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This podcast offers business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for lean process improvement and implement continuous improvement projects, cost reductions, product quality enhancements, and process effectiveness improvement. Listeners come from many industries in both manufacturing and office applications.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 0:00
Hello and welcome to another episode of Lean Solutions podcast. My name is Shane. In the studio with me here today is Andy. Andy, brother, how are you doing?
Andy Olrich 0:09
I'm tip top mate. How you going? It's been a while, and great to be back on with you again.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 0:13
Yes, I'm very excited about that, and I'm very excited about today's topic. As nerdy as that sounds, today's topic is about batching, and this is something that you know. I'm sure that in in your work, you've also had different conversations with people trying to explain how when we're talking about lean batching is not a good thing. But I'm I'm very interested in this because batching is one of those things we do on our every day on the regular. Like I batch how I do dishes, I batch how I fold my laundry or how I do my laundry at least. I batch how I do lawn work. There's so many things that we batch, and it just makes sense to us in batching. But there is a different way of looking at it, and I'm very excited about who we're gonna have on today. And I'm just going to let you take it from here.
Andy Olrich 1:03
Thanks, mate. Yeah, really exciting. It just it seems one of those things when you first look at it, it's like it doesn't make sense. It's it's better to do it all at once, and it's more efficient. We can see lots of things happening at once,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 1:15
right?
Andy Olrich 1:16
Well, it looks that way, but yeah, I I won't wax on about that. I'm going to bring on my mate Jimmy James Martin. All right, so great to have a fellow Australian on the podcast today. And I met Jimmy a few years ago, and yeah, really have been a keen follower of his work and and some of the different methods and tools and industries he's been working in. But where he's at today, Jimmy is the Continuous Improvement Program Manager at SRA Solutions, and he works closely with senior leadership to drive strategic growth, operational excellence, and business transformation across the whole organization. And I've seen it. I've been there. It's a fantastic facility, and his role includes mentoring and coaching the management team, supporting strategy deployment and execution. Obviously, he's leading a fantastic lean adoption and program there, and really cool small scale, but also the big hit is the high impact continuous improvement initiatives across the business. So, I'm just thrilled that he was was keen to come along. And Jimmy, great to have you here, mate. How you going?
James Martin 2:18
Thank you very much, Andy and Shane, that's great, great opportunity. Thank you very much for the invitation. I really appreciate it. Our pleasure, yeah,
Andy Olrich 2:28
pleasure.
James Martin 2:29
Yeah, no, it's batching's a great, great topic, and what I wanted to try and try and talk about today is just the not just the shop floor impact and and what you can see, but how you can really look at extreme anti-batching or pro-flow, as some people like to say, it's all about flow. Make it flow like a river. One of my bosses used to say that all the time. How do you make it flow like a river? So not not not just on the factory, but throughout the whole organization to execute the strategy, that's our that's our philosophy, and it can be really challenging because, as you said, Shane, it's it's our it's it's a normal human behavior to to batch because it's that localized efficiency and all the machines and everything in the world set up to batch, but it's actually bad, and we read about it in the all the books. Say, you know, don't batch any batching. Don't do it. So I wanted to try and, well, you know me, Andy. I try to be very practical. So I've got try trying to trying to articulate hopefully today some stories that can really resonate with people so they can see the impact of some real life examples of batching and why it's why it's bad and how extreme you can take this thinking because you can really get into it if you if you push push anti batching hard.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 3:57
So so take us take us to a specific time where you watched batching, I don't know. Did it quietly wreck a team's flow? I mean, you talked about, hey, we're trying to be pro flow here. So can you take us to a time when batching did the opposite of flow? You know what happened on the ground, and what tipped you off that it was the batching that was the problem and not the people or the process?
James Martin 4:21
Yeah. So I'm going to wind back to the '90s. Whoa, whoa, easy one. Sorry, sorry,
Andy Olrich 4:27
mate. I, I, I don't remember that. I'm, I'm too young for that.
James Martin 4:30
Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I was really lucky. Part of my manufacturing degree, they don't. I don't think they offer it in Australia anymore, but they actually had a degree around manufacturing, so I was all focused on that. And there was this subject called lean, and I was a young youth student, had no idea what this lean stuff is. What does that mean? No idea. Anyway, I really loved it, and I ended up doing my thesis to to attain my degree. With with Wilson Transformers, and it was to get rid of batching, so, and and that was such a fantastic opportunity with Wilson Transformers. I was supposed to just you know work there for a few months, and I ended up working there for seven months and got right into this project. But we eliminated batching in ovens for baking and cooking the coils in the transformers,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 5:23
okay, and they
James Martin 5:24
thought of this really awesome innovation where they could connect up DC current to to the taps on the windings and heat them with with the current going through the winding. So they connect all the taps together because you'd have various taps coming out of a coil, and you put them in a press, and you could actually, you could actually instead of waiting 14 hours overnight. So this is your your your question showing where can you see the impact. Well, you couldn't finish making a transformer. You had to make a whole bunch of coils ready for the next day to put into the transformer to fill it with oil and test it and blah blah blah. So the process had to stop. We had to fill up the oven, turn the oven on, cook them overnight, come back in the morning, then take them out of the oven. Then I mean, if anything had gone wrong with the oven or something, you got this whole batch that you okay? Yeah, exactly. So it's not just the waiting. There's all that risk because you've got everything, all your day's work, rolling over to the next day. So if anything goes wrong, what are you going to do the next day? Yeah, and and they change that process from 14 hours to as little as one and a half hours to three hours. So it's an incredible transformation. So we tripled, literally tripled, the output of that line in a third of the space that it took. It was just an amazing transformation. It's such a great project to work on, and and that from that that really set the tone for me from then on. Everywhere I worked, I was looking for those one of those great wins because I had such a great experience there. I
Andy Olrich 7:07
think I think you nailed it there too, Jimmy. With you know, you've got that whole batch, and if something goes wrong, the previous day's work, like all of that, yeah, you might be able to get it all done at once and out the door at once. But if something goes wrong or picking up that quality issue, the whole thing at least has to be set aside. And if it's major, well, then that whole thing is is gone, right? Instead of that small, simple incremental, you know, moving through and smaller parts. So, yeah, a real passion killer, and it definitely demonstrates. So, how was how was the, I guess the workforce reaction when you're putting this up, it would have been quite well. That's not how we've done it. Or no, it's got to take that long if it doesn't dry out properly and all that sort of stuff. So, how was the initial convo with the team, and how you pitched that, and then just, I mean, how did you convince leadership to let you give it a crack? As you said, well,
James Martin 7:56
I was pretty, I was pretty lucky back then. Like I was pretty green then. I was in my in my 20s, and I was working with with the leadership team. So I wasn't leadership team material back then. I was a young whippersnapper from uni, and and just lucky to be part of that project. And I was just soaking it all up like a sponge. So I'm sure they removed a lot of barriers for me with that project and and helped guide it through, and and get it to happen because I know there was a lot of testing involved and making sure the moisture content was removed because if you got any moisture in a transformer in big trouble and all that sort of stuff. So, so yeah, back then I think I was pretty lucky to be working with a very good experienced team that knew they knew what they were doing. They they also were very very aligned with lean thinking, and it was just a great experience and a great learning for me for the for the rest of the rest of my career to now. There's there's other things like how do you how do you convince your team because localized efficiency makes sense, right? So we we talked about. I wanted to talk about trying to convince one of our teams. So SRA Solutions, fantastic business, and part of the business is single piece flow. So they're already converted, but we take it to the extreme. We're always thinking about how to even reduce batching even more, which I want to talk about a bit later, but we've got another business PMQ, which is more a jobbing shop. So they don't, they're not set up for single piece flow. They're a machine shop, and they're set up with machine centers.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 9:33
Okay. So it
James Martin 9:34
doesn't make sense for them to do single piece flow. However, there was a there's a product. I just wanted to tell a story about mutos. What a mutos? I better explain.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 9:46
I have no idea what a muto
James Martin 9:47
is. Yeah, neither do I. Multi-user telecommunication outlet. So it's a little metal, little metal box. It's got a clear cover on it. It's for defense and those kind of government. Government agencies for running telecommunications, so it's all transparent, so you can see, so you can make sure there's no no one's implanted any extra sort of telecommunication cables or bugs or whatever in the system. So we make a lot of these products. We made when we had orders, we'd have orders for 200, 400, 600, 300, so quite a few, quite a few, and they would make 200 at a time. So why, why, why, why do we make 200 at a time? That's the first question. Why, why 200? That's how many fit in the oven. So boom, I'm straight away thinking back to thinking back to the Wilson's going. Okay, it makes sense. You're making 200 at a time because that's how many fit in the powder coat oven. When you, so you want to maximize the efficiency of that oven,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 10:50
right?
James Martin 10:52
So the the the that whole setup was okay. Well, how do I how do I how do I convince these guys that this team? So we went through the theory, and we go through all the all the lean thinking and batching. And I've got an example on the on the whiteboard with maths and minutes. And you know, if you do single piece flow, how quickly you can get the first one, and then the first 10, and the first 50, blah blah blah. Anyway, that's all good, but it it doesn't really. We learn by doing. We don't we don't learn by looking at someone do maths on a whiteboard about the theory of single piece flow. So Jamie was really great. The GM over there, he goes, "Well, okay. So he goes, he questions the team, and he goes, "Team, how many how many fit on a sheet? So when we weren't, the first operation is to punch the metal from a sheet.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 11:41
Sure.
James Martin 11:41
And they go, yeah, yeah, we we punch 36 off a sheet. Okay, well let's let's just make 36. Let's let's make a batch of 36 instead of 200. Okay, let's let's get and let's just give it a go, and let's just see how it flows through the shop. So anyway, they do this. They load one sheet in, punch 36, and then that goes straight to fold, and they fold 36, and then it goes to the next stage, which is welding, and then it goes to the next stage, which is powder coating, and then there's assembly and nuts and bolts and bit of assembly, and then packing and shipping. So normally it would take for for 200. It takes 10 days, two weeks. So they'll tell the customer, okay, two weeks. Yep, you can have 200 minos. They they tried it with 36. They had 108 made in three days. Three days, and then they'd finished in the five days. They had them all done, so they actually rang the customer after three days and said, "Oh, we got the first 108. If you want to take the first 108 or 100 earlier, you can. And the customer said, "Oh, what really? And then, and then because they're all different colors, so you don't want to make these to stock. So obviously, we we avoid that too. We don't want to have stock of these things because they're all different colors and slightly different accessories and bits and pieces. So, and then the comments from the team afterwards when we when we regrouped and re re discussed, it was just it just flowed through the shop so easily. So you're not you're not punching 200 and having big stacks of sheet metal parts on a trolley. Then it's really unwieldy and hard to move the trolley, and then you then you move a stack because you don't want all that in the way in front of the press brake to fold them, and it's just all that waste of moving, double handling, strain, murrey, muira, all all that. You're just eliminating so much of that and so much time. So basically, it was a third of the and a third of the labor time to do it because you've eliminated all that waste. So that was just a great way, but it took buy-in from the from the leadership team to give it a go. But if you can do something like that and you have a good experience and everyone wins and everyone has a positive experience about it. Then you're just you're sold. It's
Shayne Daughenbaugh 14:06
done. So so there's a couple things here that that I'm picking up. You know, you kind of spoke to how you try to win over the hearts of those that have always done it this way. You know, and you're asking them you you how how that worked out was simply by asking them questions, you know. Hey, how many is this? So, and then also by then experimenting and asking them, hey, what if we did this? How did how could how could what would happen if we did this? And having that freedom to be able to experiment, you know, is amazing. But you've also mentioned buy-in from leadership, and so the question that I have with this is what are some of the misconceptions, some of the biggest misconceptions leadership has about batching? Because batching it just feels more efficient. Like I, I if I'm going to fold my socks, you know, I'm I'm going to fold, I'm going to find all the socks, pull them all together, and then I'm going to fold them all together, and then you know maybe the next. Batch of whatever you know, shirts or whatever it is. It just feels more efficient. So, what are some miscon misconceptions that that you've seen that leadership has around batching?
James Martin 15:10
Yeah, so that's great. So, and I and what I say to them is that's true. It is more efficient for you. For you,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 15:18
it is. Yes, you're
James Martin 15:21
absolutely right. It's the system that's not efficient. So if you think about the whole machine, the whole organization, every time we, you know, sit for two hours going through our emails in our inbox, that's batching. Every time, you know, purchasing or finance is going through all delivery receipts or lead forms, or you're sitting there going through all your emails down to the factory nesting all the parts on a sheet because we don't want to waste any sheet metal. It's all batching.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 15:56
Yeah,
James Martin 15:56
it's all localized efficiency. So, so if I'm a if I'm a machine operator. I'll take it back to a back to a practical hands-on example. If I'm a rack, a server rack, which we manufacture, has four verticals and a top and a bottom.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 16:12
Okay. We we
James Martin 16:14
punch all the parts, and if I'm on the press brake, I actually have to change the tooling from when I when I'm folding a vertical to a top and a bottom, so I fold the four verticals, and then they're ready for the next step, which is to weld the four verticals and the top and the bottom. But then, if I'm as a localized efficiency, if I finish those four and I I've got the tops and the bottom sitting there, I know they need it, but I see that the cell one, the cell in front of me, has already punched the next four verticals.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 16:48
Yeah. Okay.
James Martin 16:49
I'm going to go. Well, I've already set up the machine. I've got that program here. This is way more efficient for me to just walk over into cell one, grab those other verticals, and fold those four as well, but what you've just done then is just killed the next guy's time, and that's multiplied by all the cells. So, so the fabricator, the fabricator can't make a rack. He's got he's got eight verticals, but no tops and bottoms now. So he can't do anything. So you've just stopped the flow. So yes, it was better for me because I've done more work and I'm watching the machine work and make stuff. So that's great, right? Because you feel
Shayne Daughenbaugh 17:30
productive. Yeah,
James Martin 17:31
I'm pumping through all these parts. I'm yeah, I'm doing. You are hitting
Shayne Daughenbaugh 17:35
your numbers. Great.
Andy Olrich 17:38
I'm doing my job, mate. Lock down there. They're just hanging around. What are they doing?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 17:41
That's right. That's right. That's right. What are they doing down there? Why is that? Why is things just backing up?
James Martin 17:46
Yeah, and then the welders in the fat bay just twiddle his thumbs, going, "Oh, I can't. I can't weld anything together. I can't make it rack. I don't have all the parts I need. I don't have
Shayne Daughenbaugh 17:54
all the parts, right? And then if you
James Martin 17:55
push that back to nesting, and and and trying to save scrap metal. This is another another challenge. You don't want to waste any metal because steel is very expensive, right? Sure. And so you're trying to maximize your yield, and you don't want any scrap. So then you're nesting. If there's a little bit of spare area, I'll just make a few extra bits of whatever I need. Well, whatever I need, hopefully I need it on the rest of the sheet metal for later because I don't want to waste that sheet straight away. You're making someone wait because you don't actually need those bits right now. You're just saving metal, so the punch program takes longer. So those four verticals are sitting on the sheet, but there's a bit of extra space. I've made a few feet or brackets or whatever for something else because I don't want to waste any metal. And all that punching program could take another 510, 15 minutes. And you're waiting. You make you you're just making someone wait. And you may you may in a month's time actually throw that in the scrap pin. You mightn't even need it. This is the this is the challenge.
Andy Olrich 19:03
I think just those those examples, Jimmy. Every every time I've you know caught up with you, I've seen you present it at national conferences, right? On some of your agile Scrum type approaches that you've been involved in, and I'm sure it's coming through strong for all our listeners here. Jimmy is not just you know the theoretical, and he's read about it, and he's watched a heap of videos and things like that. Like he's actually trying this stuff and and and delivering the results repeatedly and rapidly. And that's why whenever I'm in your neck of the woods, I'll call in and just see what what's he up to now. I think there's a really great tie-in with so not only the waiting for the materials or the product to the to get that first bat first I was about to say, batch to the customer that first part of the the complete order. So you can you can invoice them too. You can clip the ticket a little bit more regularly, so your cash flow flows through. One of the things when I was getting my head around this batch in queue, the first thing was yeah, just someone giving you the permission to try, which is amazing. And then, if you actually see whether it works or not, then you know what you know. But the other part is, I wanted you to just touch on Jimmy. Is you've done some really good kaizen or rapid improvement events down there, right? The thing that again jumps out of the page for me is you have it set up and it's small, simple incremental improvements by the team, right? So it's not this whole massive one-shot improvement. They call it a wrap improvement event, but you've got a series of improvements there. So I just, when you're talking about making things flow across the whole organization, obviously what's happening at SRA Solutions is proof in the pudding there. What about your team? What about what they're getting on and doing with that staying flow approach around their own improvements. So I'd love for you to just share a bit about that for our listeners.
James Martin 20:44
Yeah, what what I'm loving is the the whole culture around it at the minute. So it it it it starts to take off and becomes infectious. And when when people have that good experience, like we were talking about earlier, they want more, and they're trying to trying to understand how we can how we can have some more gains, and people talk about the one percenters. The one percenters are really important, but it's a real challenge because you look at something. But there's so many things. There's so many one percenters. There's so many things to do. How do I how do I do them all? Empower everyone to do it. You can't do it all yourself. When you when you when you're looking at all the things that need to be done, there's just so many improvements and so many things out there. So how do you set up a culture so everyone's doing improvements every day? And this is something you see, like Edwin, Ryan Tierney, Paul Akers, all those guys that with the 3s. And I've been I've been just blown away by them and and really really fired up about how how they how they had some fantastic ways of getting buy-in from all their teams daily every day making improvements. It's just fantastic. So we've we've got a we've got a couple of artifacts here, but when we're talking about that culture of improvement and empowering staff, we've actually got a staff pocket guide which we which we bang on about. Which it's it's setting up giving staff permission to do stuff and to enact our strategy, because that's also if you're not, you're also batching, because you're getting people to wait. Oh, you know, I put in a improvement suggestion on the improvement board, and I'll wait for the improvement committee to get together in a month's time and assess it and see if it's a good idea, but that's batching. How do how do you how do you and you need to set up guardrails. I mean, we probably don't have time to go into this whole thing, but awareness of an improvement opportunity without any action is useless. You have to act; otherwise, it's it's just an opportunity sitting there. It's not going to. We remind everyone about our culture around continuous improvement and our vision and our culture. We've got a we've got a game plan on a page where we we talk to our staff around what what what is SRA Solutions actually trying to achieve? What's our strategy? Where are we headed? What are we doing? Because that that enables them to get the context of what's okay and what's not okay and what's aligned with their strategy and what's not. So once you get all that set up, and then we've given a series of just basic questions around decision making, and we can we happy to share all this stuff. Anyone who comes from factory tour? Absolutely, share all this. It's no, it's it's not not top secret. That's for sure. It's all about eliminating batching in everyone, because every day you you you you can't micromanage and and and see what everyone's doing every day, you've just got to trust. They know what they're doing. You've got to empower them with with a certain you know permissions, and then obviously from that becomes you can be aware of all the capabilities as well, which is awesome.
Andy Olrich 24:16
Yeah, those those guardrails. And you've talked about some tools. Where is this place heading? Like, how does this little piece fit in here somewhere? And trust and verify. So there, there is there is a method where you're checking in. But yeah, it's amazing what you find out your people think about, or or even better, can do if you just let them. And and there's no other way. I mean, some people look like it, but this whole thing around batching again-like some people look like you don't go and get half a haircut, right? So sometimes it makes sense. You're sitting there, you get the job done. Here, here, here goes Andy at five, whatever in the morning, off on a tangent. But it's-it's more like yeah, there's some things where it makes sense to, yeah. A particular task. Do one thing well, as they say, but I have led and now I support organizations that are standing up or trying to revive a continuous improvement program. And the number one killer of that is waiting for a decision, or look, I'm I'm giving them the answer, and no one's listening because of bureaucracy, or the leader's just too busy, or not clear where it fits, and you can't show them. Hey, that's your strategy. There, this one thing fits. It's not easy to do, right? And James, again, the the content and the awareness that you're giving your people there to get on and do it. That's that's one of the things where I go around and I can see that it's not it's not all Jimmy doing it and making it look good for the lean tours that he runs through the place, right? Like it's a really nice sign where someone says, "Hang on a minute, can you explain to Andy what you're doing here? Like half the time you don't really know what they're doing; you're just seeing the results, and it's here. Yeah, oh yeah, I'll catch up with anything. Show me what you did.
James Martin 25:55
Right. So that's yeah, exactly. That's what I real. That's what really gets me excited. I so blows my hand back. What's left of it is when I when I when I find out about all the cool stuff that's happening, and I don't even know about it. Like you find out about it secondhand and go, wow, that that that's epic. That's an awesome. Like I had one of our engineers come talk to me yesterday about a system that he set up that automates the what's gone wrong in the factory, and automatically sends the emails to the correct departments around what's going on. So we've got direct feedback about things that are going wrong in the factory and going to the right people. And he's just gone and developed this thing, and it's got all this data around it, around what are most of our problems. And he said, "John, you know that that Pareto thing you told me about? Well, all our issues are coming from doors and and this and and assembly instructions. If we fix those two things, 80% of our issues would be gone. I go yes. It's just that's that's it's yeah. That's when you know it's working, right? You can
Shayne Daughenbaugh 26:54
so yeah. And what what you're talking about? We we started talking about batching, but something as simple as batching and being folded into a a a way of thinking and a mode of thinking and how we're working and trying to find the more efficient ways of doing things, trying to find the things that make it easier, better, faster, and cheaper. You know, incorporating and and giving ownership to those that are doing the work, but also you mentioned you know talking with leaders and getting leadership on board. That hey, you know this this does make sense. Let me give you some examples. So you showed us some examples, you know, of some of those things, and you've showed us how this plays into your overall perspective on how we want to do it with that with that, you know that that handbook, you know, I I love seeing these things and seeing how they all play out. But I want us to to slow down and to back up just a little bit with a little bit of time that we have left. And for those that don't have that pamphlet and that workbook, for those that don't necessarily have the leadership behind this kind of thing, but they they have heard this, they're listening, and they're going okay. So I could see where we do a lot of batching, but Andy, you mentioned not every, not all batching, not all batching is bad. But when it comes to all you're doing is just localized efficiency, and then down the line or upstream, even if I'm just going to focus on localized efficiency. It may really cob up the works, right? It's it it for for some things, you know, batching actually stops the flow and stops the work. So where is a place? How do how do people start with this, Jimmy? When when when someone wants to reduce some batching in in where they work or in their organization, where can they start, and and how can they improve with maybe smaller batches like you did? I mean, you didn't stop doing batching; you just went from 200 batches to what made more sense and actually moved the flow into 36 batches. Now that was a great example. What are some other things that people might be able to do, you know, send us home with some action that we can. Just like you said, an awareness isn't any good if there's no action to it. So give us some action that that our listeners and watchers may be able
James Martin 29:14
to do. Yeah. So we there's batching and flow. So you we're always trying to think about flow, so this is going to sound strange, but we actually implemented a batching activity at a point in time because we had a bottleneck, and everyone's going, "What the hell are you doing? This is this is not good. You're saying batching's bad. Now we're now we're doing some batching, and and I can tell you it was very interesting because all the symptoms you get with batching we found it, and it and it was an issue, but it was one of those things where we were trying to strike a balance to create flow, and we had a bottleneck in the punching cell. Since then, we fixed it and we bought another punch. So we got three punches now. We had a 2% capacity of our punching. We're back in balance, bottleneck addressed. Happy days. But at that time, we had a massive demand in manufacturing, and I sat down with the with the team. We were discussing it, going, you know what? The only way we're going to overcome this bottleneck is to punch ahead and have some punch parts ready. So this this is I guess why I'm talking about this is there's always attention. There's always this. You've always got to be thinking about the flow and how to deliver to the customer and how to overcome the issue,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 30:42
yes,
James Martin 30:43
and and leverage all the tools and and knowledge that the team has to try and take advantage, however you can. So we actually had a small shift, a couple of people punching at night, ready for the day because we knew the punching cell couldn't keep up. But the classic happened, where doors for us take a long time to punch. They're the longest program, so we focused on. We tried to work out what we were going to focus on to punch at night to overcome the bottleneck. Now, luckily, our MES, our manufacturing execution system is absolutely brewing. The team at SRA just they blow my mind. So I'll hope to show you one day, but the system is incredible. It's a bespoke system designed by the team in house, and they can see we've literally got a heat map on where the bottlenecks are on the cells for the various products, and we've literally got a different product coming through the line, one after the other. We'll have a black rack, a white rack, one with red and blue doors, one with the green one. It's just, it's literally like the Toyota factory. Although, I mean, that's that's our lights on the hill. It's not that. It's not. We we wish it was, but that's our lights on the hill. But so what we did was we we did make some, we produced and and punched ahead, but it did become an issue, and all the things you read about, we punched too many one night, so we we lost count because we were stacking them up on a trolley, and you've got that batching issue again. And instead of making 20 doors, we made 30, and then we had to throw 10 in the bin. However, that's part of the cost of the speed, so we we were happy to accept that and try and try to really tightly manage it. And the good thing is, everyone knew it was bad, and everyone knew that it required special attention and focus because where do you put them? Like the factory isn't designed for it, so so you make the you make the 20 doors, 30 doors, whatever you want to make at night. Where do you put them? There's no trolley for that because we set up a single piece flow. We don't want whip, so it needs a special sign on it and needs special communication. We had, you know, a stack of parts fall off a bench and got bent one day, and threw them all in the bin. Like so, but we achieved our goal, and we knew it was only temporary, and and it was actually a good experience for the team, because it reminded us about all the reasons why we don't do batching, because we had it was so hard to manage, there was so much waste, but we did at that time address the bottleneck and delivered the products on time, but it was at a cost. We know it wasn't the most efficient way to do it, but we we achieved the speed. Yeah, I
Andy Olrich 33:31
think. Sorry to cut to accidentally cut in on you there, Jimmy. There before, but yeah, I think for me the key message out of that is you you made it visible, you know where things are at that that system you've got that makes it visible where the bottleneck is, and sometimes you actually have to log that bottleneck to get it to real, or you have to poke the system hard to get it to really stir up and go, yeah, it's there. All right, because we we we have this hypothesis we think about. I think it's in there, but we we actually may need to make this worse to really get it to stick its head right up over the the parapet, and we can get it. So I think that's one of the things I find is great with you as well as and and your approach is making things visible. So my my last moment around flow for me is around the information to the teams down, up, and across the organization. So would you prefer to do a a 15 minute daily check-in with the team every day and look at some real numbers and data, or would you rather just wait and see what the boss says when he gets the end of month report? And then it's all too late. You batch the whole month of the business, and then we'll let you know how we went. Like that's that's a killer. Whereas the daily focus, make breaking, getting rid of that monthly batch of performance into a daily or shiftly type thing, you know when you're going really well, and you can find out why that is, and keep going. And the other bit is, if it's starting to go bad, you grab it. So, Jimmy, again, we will definitely have you on again. It's just one of those things. But I'm just really thankful that you've got on. That's my final words. I'm thinking where I'm landing with that is the the flow of materials, your improvement, your culture, and your information, and it's not one or the other in mind for what I've seen that you're delivering down there to SRA solutions in the wonderful town of Queenbian or city. Sorry if that offends the Queenbians. However, whoever you call yourselves down there, Shane, over to you, my friend. What do you got?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 35:21
Well, I I just I I want to to just wrap that question up just so people because it was kind of drawn out. So what I heard to wrap up the question: Hey, how what can people do to to you know to to reduce batching? One, I loved what you said in Hey, this is about flow. It's really not about batching. Batching is just where we may focus, but it's about flow. I picked up on that pretty strongly. And so, how can we reduce batching? Let's look at the flow. Where does the flow stop? Let's make it visible. Let's push it where where it can be pushed, so that we can see where it's visible, and then we can adjust, and as Andy just mentioned, the the frequency of the visibility is is super important. Okay, so let's pay attention to flow. Let's let's make everything visible, and let's pay attention to where where are those bottlenecks? Because that's where batching really harms us, is where where it produces bottlenecks. We don't want that kind of individual efficiency or localized efficiency. We want to be looking at the whole system and how this how this works. So I have really enjoyed this, Jimmy. That the stories are as fascinating as the topic of trying to figure out, hey, batching bad, good, when, no, all of those kind of things. Yeah, this conversation can easily be continued. But Andy, I'm going to let you bring us home. Jimmy, thanks so much for for being here too.
James Martin 36:51
Absolutely, pleasure. And just quickly, the the the way the trust we have from the board and shareholders to be able to do all this, and we are also empowered to do this, and we're able to make mistakes and learn. So we've really set up a fantastic culture. It really does come down to that culture and empowerment of everyone to learn and improve, and and trusting in in in everyone to do the right thing, so it's really um yeah, it's really great place, great place to work. Love it,
Andy Olrich 37:28
great great wrap up. Yeah, success breeds success. You get confidence of the board by delivering. All right, and people hanging around or people wanting to come and work for you. There's something something magic in all of that. And at the end of the day, Jimmy's Jimmy's got a key role to play. So, mate, thanks again for coming on. I love the saying that he has: is give it a crack. All right. So, for I'm not talking Catherine, our Irish Northern Irish friend. It's not crackers in whatever that means over there. Sorry, but yeah, give it a crack means give it a go. So, for anyone listening there, if you want to catch up with Jimmy, we'll put all of his contact details in the show notes. And if you have a specific question for Jimmy or where you want him to take it next, yeah, certainly reach out and he'd be happy to chat to you. So, Jimmy, good on you, mate, and I really look forward to catching up with you again soon. Shane, pleasure as always, and thank you all for tuning in, and we'll catch you all on the next episode of the Lean Solutions podcast.