Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Max Krug & Dave Griffith

Curt Anderson 0:00
This is going to be done. Hey, my goodness, happy Monday, everybody. Manufactured Monday motivation is here. Best day of the week. Dan, how are you, brother? What’s happening, man?

Damon Pistulka 0:12
I’m doing great. We had a 48 hour hiatus from internet or cable accident, our asset access at our house this weekend, which was really interesting. So, you know, the only thing that I gotta say that was good. It was it was good being off the grid a little bit. But we still figured out how to broadcast that Seahawks game in here. See the win?

Curt Anderson 0:35
Hey, God bless you. And how about this little victory here for my dear friend Whitney? Houston, right. How about those Astros? And yes, Whitney, we have the best beard in manufacturing here. So let’s know what the thing is Damon. So I have a bunch of dudes on stage that are big, you know, everybody hears from Buffalo area. I thought we’d be having like, everybody been a really good mood today. But that didn’t happen. But we’ll forget about football for a minute. So we’ll celebrate your victory. And then we’ll just skip on and we won’t talk football anymore. Right, Max? Right, Dave? Yes, it’s kind of skipped over that. So anyway, happy Monday. It is such a glorious, amazing. It’s a beautiful day here. And what a great way to kick off November. And we want to talk about great stuff here with my dear friend Max Krug. Max. How are you, brother?

Max Krug 1:22
Great. How you doing? I’m doing every single show today.

Curt Anderson 1:25
Oh my God, dude, this is so long overdue. And so Max, we go way back. We have some funny stories as the share. We’re super tight. Families are tight. We’ve got Dave Griffith and now Dave, how are you doing?

Dave Griffith 1:38
I’m doing great. Curt. I am mostly fully caffeinated. But we’ve got round to around three coming up as well. All right, so

Curt Anderson 1:44
I know. Max, what are you drinking? I’m hitting water. Were you anything stronger to you guys. I just I punished my orange juice. And now I moved on to water. So let’s dig into the show. We’ve got Diane here today, guys. Man, this is going to be a good one. If you are out there. drop us a note. Let us know. Give us a hello. You absolutely want to connect with Max Max is just a dynamo. He’s a kook guru. He is the founder CEO of future state engineering. We’ve got Dave Griffith here and Dave is a digital nomad. He’s a fierce podcaster we’re going to be talking about your podcast. Dave. And you guys are efficiency experts. So next I want to I’m going to kick things off with you. Dude, I know you’re a big ski guy grew up here in Western New York. We’re located right outside of Buffalo. And so you know, I know you’re big athlete guy. And you know, our daughters are figure skaters together just so for everybody out there. So Max and I. Our second home is at the skating rink. We’re together constantly. I’m with Max’s wife all the time. We just live at the skating rink. Next as a young man growing up in your outside of Buffalo here. Who was your hero? Growing up? Who was your hero growing up that sparked this incredible guy that you are.

Max Krug 3:01
So probably my father was a great influence on me. He was a great athlete growing up and taught me a lot about sports competitiveness. Even though I’m an introvert, it’s like, hard for me to be like super competitive. But

Curt Anderson 3:19
in a of course, through all of our figure skating shows, I’ve met mom numerous times. What’s dad’s name?

Max Krug 3:26
My dad’s name. Yep.

Curt Anderson 3:29
Don, so I’m so Don is your hero. Thank you for sharing that. And I know we have a Christmas skating show coming up in a few weeks, so I’ll probably get to see mom. Dave, same question that your brother you are a digital nomad. We’re gonna dig into that dude. You like you and your wife Beth and your your Archie that wonderful Archer. You guys traveled the country grew up in Buffalo share with us who was your hero growing up?

Dave Griffith 3:51
It’s a good question. Curt. I think both of my grandmother’s right so my grandma on my mom’s side and my grandma on my my dad’s side. I think both of them were just amazing people and kind of did things in ways that no one was doing back you know, 50 years ago. Plus, my Nan, my dad’s mom, she she ran a country store. And I have some of my greatest young memories growing up in in eastern Maryland. I’d go and spend the week and it was this old house from from the mid 1800s. And she would just kind of the prototypical southern lady, right. So Nan would go and the store would open when Dan wanted the store to open the store would close when Dan was done working in the store at the end of the day, and so I have some amazing amazing memories there. And then my mom’s mom, also an amazing amazing woman she ran a credit union in North Tonawanda up here for a number of years started that and kind of continued and finished her career as mayor and kind of just I should just my memory growing up and she just kind of did whatever she wanted to do and and no one was foolish enough to tell either them no.

Curt Anderson 4:57
Well, dude, the app the apple Did you say mayor did I hear? Did you say? She was the mayor of North? Tonawanda? Yep. Okay, so, North Tonawanda is a great suburb of buffalo man, and it was a rival virus in football. And so you know, she was the mayor. And so that is absolutely fantastic. And do the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree does it? Because I know you marched at your own, you know, your own beat, and just do an amazing job. So I guess let’s dig into your superpowers. You are fierce advocates for US manufacturing. Dave. You know, you and I connected through Chris Lukey manufacturing happy hour, man wait before COVID We become fast friends. Damon, when you say next, these two are these are twin towers. These are two words. Now talking with right here. Next you and I had the honor privilege we connected years ago, I was doing a LinkedIn workshop. I think this was like maybe 2013 14 You’re at that workshop, and you and I became fast friends. And so you know and man, I want to we’re gonna dig into your work and your business. kick things off. Like, you know, you went to St. Bonaventure, NBA, you’ve worked at commons, you know, major manufacturer, you’ve worked at GE, we Damon, you and I talked about the MEPs. A lot. Max has done great work with the buffalo MEP, the Pennsylvania MEP s. Max, what drove your superpowers, bringing your talents, your skills, your passion to the world of manufacturing? How did that get started early in your career? Yeah, so

Max Krug 6:25
my education is in industrial engineering. So of course, industrial engineering, one of the main places that people go for their careers in manufacturing. So I started out of school at Busch industries here in town, and worked as an industrial engineer, I was the first industrial engineer that they hired. So I really got into manufacturing, learning about how a business works. Learning about systems about processes about ERP systems is like, the whole gamut because I was like, it was a growing company like crazy. And so I got to be involved in a lot of different things. Right? Yeah,

Curt Anderson 7:01
you caught the early wave, great company. So David, this is a furniture manufacturer, Bush industries, they do office furniture, great company, and then Max, you slid into, you know, if I’m not mistaken, you have other major companies on your resume that you transferred, you know, brought your talents to, like we mentioned commons, GE, the MEP world, talk about, like how you’ve continued on this great legacy through all these years, you know, really striving on efficiency, and you know, maximizing those. Effectiveness is the word that you use for manufacturers.

Max Krug 7:32
So I actually went to work for the buffalo I’m up for 10 years, I was director of their consulting services. And, you know, I had the strong manufacturing background going in there. And then when I started working there, of course, they provide all this unbelievable training. So I got training in Lean. I was my boss at the time, actually worked for Dr. Deb. I mean, yeah, she was a huge influence on me right to the heart. I learned so much about total quality from her. And then I got introduced to Dr. Goldratt through that company that I worked with, and it’s like, that was like, changing my life. Experience.

Curt Anderson 8:15
Yeah, change your life. So guys, so we’ve got Hey, Diane gives a little shout out, you know, hey, that’s a very, very humble, very humble view, Diane giving a shout out to Whitney on the Astros. She’s sending cheesecakes and pretzels. David chrysler says, Hey, this is epic right now that I agree with you 100% Damon, who got a great crew, you know, good conversation going here. So David, let me slide over to you a little bit. Okay. So again, you know, your passion, your skills, your expertise, brought it to manufacturing, why manufacturing, you could go on in multiple different directions, you could have gone in different industries, what attracted you to

Dave Griffith 8:49
manufacturing? Well, Kurt, I like to tell people that I tried a bunch of different industries and manufacturing just continued to to pull me back, right. So my technical background is in aviation, I went down to get certified to work on on basically anything that flies through the FAA, right. So spent a lot of time wrenching on things and learning to troubleshoot, and then came out and thought that I was going to work more specifically in aviation, the economy was doing kind of flips, not all that different than than what we may be seeing at the moment, I decided that I didn’t want to get kind of pigeon holed into bending sheet metal for the next 30 or 40 years of my life. And I ended up taking a job for a German based company that had a location in the US and they build the large gantry style machines, the drill and rivet airplane fuselage is together, right? And I’m like, Yeah, I can go work in this while I’m continuing college. And then it became the, hey, we need someone to go help rebuild a supply chain. So let’s go talk to 50 or 100 or 200 different you know, machine shops in Western New York and let’s go find some fixture places in Detroit. And let’s go kind of rebuild all of this. And then oh, we have one engineer in the US and she’s about to leave on maternity leave. So David Good luck, right. And so it’s just a series of things that kind of continue to drive me down into this. And at the Corker, I would say I love solving problems, right. So everything I do be it, you know, podcasting or kind of doing marketing stuff, or sales stuff, or going and doing kind of the hands on technical nuts and bolts of of solving manufacturing problems, is I love solving problems. And in my opinion, manufacturing is still the Wild West, right, like, like so many other places are in are in the 2020s. And like, we have phones and like computers, and you walk out into a manufacturing floor, and I swear to God, last month I was out at a place they were starting up a new line that hadn’t run well in more than they hadn’t run in four years, hadn’t run well in at least a decade. And literally, they found a bunch of one page learnings, it was just covered in dust and you can just go, I’m just blown the dust flies off of them, right. And then mind you, no one had any idea of if these were still valid, because they like stole a bunch of stuff from other lines in order to get this line up and running. And a bunch of stuff from that line had been stolen for lines that are currently running. So I mean, it’s the Wild West, we’ve got a stack of information that may or may not be valid, and we’re sending people to another facility four hours away for a week at a time, not knowing how close their line runs to the line that we just started up. And it’s like, well, now we have to produce and so so good luck. So I

Curt Anderson 11:26
factory. So now, now and I forget I you know, I’m Damon you know I’m not a young guy anymore. You know, Max knows that well, so I’m a little forgetful. Now Max, did you say that you’re the introvert in Dave’s the extrovert I can’t remember. Which is which, right? So Dave, you’re the you’re the engineer that like you know, you’re you’re the oddball we’re like, you just have this amazing magnetic, just dynamic personality. Was that from was that from grandma? Was that from the to grandma’s?

Dave Griffith 11:53
I think so probably it’s I guess, I guess, as Max likes to joke, he’s the introvert. Right? He’s the introverted engineer. And so I have to be the extroverted sales guy. But then it’ll flip and Max will go on and talk for 20 minutes about something he’s really passionate about. And I will just like kind of stand back and let him have have these conversations, I would probably say I’m the most introverted person in the family. Just so the reason I talk so much, is because the family is just so loud. If you’re not ready to get in there, then you’re just going to go all within or without saying a single word. What’s wrong with you? Why are you so quiet?

Curt Anderson 12:28
And here’s the funny thing about Max. Max says he’s an introvert. I can tell you time and time again. I’ll be staying with Max and his wife will be figure skating practice. And like we’re literally crying like I like he he’s one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever met. Like, I can’t breathe, where he’s just killing me. But yet, he’s an introvert. So Max, I’m gonna come back. You mentioned you mentioned Dr. Goldratt. For David Kreisler. Our dear friend probably knows. Yeah, of course, Damon, you know this. This book was a game changer. I fully admit I’m embarrassed. I did not know this book until I met my dear friend, Max. We’re talking about the goal. Next, please talk about Dr. Goldratt. Talk about the goal and why anybody in business, I don’t care what sector you’re in, what industry you’re in, what department you’re in, you should read the goal. Next, please share with everybody what is the book The goal?

Max Krug 13:15
So the book The goal is a book written about manufacturing. So is actually Dr. Gold rats experience from three different plants that he took and wrote this book about his experience with these three plants. It’s funny because he calls the goal the Bible of manufacturing. He goes, You know what the definition of the Bible is? Everybody believes it. Nobody does it.

Curt Anderson 13:41
That’s classic.

Max Krug 13:43
So basically a turnaround story of a company right and how the soul Jonah in the story was a professor that was trained in the early systems thinking, then taught this plant manager how to turn the plane around by looking at it from a different perspective. So that’s the basis of the story. So if you haven’t read it, you gotta read the book, because it’s unbelievable story. There’s unbelievable knowledge in that book. It’s like, you got to not just read you need to, like sit back and understand what what’s being portrayed as, the backstory behind what’s the logic and the theory behind the story.

Unknown Speaker 14:19
Yeah, yeah.

Curt Anderson 14:21
And so a lot of layers in that thing. We have a lot of layers in that book. And so So again, guys, if this book is new to you, go out check out encourage you vite you welcome you beg you implore you buy the book, the goal, and it is a total game changer. Now, max that in the book, it’s the theory of constraints. And when you and I met you are a Theory of Constraints. There it is right there. Thank you, Damon. There’s the goal right there. Guys go out and grab that it’s on Amazon for 999. I don’t know how much of this but got that book and boy, it’ll be a game changer. Now Max, that is the theory of constraints is the basis of that book. Sure. What is the theory of of constraints.

Max Krug 15:02
So theory constraints. So Dr. Goldratt was a physicist, or what he did is he took physics and applied that to manufacturing. And so it’s really about systems thinking. So when you look at any system, there’s very few elements that control that system. So if you can understand what elements control the system, you can improve the system performance significantly by changing a few minor things. My cat is going to come visit here, more than welcome.

Damon Pistulka 15:31
And it’s amazing to it’s just amazing when you when you understand that, and you can look at large facilities. And it can be there we go. You can have large manufacturing facilities and boil it down into one spot. That controls the output of you know, 100 acres. Yeah,

Curt Anderson 15:51
absolutely. And our buddy, David Chrysler, hey, read a few times he catches something every time and then he shared it.

Max Krug 15:57
Oh, it’s even got the link there.

Curt Anderson 16:01
David, so thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Dave Griffith, let’s come get you back on stage here, brother. Let’s talk about, again, different aspects of manufacturing that you could have gone into you are super passionate about process improvement in particular technology, just sure. Like what, what attracted you to go that direction in manufacturing on these efficiencies?

Dave Griffith 16:23
Yeah, absolutely. So on my side, I have seen lots of people be successful to kind of varying degrees when you talk about, you know, theory of constraints, and Lean and Six Sigma, you know, some people are very successful, like Max in in helping to take that and help to enact change. But what I found is kind of the newer generation wants more information at their fingertips, right? Like, they want to be able to see what’s happening in their plant so that they can make decisions quicker. They want to take digital and technology and put it on the floor. And we want to talk about artificial intelligence and, and augmented reality, and how can we put that on the floor. And that gives us the ability to train and retain better talent, which is something that we have struggled in, in manufacturing for at least as long as I’ve been alive, if not long, right? Probably forever. We’ve always struggled to find and retain, you know, good talent. And so these pieces of technology allow us to, you know, we’re probably never going to be as awesome as an Amazon or Facebook or any of those things. But it is going to allow us to bring some people in and train and retain some of that good top talent. And so my goal has always been, how can we take these thoughts and methodologies, and leverage that using technology so that either we understand kind of everything that goes along in the Theory of Constraints, or Lean or Six Sigma? And kind of explain that? Or how can we take the technology and kind of forcibly allow us to do that while getting these efficiencies and these additional outputs?

Curt Anderson 17:57
Absolutely. Go ahead do?

Damon Pistulka 17:59
No, I just think this, this is one of the coolest parts of manufacturing now is the enabling the technology that’s enabling us to help train retain and give people more of the information they need to make decisions right at the at the point that they need them? And, and when you think about what that’s going to do for future generations, manufacturing is going to be incredible.

Dave Griffith 18:24
Absolutely. Just to kind of add to that, Damon, I guess, I see that we’re going to have a big issue in the next five years or so kind of when all of the people who actually know how processes work, they’re all going to retire. Yeah, there’s gonna be they’re gonna be very few of us left that actually understand how to figure out what the process is supposed to be. And there will be not an insignificant number of phone calls to the I don’t know, 100 people who know how to actually go figure out what a process is, yeah, go kind of figure out a plan to process from scratch, and you’re going to be granted the Hulk for weeks or months at a time, as someone like me or a Max goes to try to figure out, hey, this is what we should have done. I don’t know why we didn’t collect any of this data or this information for the last 50 years. But this looks like how it’s supposed to be? Well, let’s go run it a couple of 100 times. And if it doesn’t break, let’s just assume that this is how we are supposed to run this segment of the planet, and then go to the next part. Yeah. So at one company, we actually call it the grace of Nami. It is it is.

Damon Pistulka 19:23
It is and we we were some people talk about technology. obsoleting workers. And I’m like, you don’t think that’s the name. Nobody think about that. But that technology needs to be there because we have workers that are going to retire at a rate and manufacturing, that if we don’t implement the technology harder than we’re in or more aggressively than we are today. We are going to have people to fill the positions.

Dave Griffith 19:48
I worked with an organization and they had one guy who was really good at rebuilding valves, right and there were probably only like 4000 valves in this facility, but he was really good at rebuilding valves. He was the valve guy. I’d done it for 45 years. So yeah, and then March or April, he retired and you want to know who can rebuild valves him when he comes back on contract work once a quarter. But But beyond that literally, we have no extractions or understanding of how to rebuild valves. And that’s just a small part of what’s going to get larger and larger. And if we don’t take technology or other things to capture this information, it’s going to be gone. And in not too many years, they’re going to retire and move away or retire and decide they don’t want to come back to work for the facility they did every day for 45 years. And, and then you’re just going to shrug your shoulders and have to learn the hard way how we rebuild these things,

Damon Pistulka 20:38
right? Yes. Right. I mean, it’s simple stuff today, too. I mean, you can literally be be videotaping this stuff on your phone, at the very least. Yep. So you got some sort of record? Right? Absolutely. No record is disaster.

Curt Anderson 20:55
Yeah. So Dave, dude, you’re young man, you’ve got to you’ve got job security for years and decades to come, my friend. And so from that pavement, we’re gonna get into like, you do a great job of podcast and everything you’re working on. Max, I’m gonna slide over to you. So I have a hysterical story when I met Max. So there’s kind of 2014 ish, we were at a LinkedIn workshop, and Max is there. And so, you know, we get together and meet up afterwards. And again, Theory of Constraints, the goal all brand new to me. So I have this office, and he sits down and I’m like, So Max, tell me about your business. And he’s like, Well, you know, it goes, you know, theory constraints, and I want to be the right knee guy, and he just kept talking. And I’m like, what? I go Wait, like, I literally throw it. I might do. Timeout. You gave him the timeout. I don’t. I go, I can’t most of what you said I go. Did you just see the right knee? Guy? goes? Yeah, I want to be the right knee guy. I go. Next, what on earth is the right knee guy? Next? Do you want it? I’ll tell it. He looks at me. And he goes, if you injure your right knee, who are you going to go to? Or you’re going to go to like the general practitioner, the guy that’s helping the cold and the flu and one Beanery stitching up somebody one minute like just doing a little bit of everything? Or do you want to go to like a world renowned authority expert on the right knee, the same doctor that takes care of like a local professional athlete in just repairs everything he goes, I want to be so specialized. If somebody if you’ve hurt your left knee. I’m not your guy. I don’t know a darn thing about the left knee. You hurt anything else on your body? I’m not your person. I can’t help you. But boy, Gosh, darn it, if you’ve hurt your right knee. I’m the world renowned expert on the right knee. That’s what I want to be with the theory constraints

Max Krug 22:50
on my manufacturing, right? Where am I dude?

Curt Anderson 22:53
Slap the mic. It was like it was more like Like, there were like trumpets playing Damon Angel’s chin down. I was like, I’m like, Dude, that was like one of the best. And I use that I use that story over and over. I was an advisor with the Small Business Development Center. So I started using it, Max, man, I probably owe you money for this. Every client that I’ve worked with, I would use that story. So this woman comes in I haven’t seen her in months. She’s a millennial. She’s tatted up, she’s got the piercings. I hadn’t seen her like in a year. And she sits in my office. I’m like, Hey, how’s it going? And she goes, Well, you know, I’m trying to be the right knee girl. I’m like the right neger I go I told you that story. She goes, of course you told me that story. She goes I think about it every day. I want to do the right knee girl of the space that she was at. So Max, share with everybody. Why is it so important to niche down we call it niche down till it hurts? And stay laser focus, be that right knee guy or that right knee? Gail?

Max Krug 23:49
Yeah. So it’s like, you gotta have the depth of knowledge, to be able to help companies, I gotta have super deep knowledge of concepts, right to be able to look at an organization and understand what’s preventing them from getting better performance. But you also need a broad business sense. I spent my whole career learning about business, the broad business sense, but I wanted to be super deep, knowledgeable about subject matters to help transform companies. And it’s like, the first question is like, Okay, we got this organization, we’re not doing so well. So the first question is, why don’t we change? Well, if you talk to everybody in the company, you’re gonna have three ideas from every person in the company. So you’re gonna have 300 ideas of what we need to change. It’s like you can’t, it’s all about focus, right? You can’t work on 300 initiatives. And David, I see it in companies. I have all these initiatives going. And when you look at the ones that are actually converting the company to improve performance, sometimes never none at all, sometimes

Dave Griffith 24:49
none. Too often. None. In fact, yeah,

Max Krug 24:53
we worked on a project together. We interviewed everybody in the company and we’re like, we know where the biggest problem is. And we’re like, who’s Working on it. Nobody know.

Curt Anderson 25:04
So, Max, so let’s go here. So you do an amazing job. I’ve had the honor and privilege of going through you do webinars, workshops, training, you’ve taught me, you’ve taken me through exercises that I literally use on a daily basis, you know, you have the ripping game and all these games that you have, you know, folks in your audience that learn Sure, a little bit about like, your, you know, how you’re training and but you just you get rave reviews, everywhere you go, when you do these trainings, just share a little bit about like, what what would people expect at your trainings? And how do you? How do you attack those for folks.

Max Krug 25:39
So I’m a hands on learner, so we teach the concepts, and then we do exercises to reinforce the concept. So it’s learned by doing. But what I found was that in companies to get breakthrough employment performance, you need to change the mindset. So these games are done to change the perception that people have about different subjects, whether it’s costing, whether it’s flow, whether it’s problem solving. And so it’s like, when I see the issues that accompany I’m looking, okay, so these six mindsets need to be changed. So I do the training, and reinforce the concepts of what the correct mindset needs to be. So it’s all about mindset. So like, with you with the paper ripping, right, it’s like, oh, we need to be good. multitaskers No, take one task and run it to ground and complete it.

Curt Anderson 26:32
Right? Right. So Dave, you’re nodding up a storm here, dude. So share a little bit like your experience with like, you know, trying to help educate, you know, manufacturers are just they’re so busy, especially these entrepreneurs or smaller ones, where like, you know, one minute, they’re their own HR department, the next minutes are their own finance department. Next, they’re trying to be marketing, you know, it’s hard to be, you know, it’s very difficult challenging from a manufacturer, being an expert in all of these. That’s why it’s so critical for you guys to come in, and help elevate their game. Talk about like some of the game, some of the things that you’ve seen by going through these trainings with manufacturers?

Dave Griffith 27:07
Absolutely. So So I would say Max and I have gone through a number of these trainings, and facilitated a number of these trainings together. And I think, almost to a one, there’s always at least one of those eye opening moments, right? So so I was laughing when when Kurt said he’s stolen Max’s paper ripping game, I have also stolen Max’s paper up again, although I’m fairly confident, I’ve asked Max, if I can borrow his outline of the paper ripping game, right, so So focus, right, so I think focus is, is one of the kind of lowest pieces of hanging fruit that any group is missing. And if you can focus on whatever task you’re working on, you’ve got a huge chance to succeed. I would also say focus is absolutely the hardest thing in order to actually claim of people’s time and other people’s mental energy. Regardless of I need to go show you guys why it’s important to focus, we’ve gone through the paper ripping game, everyone’s agreed, we need to focus. And then I see people sending emails, 12 minutes later, in the middle of these workshops. So I think it’s important to go and like you go through through Max’s process, we do a bunch of interviews, right, we go and highlight some problems, we go do some workshops to kind of say, Hey, this is what we have to do to go solve the problems. But then you actively have to go out there and be out there to help them solve the problems and show that it works. Right. So showing that we need to focus or that we need to get better in one area works well. For again, that 12 minute segment. But if you can repetitively go and work with different groups who are actually performing these tasks, and show them how their jobs get better, their lives get less stressful, they can also be more productive by literally doing less things, then that is where you see the breakthrough success to breakthrough performance, which is always the goal when we come in to talk about efficiencies at a manufacturing facility.

Curt Anderson 28:55
You know, I love that. And so I have a buddy who’s a football coach, very successful football coach, and his father always said, You know what? It’s simple. But it’s not always easy. Yeah. So many things in life are simple. And it’s not always easy. You know, Dave, why is it? Why is it not easy? Why is it so challenging? You know, and I’m throwing myself under the bus as well, like, you know, why is it so easy? Why is it so difficult for us to focus?

Dave Griffith 29:20
I think it’s difficult to focus because throughout our entire lives, we always have all of these inputs, right? So you know, the last 15 years, we’ve all had smartphones, but like before that, you know, you’re working the floor, you’re in operations, there’s a problem, you go run to go to go put out that fire, and then hopefully you get to the end of putting out that fire before the next fire comes on. And then some at some point, you’re eight 912 hours into your shift and you’re like, Oh, I didn’t do any of the things that I had scheduled to do today. I didn’t write any of the reports. I didn’t look at the previous stuff. I have no idea what the schedule is supposed to be. And so that stuff just gets pushed to the back and Until something, again is on fire. And it might be those things that are on fire. And so it’s just this constant cycle. And now we’ve got all of these other inputs, right, so we’ve got all these other inputs, we’ve got a phone, maybe you’ve got the boss calling you, you, you have to go do 20 interviews today, because we don’t have enough people to work third shift, like it consistently gets worse that the most successful people we see are people that can go block their time, and actually focus on things and and I have found, especially working remotely is that sometimes if you go lock yourself into your room, you can go do eight or 10 hours of work in two hours, like you just have to be able to sit down in order to get it done. And many times people are just spending another six or eight hours doing busy work or, or other things as opposed to just focusing on the task at hand. Right?

Curt Anderson 30:52
Absolutely.

Max Krug 30:53
What I see is that people are focusing on putting out the fire, but nobody’s looking at what was the spark that started the fire? Yes. If we prevent the spark from happening, there’s no fire.

Curt Anderson 31:03
Right? So hey, we had a great comment here from Diane, she is the putting out fires, oh, that’s from Whitney putting out fires is a huge time suck. And then mine been trained to multitask, right? Hey, let’s do five things.

Max Krug 31:16
In order for multitasking. Yes, we’re

Curt Anderson 31:18
totally rewarded. And again, like, you know, guys, if you’re serious about some of these games as training, you have to connect with Max, drop them a note. And he has some really powerful little tools exercises to help you be more efficient. Max, you and I you’ve shared you know, mind blowing story after mind blowing story with with with myself, you know, talking about like the resistance or the challenges that you face with talking with executives and what have you. And when you get to the other side, like I love when you share those those aha moments, you’ve shared numerous of those light when the light bulb goes off, talk about that resistance and and how you break down that resistance and get folks to the other side.

Max Krug 31:55
So, you know, when I was trading from Dr. Goldratt, how to overcome resistance. So the first thing is like, we need to agree that there’s a problem. But when it’s like they don’t even think there’s a problem, right? And it’s like, and what I see is that companies have been dealing with problem for so long, it becomes normal condition. Right? And so like I went work with a construction company, right? And the construction companies like Oh, after we finished the job, order walks through, and we have this punch list. I go what is that? It’s like all the we need to fix. Wash. Yeah, that’s normal for the construction industry. I go, not that the other industry is not. It’s like what when you get a new car, you go through and say, Oh, here’s all the problems with the new car that the manufacturer needs to fix before I take it. What is that? Right? Yeah. Right. And it’s just the mindset that’s like, oh, that’s how it’s done. It’s like, Yeah, but not in any other industry. It’s done that way. So they get in this mindset where problems become normal condition. And they can’t get out of that mindset. And so the first thing is like, is there really a problem? And what is the problem? So you got to take walk them through the layers of resistance to get them to see, it’s like, I can give solutions all day long. But if they don’t understand what problem that’s solving, it doesn’t mean anything.

Curt Anderson 33:17
Right? So let’s Alright, so let’s take a step further. So when when, when you identify, obviously, you know, somebody’s coming to your workshop, or training. And so these are folks that I get past that where they say, Yes, I do have a problem. Dr. Max, can you come in and help us right? Talk a little bit about like when that aha moment comes through, or when you start identifying some of these challenges.

Max Krug 33:38
So people are good at identifying the symptoms. So it’s like, oh, we have too many late orders. We’re constantly expediting, we have, you know, expedited freight costs, it’s like, but they don’t understand what’s causing it. So part of my training is to get them to understand what’s the root cause of those problems. And when we can understand the root cause. And then when I can recalibrate their mindset about the root, cause that’s where the light bulb comes on. Right? So the belief, it’s like, oh, we need to be good. multitaskers. Right. But multitasking is terrible for productivity and quality. So when we say, man, if you can focus, you can knock out three times the work when you’re not multitasking. But we’re just trained, right? There’s all these concepts that we were trained that I don’t know where they came from, but and then it’s the wrong mindset.

Curt Anderson 34:30
Right. Dave? What How about from your side of things on a technology technology side, when you say you’re facing some resistance, but then people are like, you know, maybe they cry uncle, or maybe it’s just a situation like, man, it’s just can’t continue. Maybe there’s an upset, you know, like, unfortunately, sometimes it’s something reactive. It’s a lost customer. It’s, you know, quality issues, something that finally triggers. Hey, I’m going to throw in the towel here. I need help. But what from your perspective? What do you see? And then how do you get people to the other side? Oh, You know, that light bulb moment?

Dave Griffith 35:01
Absolutely, I would, I would agree. I’d say that those are all great, great statements, Kurt. So I’m gonna go with talking about the light bulb moment, right. So I think the light bulb moment is important, especially when we talk about technology implementations, right? So I could go and build out that the best piece of technology and kind of push it out and Max and I could go live in a place and force people to use it and sit in the 7am meetings and the the 11am meet and sit in every meeting for six months. And then as soon as we leave, they’re just going to stop using it because they’re comfortable in what they were doing so that they need some sort of moment, in order to say, Yes, this is why why we need to do it. So I was, as I said, earlier, I was just working with a client for the first half of October, working on some digital work instructions, and as part of this platform that we’re having, right? And so I actually found this, right. So they were they had supposedly rolled it out, right? So I get there. And I was going to do like second third phase of this rollout and work individually with people. And I go and I talked to the first 20 people and they’re like, Dave, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, right? Like the person who was supposed to did it, like we spent an entire hour and none of us got logged into our devices. And then that’s it. I’m like, Well, this makes a lot of sense. So we had to go completely rework everything that we were doing. And I went, I did some digging, and I found that it’s got the opportunity to go print QR codes for specific work instructions, right. And so I go take these QR codes, and I slap them up on the machine. And either for particular work points, or for particular issues that people have all of the time. Sometimes they’re cleaning instructions, it really depends upon the machine, right? And so I go and I’m re rolling this stuff out to the operators, and some of them are like, lukewarm. Lukewarm is about as good as we got. Right? So like lukewarm to like, exceptionally negative. And I would say some everyone, so like, 90 95% of them. Like we got to the what did this guy bleeping get us into now? I’m very upset with him, right? So this is what they’re saying about their own engineer. And I’m like, Well, I understand what you’re saying. But I’m here and I’m over here. Like, guys, I get paid the same amount whether you guys want to use it or not. So can we at least like roll through it and show you so. So we got some pushback, we got them all logged into their devices in like 10 minutes. And then we just walked out the floor. And I just pointed I told him to point the iPad at the at the QR code and scan and they looked at me like, Oh, this is amazing, like 95% of them. There was that aha moment. Yeah, like, Okay, we have them. Now I just need to roll this out to 600 other places on the floor. But as soon as you get the aha moment that their use in the last two, two and a half weeks has been like 600 1,000%, above what it had been before. Because we showed them a reason that would help them in particular, yeah. And we worked with the operators who worked with the mechanics, we worked with the supervisors, right? Like everyone has to have a reason to go in and log in. And if we’re then giving people reasons to go in and log in, then then they’re going to adopt the technology, but it has to make their lives easier. If it doesn’t make their lives easier, they’re not going to use it. And honestly, if it doesn’t make their lives easier, I’m not gonna go waste a couple of weeks of my life going going to help them out, no matter how sunny facility might be, while I’m in the conference room or in the facility, because they’re all dark and dark and dreary, by the time I get to leave or by the time I get to drive back in the morning.

Max Krug 38:24
Right. So that’s an important point, because it’s like, so what is difficult for us when we’re doing these large Transformations is sometimes for the system to be efficient. Most operations need to be less efficient, and that’s hard for people to understand. And so it’s like, was one company one into where we, we increase the number of work orders on the floor by 10x because they had these huge orders. So we cut the order batch by 10. So now, the people in production control need the right or need to print 10 times as many work orders. And like this isn’t an efficient for us. Yeah, but it’s efficient for the system because we can control the flow now in production. So that’s the other thing that’s hard for people is like for the system to be efficient. Most steps need to be less efficient, and people can’t get that through their head.

Curt Anderson 39:12
Okay, man, this is yeah, so good man are some really good comments here. You’re speaking my language today. Identifying problem and love this is going Diane’s gonna go home with whiplash because not so much in agreement. David says he loves the QR code. And so Whitney agrees. Dude, I think that that is no to me. I next let’s go here, dude. I mean, we’re just let’s keep this we’re on fire right now. I knew this was gonna be good. So let’s, you know, again, like you’ve shared multiple multiple case studies with me over the years, you know, we’re standing there together, you’re like, oh, Kurt, you know, this throughput. This, you know, like, talk about the throughput, the big dynamic changes, when like, even if, like you said, you have to take a step back to get those Back in third, four steps forward, talk a little bit about some of the wins, or some things that folks could expect, as we’re having this conversation here.

Max Krug 40:08
So if you haven’t gone through any type of what I call formal process improvement, so we do a lot of point solutions, right? So a lot of companies do, oh, we’re gonna do a setup reduction here, we’re going to do five s over here, we’re gonna do quality initiative here. And it’s like, that’s the point solution concept is like, that’s where I started my career. And I wasn’t getting results from companies. So frustrating for me, it’s like, we did all these changes, and nothing’s getting better, like delivery performance as an increase, inventory hasn’t gone down, lead, time hasn’t gone down, quality issues haven’t gone down. It’s like, why don’t we do it? And then I started to learn more from Dr. Gold round about the system thinking it’s like, okay, I need to step back and look at it from a system perspective and understand like, where are the leverage points, the leverage points is where we can apply some techniques and get huge benefit for the system. Yep. And so it’s like, you got to have the system stable. So what I learned from Dr. Deming is, if you have an unstable system, doing point solutions is actually going to make it worse, we’re still trying to do these continuous improvement events, and things get worse, meaning inventory goes up even more, right? More quality issues, maybe that one operation is doing better, but from a system are doing worse. So it’s like, you got to step back and say, okay, understand, what’s the cause and effect happening on the system? Where are the leverage points. And if we can focus there, it’s all about making that leverage point, more efficient. And in most cases, the other people need to be less efficient to make that one point more efficient. And that’s super hard. For companies. It’s like, because we’ve been trained our whole life, like be efficient, be efficient, be efficient, and we come and say, No, don’t be efficient. Like, what are you talking about? What are your thoughts?

Damon Pistulka 42:00
Well, I think you know, like yourself, when you you speak of theory of constraints, and the things like Deming, interchangeably, almost, but when when you apply it, the theory of constraints is so nice, because it allows you to go okay, here’s where we should focus. And then he talks about because we know that is a lever point for the entire business, and then you go in there and you can use some of the Deming, Six Sigma kind of stuff in there. If that is correct to do if it’s not clear, you’re totally right, because it’s like, I love the the graphic that you’ll see people use sometimes where it’s like two big pipes with a little teeny pipe in the middle that’s like that pipe, that little teeny section is what’s limiting your business. And you’re right, all these endpoint solutions all around here for doing all the little specific improvements. Don’t do a thing for the business until you get that little pipe bigger. And let the flow through. Go go faster. Cool.

Curt Anderson 42:57
So Max, what are some tips advice, folks who are out there? And again, like say manufacturers like man, I hear you I love this. I still I’m still stuck. I have exactly what David just described. I’ve got the two big pipes with a little pipe. Next, how do you help folks identify those constraints? And how do you help remove them? Let me start with how do you hope folks identify those constraints?

Dave Griffith 43:22
That’s a tough, that’s an easy question, Kurt. Thank you for giving it to max.

Curt Anderson 43:29
I did that just for Dave? No, I’m just kidding.

Max Krug 43:31
So it’s funny, because when I go when I start doing training with companies, when we start the project, I asked people where they think the constraint is robbing companies were correct. Zero.

Curt Anderson 43:42
Fascinating. Why is that next

Max Krug 43:45
because they’re making an assumption based on the current system. And when you change the system, the whole dynamics change. So I went into one company, it’s like, they said, Oh, our constraints and our layout Department said, Okay, let’s take a walk out there. So we walk out there and say, Okay, why is it the lamp department looking at all the parts waiting to go through layout? It’s like, they’re all piled up here. So I started talking to operators, I said, Okay, so how many shifts you run? Oh, we’re running three shifts, seven days a week? I’m like, Well, what’s your utilization? They look at me like, you know, dog turn the head sideways. Like, what a lot. I go, how many hours you actually working on arts? Like that’s a good question. I said, they said most of these parts here, we have to because it’s aerospace, we have to take a core sample, we send it out to a lab to get the core sample, you know tested and when it comes back and we have a good you know, core sample test, we start processing. And so I go to the plant manager, I go, so I just have one question for you. How many of these tests fail the, the, you know, materials test is like less than 1%. Then why are you holding them? Oman has a serial number. If it failed to test we can we know where it is we can pull it out downstream. So we change that policy, we don’t have to wait for the test to come back the prudent to process them, the floodgates open. We have like, mind blowing,

Unknown Speaker 45:17
it’s a different place.

Max Krug 45:18
There was a policy that they had that it’s like, oh, we don’t release the product until we get the test results. But the risk is so small, right? Stop doing that.

Curt Anderson 45:29
The policy was the was the constraint. Dave, you know, thrown on your technology hat when you and Max take team projects together? How about from from your world? What are some things that you see as culprits or, you know, the, the criminals out there that are causing these constraints that you’re finding?

Dave Griffith 45:46
Yeah, so I’m certainly seeing it. Many times their communication issues, right, like one group, as Mac said, one group does something, they think to their best of abilities to potentially maximize their time. And then the next group is punished by it. Right. So Max, and I did a project at a brewery, right. So they were making beer, they were making a bunch of hard seltzers, and things like that. And so everyone in the cellar, everyone in all of the tank was always complaining about everything that they had to do, and how the schedule was so screwed up. And they never knew when something was gonna get pulled to actually go get canned. Because it could be the day it was said, or it literally could be two weeks later, right? So it caused them all of these issues. And it wasn’t infrequent that they literally had to go dump hundreds of 1000s of dollars worth of sold product, because it had timed out in the tanks. And so you go you talk to the folks doing the actual canning, and they’re like, Oh, this is terrible. Like I did the calculations one week, they were down like 20 hours, because they were trying to get the tanks prepared in order to go run it through the candlelight, right. And so I’m like, Guys, there’s got to be like, one side is getting hammered on this, because they never know when it’s ready. The other side is getting hammered because it’s never ready when they need to run it. And they also never know when they need to run it because the schedule changes six times a day. I’m like, What can we do? So we actually went and built. It’s basically like a Google Doc, right? So so we went, we built a Google Doc, there were a couple of checks in there. And we basically just increased, well, we didn’t increase, we just started the slightest bit of have the ability to communicate with two groups literally separated by 20 feet on the plant floor. And basically overnight, we had $200,000 a month of issues going away, right? Like we just rolled it out, and it was gone. Because they’re like, Oh, we shouldn’t just talk to the other person. And and these guys in the cellar absolutely want to get the tanks ready so that we don’t have to go bug them when there’s only one person ready. And and the guys in the cellar like yeah, we absolutely want to get these ready, because we’ve got three other things that need to go in this tank, we don’t want them screwing around with our tanks for four hours in the middle of every shift. And, and so you just provide people with the ability to solve their problems. And most of the time people will solve their problems. And that’s kind of one of the core tenants when I go talk with groups is that I mean substantially in a good stable organization, which is kind of the goal to work with, they know generally 90% of what they need to succeed, right, what like the biggest, lowest hanging fruit is asking them the correct questions and facilitating the correct conversations. And I have kind of niche down beyond kind of, as Max describe it, right? Like, I want to go and find jobs that more than pay for themselves in the shortest amount of time. And the question is, how can I facilitate these conversations in two or three days, right. And part of that is bringing the right people together. And part of the reason I want to do it in two, three days is because you cannot keep people’s focus for a week or for two weeks, because they already have 20 hours a day of work to do. So I just I literally am trying to get like 1520 hours of focus out of you know, a group of cross functional people. And I like that the majority of it is guys go write down these ideas. Let’s figure out if they’re profitable if they’re profitable, like we can just implement them, right? Like if we can go save $2 million a year on this idea. The bosses would be a fool to say no, regardless of it takes technology or not. Like if we can go find projects that pay for themselves. We’re just going to move on to the next project because no one would ever say no if we’ve already been successful.

Max Krug 49:23
So tell the refinery story.

Dave Griffith 49:25
Oh, yeah. So So Max and I last year, last year, when I drove back to Western New York, I got here and Max and I talk like 20 minutes after I pulled into to Buffalo and Max is like, yeah, this refinery that Max and I did a design sprint for a the year before earlier that year is having problems right? They have basically D rated their ability to run by something like 80% Right. So So typically, what I will say they typically run about a million dollars a day and they’re running like $200,000 a day worth worth of product through through this I upgraded system that they had done to just rebuild it right. So they rebuilt it, they made some basically no changes, but they’ve D rated themselves something like 80%. So, Max and I, Max and I show up and I guess Long story short, we got a little bit of focus, we we sat in a very hot conference room that allegedly had air conditioning running. But we were all sweating pretty good by the by the time we were done. And I guess Long story short, we did some troubleshooting. And we’re like, Okay, guys, what’s different now than last year when we looked at some historical data, and I guess, long story short, the compressors, were just continuing to push the psi in the airlines up and up and up. And it was like 30% above what it was five years ago, when they were running well, they also had some different raw materials that came in. And so basically, their relief valve continued to get bumped higher and higher and higher. And we basically just dropped the psi and the relief failed by something like 567 psi, and we pushed an extra half 1,000,008 $750,000 A day worth of process through the lines. Just I don’t know, Max and I should have gotten paid more for that. It was it was again, it was a hot sweaty six hours in in an alleged conference room. That was air conditioned. Yeah, yeah.

Curt Anderson 51:17
You should got Yeah, something for hardship there for that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Dave Griffith 51:21
So yeah. I don’t even think they’re brought drinks in with lunch. Okay. Hi.

Curt Anderson 51:26
So first off. Yeah, this is so good. I grazer says two minutes. So guys on our program, David, we call them moments of silence when like you guys are just dropping the mic. Just Just incredible value bombs over and over and over. Thank you. Thank you, Diane, we got tons of great comments here. Yeah, you guys get a chance here. You know, you know, if we all knew what we don’t know, that is the cause of the problem, you know, and be able to fix it ourselves. So guys, I want to be mindful of time. I know we’ve got a hard stop coming up here. So man, this was so good. So first off a couple of things. I want to recap, you guys are just absolutely amazing. I’ve learned so much from both of you. You know, dear friends enjoy hanging out with you guys. You guys just you know iron sharpens iron. You guys just make everybody around you so much smarter, more efficient, greatly appreciate what you guys bring to the table, Max food, you know, CEO of future state engineering. We’re for working folks, obviously here on LinkedIn. If somebody’s catching this on YouTube or another platform, where can folks connect and find you?

Max Krug 52:34
So LinkedIn, I’m posting all the time, three times a week. My website future state engineering.com My YouTube channel. So you have a YouTube channel that has all my videos. So there’s tons of information about learning about mindsets. I got a whole series on mindset change. So those are probably the three places you can find me most

Curt Anderson 52:57
awesome and absolutely. And boy, guys, if you ever get a chance to attend one of Max’s workshops or webinars is man it is worth every penny. It is gold. I’m telling you, I did it years and years ago, and I still use it on a daily basis. Dave, my friend, where’s the best place for folks to connect with you?

Dave Griffith 53:15
Absolutely. So if you guys are watching on LinkedIn, absolutely, please connect with me on LinkedIn, I spend what most people would say is way too much time on LinkedIn. I posting, talking with people about about all of this stuff and more on if you guys aren’t on LinkedIn, you guys can check out my website Kaplan ca p e li n.io. That will link you to my website and I’ve got some blog posts and I’ve got some videos and I’ve got like hundreds of them that need to get repopulated up there. I briefly mentioned profit by design that will get get rolling up on the up on the website soon at some point either this week or next week whenever I find time to 20 minutes to focus on that. Beyond that I will make the plug to manufacturing up so every Wednesday at about four o’clock East Coast time I go live with my counterpart fled on LinkedIn. You guys can also find us on the soleus PLC YouTube channel or manufacturing hub dot live we talk about all things manufacturing. Every month we pick a theme and we put four conversations around that with four different experts except this month we don’t have a theme we’re just kind of putting together a bunch of conversations that we are happy to have. But check us out. We again every Wednesday at about four o’clock we go live but we tried to do it for an hour but we can never do it within an hour. I don’t know how you guys keep it within an hour. We’re always like 90 minutes in and I’m pulling the shepherd’s hook saying sorry. We gotta leave like some people have things that they have to do with with their life but but please feel free to connect with me in any of those places coming out and ask questions.

Curt Anderson 54:48
Oh my god, I can’t like this. This like, blinked and like an hour just went by. Exactly. If anybody catching this on replay, we’re gonna have it in the show notes. We will have links to future state engineering, we’ll have links to Kaplan manufacturing hub podcasts you absolutely want. Boy, if you think Dave has a right here, you want to catch him on his podcast and on his LinkedIn live. And so guys will wind down, I just I, I cannot thank the two of you enough, I knew this was going to be good eye, we’ve got to have you guys back on because we need like, two or three or so we need to keep this going. But guys, if you have you know what I’d love to do next, you know, boy, you ever have a retirement case studies and what have you, you have a client that you want to bring on, you know, we create like a little panel that will do that. I think that’d be a lot of fun. Max, you and I will talk about that as we continue. So any parting thoughts, words of wisdom, Max crew, any parting thoughts, words of wisdom for everybody out there?

Max Krug 55:48
So it’s just like, it’s like, if there’s any companies out there that are looking for help? It’s like, it’d be great if you call us before the ship starts sinking? I used to get the call when the ship sinking. It’s like we’re in trouble.

Curt Anderson 56:04
That’s why I’m always picking his brain before I before I’m like Max, what about this? What about this? Dave? Any words of wisdom before we wind down?

Dave Griffith 56:12
I love that Max. Yes. So any any slightly buoyant chips, please, please give us a ring. But beyond that, I would say that we talked about a huge number of topics. But but everything is one step at a time we we briefly chatted about focus, right? Like think about where you are as an organization, think about where you want or need to be, and then go plot out what those steps look like. And it may seem like a huge path to get. But if you take it one step at a time, there is a much higher probability of success than just trying to to jump to the future state. Gosh,

Max Krug 56:46
yeah, focus. It’s like do what should be done and don’t do what shouldn’t be done. That’s the hard part.

Dave Griffith 56:51
Makes it sound so easy doesn’t. It’s

Curt Anderson 56:54
not easy. So, guys, thank you both so much. Appreciate you appreciate what you do for manufacturing. Appreciate your friendship. And boy, thank you for anybody out there. Whitney. Diane, David. Anybody out there listening connect with Dave Griffith here. Connect with Max crew, by you will certainly thank yourself your business will thank you. We’re gonna wind down. Damon, we’re back at it on Friday. You’ve got business here at six o’clock Eastern three o’clock Pacific on Tuesday and on Thursday. So, Damon just go to his profile. And we just wish everybody an amazing, incredible week. Thank you. God bless and we’ll talk to you soon. Okay, bye