmail.com. 

[0:39:13.3] MH: I will put that email address @gmail.com?

[0:39:16.2] MP: Yep. 

[0:39:16.7] MH: I will put that email address in the show notes for the folks that want to click on that and email Mark. Mark, anything else you want to add? 

[0:39:23.9] MP: No but just to say, if there is anybody that wants to float some ideas or talk through anything that I’ve said, I am more than willing. I am more than willing to sit and talk about continuous improvement and lean and help anybody out. For me, it’s what I enjoy. I enjoy helping companies, I enjoy helping people in companies just to be better. What can I do today to make me better than I was yesterday? 

Please, feel free to reach out and if there is anything I can do to support in any way whether it be via email or even coming in and having a conversation. It is not difficult, manufacturing is very, very, very simple. We make it difficult, you bring some raw materials in, you do something with them and you send it out. It’s easy, stop making it difficult. Know your expectations, know what you want to do and then hold people accountable to those expectations and businesses will flourish. 

Trust me, I’ve seen it a million times. So yeah, any help I can be please reach out and I will get back to you as soon as I can. 

[0:40:27.0] MH: Mark Potter, thank you for joining us on The Industrial Movement today. 

[0:40:30.1] MP: Thank you. 

[0:40:31.0] MH: Have a great day. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:40:32.1] 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 and industrial professionals in our achieved 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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