On today’s show we are heading back to Brazil as we continue our season exploring the machining industry around the world.

Our guest is Ali Jamil Jomaa, executive director at Samot, one of the most significant automotive parts suppliers in Brazil. Jamil has been at Samot for 32 years and is an authority on the tricky business of running a large machining company in Brazil.

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Main Points

Jamil gives his background. He says he has been working at Samot for 32 years, since he was 18 years old and loves what he does. He started at the company on the shop floor doing maintenance on CNC lathes.

Though he already had some training working on CNC machines, as a teenager Jamil worked for his father, who owned a Lebanese restaurant. He also happened to be dating the daughter of the owner of Samot, Tomislav Jancar. One day he was delivering food from the restaurant to her father (his future father in law), and they spoke about Jamil’s knowledge of CNC machines. This led Tomislav to ask Jamil if he wanted to work at the company. Over time he worked his way up to Executive Director. (3:00 – 6:30)

Jamil tells the story of Samot’s owner, Tomislav, immigrating with his family to Brazil from Austria when he was 13 years old as a refugee of World War II. In Brazil, Tomislav studied mechanics and then went to work at Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen. Then he started his own machining company in 1960. (6:30 – 8:15)

Jamil says that Tomislav’s business philosophy was to always reinvest in the company, keeping up with the latest technology. This legacy is clear today with the company’s many INDEX CNC multi-spindles and other late model turning equipment. (8:15 – 10:00)

Jamil says that the majority of Samot’s customers are Tier 2 automotive (87-88% of sales). He says the remainder of the parts the company produces are for the defense industry. (10:00 – 10:45)

Jamil talks about how Brazil’s low valued currency (currently approximately 5 Brazil real to one US dollar) effects his company’s exporting strategies. Jamil says that while other companies try alter their business models with fluctuating currencies, he prefers to continue to export regardless whether real’s value falls or rises. He believes if Samot can make parts efficiently it can remain competitive all the time. He says he has put three sales representatives in the United States to bolster the company’s exports. (11:00 – 12:45)

Jamil talks about why Brazil is a tricky place to do business. He says companies have to pay considerable taxes and provide lots of benefits for employees. He says the median salary for an employee at Samot is the equivalent of $10,000 US per year. He says the lowest paid person makes $5,000 and the highest paid makes $80,000. Jamil says that Samot has to pay 80% on top of an employee’s salary. This means if an employee makes $10,000 it costs Samot $18,000. The company has to pay several types of taxes and benefits such social security, private health care, and food (he says the company has a great restaurant). Employees also receive a 13th month of salary for vacation that is also increased by 30%. He says employees have to work 150 days per year to pay their taxes. (12:45 – 19:20)

Jamil talks about the disparity of income across Brazil’s population. He says Brazil has 210 million people. He says 47% Brazilians are “economically active people,” but among those people, 25 million are unemployed (searching for work). He says 40% of those economically active people are doing work off the grid. He says that 75% of Brazilians are medium to lower class and 19% of Brazilians are at the bottom “miserable class.” Jamil says that every month he and some friends distribute food to 250 poor people in the street. (19:20 – 24:00)

Jamil says he sees a bright future for Brazil, but he doesn’t know how long it will take. He says the government has been making a lot of promises about privatization and taking away extra benefits given to government workers. He says if the tax laws are changed, the country can thrive because it has so many diverse resources. (24:00)

Jamil says he knows a lot of Brazilians who want to move to other countries. However, he says that most of them don’t want to move because of economic conditions. Instead, they want to get away from the corrupt government and crime. (26:20)

Jamil says in recent times he has realized a great spirit of the employees at Samot, seeing how well they have come together to deal with the obstacles presented by COVID-19. (27:00)

Question: Where are you vacationing during the COVID-19 summer?

On Season 4 of Swarfcast, we’re talking to people involved in the machining industry around the globe. On this week’s show, we visit India.

Today’s guest is Mayank Patel, director of Mayank BrassFit in Jamnagar, India. In the interview Mayank tells Noah his company produces Brass fittings primarily for Tribal Manufacturing and Parker Hannifin, both located in the United States. Mayank produces the majority of his parts on an expensive Buffoli Transfer machine. This is in stark contrast to his competitors who use cheap but slow single-spindle CNC lathes that require considerable manpower.

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Main Points

Noah introduces Mayank Patel, talking about the used Buffoli Transfer Machine Graff-Pinkert sold him a few years ago. (2:30) 

Mayank says he has  two Buffoli Transfer machines, one he bought new and other he bought used from Graff-Pinkert. He says that the new one cost 800,000 Euros. (3:20) 

Mayank gives his background. He lives in city called Jamnagar, which is the hub in India for manufacturing brass parts. He went to boarding school from ages 6-15, which he says is standard for a certain class of people in India. He spent two years in Bombay to complete is undergraduate degree. Then he went to London for four years and got a Masters Degree in international business. He says he later learned machining on the job, as opposed to having formal training. (4:30) 

Mayank talks about his family’s business. His family has been in business for a long time in the brass machining sector, and he wanted to join the company when he came back from studying in London. He wanted to run the international business operations of the company, but unfortunately he was 8th in line for this position. Mayank says the company did not want to expand into international markets like he did, but just keep the status quo, focusing on India’s domestic market. Ironically, Mayank says his father had explored opportunities to bring high production machines back to India and to export parts to the American market, but the family had never bought in. So, Mayank went on his own to start his own shop. (6:00) 

Mayank talks about exporting brass parts to US customers, Tribal Manufacturing and Parker Hannifin. He says it took him two and half years to get his first PO cut for those accounts. In 2018, when he came to the United States to dismantle the Buffoli he had bought from Graff-Pinkert he visited Parker Hannifin. He says before he started selling parts to Tribal and Parker Hannifin he was shipping parts to second tier distributors in Kansas City and Michigan.

Mayank says the main reason he bought his first Buffoli was to machine lead-free parts, which had not yet been done before in India. Mayank had to import lead-free brass rod samples from Italy to prove he could machine the material. At that time mills were not producing led-free brass in India because plumbing in India is entirely made up of iron pipes. Mayank says that before he proved he could run lead-free brass his own workers doubted him, saying it was impossible to run the material and he was wasting time and money attempting to. Mayank believed that if other countries required parts made from lead-free brass it had to be possible for him to machine it. He also knew that if he didn’t start machining it, a competitor would be the first to do it. (9:20) 

Mayank shows some parts he makes on the Buffoli for plumbing applications such as compression elbows machined from profiled bar. (See video). The parts are lead-free and he can machine them in 3.5 to 4 seconds. He also shows another part he makes from ECO BRASS with a volume of 1-2 million pieces. He says the tolerances are pretty wide open for brass plumbing parts (see video above). (14:00) 

Mayank says his competitors are now making parts with lead-less brass. He is using high quality ECO BRASS because he is sourcing OEMs in the United States, while his competitors are machining lower quality alloys for India’s domestic brass market. (17:00)

Mayank says that his competitors machine with inexpensive single-spindle CNC lathes. He says for each part it requires requires two machines. One lathe machines a blank, and then a second machine completes the part. Usually one person has to operate each machine. He says with this two machine process parts often have a 2 minute cycle time (one minute for each machine). Mayank runs the same parts on his Buffoli in 3.5 to 4 seconds.

Mayank says the machine shops running the single-spindle CNC lathes have to run lights-out to be profitable. He says he runs his Buffoli 20 hours a day. He also has 10 of the cheap single-spindle lathes in his shop for lower volume runs. (19:00)

Mayank says he personally works for 10-15 hours per day running the Buffolis and employs one other person to run them. He says he likes to be on the shop floor, solving problems and adjusting setups on the complex and powerful machines. (23:00) 

Mayank says that engineering is a very popular field for young people to study in India and that many companies send employees to their own engineering schools to groom their own workforce. (24:00) 

Mayank says a huge problem with running the slow single-spindle machines is that the large number of operators required creates tons of variables. He says the human factor decides the efficiency of a shop and the quality of the parts. If there are 50 machines, there are 50 different operators, 50 difference cycle times, and 50 different tolerances. (25:20) 

Mayank says when he was in Italy to get a demonstration of his Buffoli he observed a more efficient and focused work ethic than he generally sees in India. (26:50) 

Mayank says a typical machine operator in India makes less than the equivalent of $200 per month but this amount of money can go much further in India than many other countries. He says in India the cost of living is cheaper and often extended families live together sharing a house and car, which cuts expenses. (28:30) 

Mayank says a skilled machine setup person in India might make $600-$700 a month. He says that operators have the opportunity to climb the professional ladder and make more money as they acquire skills. He says his company also trains its own employees. (30:00) 

Mayank says nobody India wants to spend much money on technology. He says his peers tell him he is crazy to buy a million dollar machine when he could buy 50 single-spindle CNC lathes for the same money. Mayank says the stereotype that Indians like to negotiate is valid. He says there are negotiations on everything in India, from buying a carton of eggs, to buying materials, to buying machines. (33:00) 

Mayank says he sees India’s economy modernizing but says “change is always slow when you’re talking about a nation of 1.3 billion people.” He says the current Prime Minister is trying to change the country from what it was during the last 40-50 years, and obviously India is a huge market. He says there is a lot of high quality machining there but not for brass. He does not sell his parts domestically because Indians mainly want cheap brass products rather expensive high quality parts. (36:00)

Question: Do you expect products from India to be good quality?

On this week’s episode we’re continuing our tour of the machining world outside the United States.

Today’s stop is Brazil, where I’m speaking with Rogerio Salvatico, Industrial Manager at Engemet, a major precision parts supplier for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Automotive in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

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Main Points

(3:00) Rogerio gives his background. He grew up in São Paulo, Brazil. During high school he attended a specialized school with technical classes in the afternoon. When he was 17 he started an apprenticeship at Mecano Fabril, a machining company producing automotive components. The first machine he learned on was a Haas SL10, which he says he immediately fell in love with. He says for him the idea of CNC machining parts for cars was fantastic. Mecano Fabril had 60 Wickman cam multi-spindle screw machines.

(4:20) Rogerio says that after high school he went to university to study engineering. Later he went to work for Engemet, a large automotive parts supplier, where after eight years he became engineering manager. 

(5:30) Rogerio says São Paulo has a lot of industry and technical schools. He says the city has a lot of opportunities for people to work in the machining industry because lot of automotive suppliers are located nearby. 

(6:30) Rogerio says Engemet is primarily an automotive supplier. It supplies parts for Tier 1 and Tier 2, both cars and trucks.

(6:50) Rogerio states that most of the parts Engemet makes are for domestic use, though the company has supplied some firms in Germany. He says Brazil has factories of most of the major car companies from around the world. He says most of the cars manufactured in Brazil are sold in Brazil.

(8:20) Rogerio talks about Embraer Brazil, a Brazilian owned company that is the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, behind only Boeing and Airbus. He says many regional jets in the United States are produced by Embraer, usually models with 100 seats or less. He says Boeing recently tried to merge with Embraer, but the merger was stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

(10:20) Rogerio says that the salary of a machine operator in Brazil starts at around $500 a month, however this number is misleading because the current economic crisis has made the Brazilian reais plummet. He says when the currency is stable it is around 3 or 4 reais to the dollar. Recently the currency fell to 5 reais to the dollar and at one point it was around 6 to one dollar.

(12:20) Rogerio says that because of the falling Brazilian currency a lot of customers are asking domestic vendors to make parts that they were buying overseas in the past. He says this is a big opportunity for Brazilian manufacturing companies. However, current automotive parts volumes are at 40% of their average because of lower demand for cars during the pandemic. 

(15:00) Rogerio says there are a lot of machining companies in Brazil doing medical and dental implant components. He says there are also many companies machining components for the oil and mining sectors. 

(17:00) Rogerio shares that he hopes the Brazilian economy is going to improve before the end of the year. He says the country was optimistic the economy was going to have a good year at the beginning of 2020.  

(18:00) Rogerio says that it is pretty difficult to borrow money in Brazil. He says the country’s interest rates are very high, and it’s hard to buy capital equipment from abroad because used machine tool imports are taxed at 30 percent.

(20:20) Rogerio explains that it’s hard to start an automotive or aerospace parts supplier in Brazil because it takes so much capital, but he sees a lot of startups in the Dental and Medical sectors. 

(21:45) Rogerio says that Brazil’s president Balsonaro has been called the country’s version of Trump because he is pro free markets and often makes impulsive remarks. (Watch the clip below).

(23:15) Rogerio says that people in Brazil’s favelas (ghettos) sometimes work in machining shops, but it isn’t easy for them to get those jobs.

(25:15) Rogerio likes that people in Brazil are social and enjoy life. He says that families there spend a lot time together and he loves the country’s food and music. He says when the economy is good Brazilians are content, but when the economy has problems a lot of people want to leave. He says he would like to move to a smaller city in the country because it’s peaceful and without much crime, while still having a lot of industry.

(27:00) Rogerio says that Brazil is the seventh largest economy in the world. He says the country has a lot of opportunities to prosper in the future because of its manufacturing, oil, mining, and finance industries. However it’s still developing, so life there isn’t always easy.

Question: Is Brazil a place you would like to visit?

Today’s podcast is the second episode of a season in which we’re talking to folks in the machining world outside of the United States.

We’re making a second stop in the UK to talk to Tom Pearce, founder of CIRC Manufacturing in Westbury, England, a small CNC shop specializing in producing flow control products using a Citizen Swiss lathe and Hitachi 4-axis mills. Tom talked about entrepreneurship in the UK and his company’s first consumer product, a luxury pen machined from exotic super alloys.

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(2:10) Tom gives his background. He says he started as an apprentice electrician working with his father. Later he did maintenance engineering and installations in a big rubber factory that made strips and slabs of custom rubber compounds. Then he decided to start his own company. 

(7:10) Tom talks about starting CIRC Manufacturing. He says that while working at the rubber factory he taught himself to TIG weld on the weekends and started a welding side business. In 2014 one of his welding customers in the oil refining industry told Tom he had a job that was going to go big time and said this could give him enough work to start his own business. Tom says his dream was to start his own business so this opportunity gave him the impetus to quit his job and do it. Unfortunately, the big job he was promised never came. Tom had just signed a five month lease on shop space, so he took some small welding jobs. Then he got a lot of work welding cabinets for electronics, which enabled him to grow a business.  

(10:30) Tom says he thinks British people have an entrepreneurial spirit because he sees more and more people wanting to be self-employed.

(11:30) Tom talks about a luxury pen (see photo) he designed made from exotic super alloys such as Inconel and Nitronic 16. CIRC Manufacturing is now producing the pens on a 1993 Citizen L320. Tom says he thought it was a good product to sell because it is a product that people already want. He says the pen is important for showcasing his company’s capabilities as well has creating a new revenue stream. It is priced at 200 GBP. Tom says he spent months resurrecting the Citizen, but it now is a very reliable machine. He jokes that the tooling on the machine likely costs more than the machine itself.

(17:50) Noah asks if most English people are happy living in England. Tom says he thinks they are, but he admits he is speaking as someone who lives in the country side, so he can’t speak for everyone around the country.

(19:00) Tom says that his biggest challenge is to find the right people to work in his shop. He says the challenge is not necessarily because of a lack of talent available. He says he is most concerned with finding people he can work well with. Currently Tom has one full time employee, one independent contractor, and his mother does the office work.

(21:00) Noah asks Tom how he thinks British people view machining. Tom says living in the country he sees enthusiasm for machining, but he says that people in bigger cities may be less interested. But, he says he thinks that recently machining seems to be being portrayed as a little more hip on the Internet and on social media.

(23:25) Tom says that 2020 would be a good year if his company could finish as well it started. He says it started off well but when COVID-19 hit, he couldn’t get material he needed from Germany for several weeks. He says business fell off for a short time but has picked up.

(24:00) Tom says that CIRC Manufacturing’s specialty is flow control products—parts for metering, instrumentation, shafts, pins, and bushes. He says on the Citizen he makes pins and shafts, and for parts 20mm and larger he uses two Hitachi Seiki 4-axis mill turn machines. 

(25:00) Noah asks Tom to tell him something interesting he has learned in the last week. Tom says he learned how much work two men and a couple of old CNC machines can put out in a week. 

(26:30) Tom says that people can find out more about his company, CIRC Manufacturing, by going to his website, www.circmfg.co.uk. 

Question: What was the first machine tool you ran?

Today’s podcast is the first episode in a multi-part series in which we’re interviewing people in the machining world outside the United States. Our first stop was England, where we interviewed Joe Reynolds.

Joe is Director of MTD, a company with several popular websites based in the UK that market prominent machine tool builders and inform people in the machining business on the latest news and technology. He also refers to himself as a “Swarf Guru,” so of course we had to interview him!

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(3:20) Joe shares his background. Originally, he was an engineer and did a 6-year apprenticeship. He worked in sales with a few American companies before starting his own tooling company. Then at the EMO trade show 10 years ago he met Paul Jones, founder of Machine Tool Direct (MTD), which would be later known as MTD. Together they have grown the business to a staff of around 25 people. 

(4:35) Joe explains that MTD is a marketing company for machine tool companies as well as other industrial products firms. Joe says they work with Europe’s largest and most familiar CNC machine tool companies. 

(5:05) Joe describes how MTD works. Its websites focus on talking to people about CNC machines and other machine shop products. The sites feature tons of videos showing the products in action. MTDCNC.com is the most popular.

(7:40) Joe talks about the MTD Podcast. He says that anything that happens in the four walls of a machine shop is a good topic for discussion on the show, from the technology and tooling, to the people behind the scenes. 

(9:20) Joe debunks Noah’s preconceived notions about the UK machining industry. Noah says he has heard that the UK is no longer a major manufacturing center these days. Joe says that UK mainstream media would agree with Noah’s assessment. However, he says a deeper knowledge of the business reveals that manufacturing is massive in the UK. He says it represents 20% of the country’s GDP and nearly 80% of its total exports. He says the average annual salary in the machining field is about 32,000 Sterling, which is above the national average across all industries. He says the country has fewer factories, but they are more efficient. He says the UK is still lagging behind some other countries in Europe as far as adopting automation. 

(12:00) Joe claims that “approximately 80,000 businesses are doing something with a piece of metal in the UK.” He also mentions that the UK is working at improving certain disparities in the industry, including the fact that just 1 in 8 women are employed in manufacturing. He says the country is also struggling with an aging workforce. He says before the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation was 20,000 people short of the skilled labor needed to support the industry.

(14:00) Noah talks about his preconception that there is an occupational “caste” system in the UK. Joe says that this may have been true in the past, but things are changing for the better in England. Joe says that 20 years ago his peers questioned him going into engineering. He also reports that the perception of machinists is improving in the UK. He says there are more apprenticeships and more people are realizing that factories are cleaner and the money is good. 

(18:15) Joe talks about how the country is coping with COVID-19 and how that has impacted the machining industry. He says the government intervened with what it calls a furlough scheme. He says things aren’t as bad as you read in the papers, and that much like in the US, machining companies in the UK range from really hurting to doing well. 

(19:30) Joe describes the Ventilator Challenge, implemented by the UK government in response to the shortage of ventilators. He says the country’s manufacturing sector quickly produced 14,000 ventilators. The initiative helped some companies through a difficult time.

(20:20) Noah and Joe discuss Brexit. Joe claims 50% of people think it’s a good thing while 50% do not. He says the consensus is that it would be best if the country leaves with a deal. He says a good outcome would be the loosening of restrictions on relationships with countries outside of the EU and on exporting to those countries. He says some people believe that the UK doesn’t get enough out of the EU to justify the money it contributes to it. He says fewer companies are leaving then expected because of Brexit. 

(23:30) Joe talks about major companies with factories in UK, including: Boeing, Nissan, Ford, Toyota, Lotus, Jaguar, and Rover. He also lists aerospace companies such as Boeing, Airbus, and Spirit Airways. He says that Boeing chose to build a factory there, even when it knew that Brexit was coming.

(25:20) Joe says the UK is a good place to start a business. (see video) He compares machining company startups in the US to those in the UK. He says he sees a lot of US machining companies starting out in home garages, which is very rare in the UK. He says in England around 60% of machine shops are SME (small to medium enterprises) and have less than 10 people on staff. He says there has never been a better time to start a machining company in the UK, even with the COVID-19 pandemic. He says it is easy to borrow money and find grants, and machine tool dealers will sell machines with deferred payments and zero deposit up front. Joe asks Noah if the American Dream is real. Noah says that many Swarfcast listeners would say that it is. Noah says Americans have a tendency to lump all foreign countries together, which doesn’t provide an accurate picture of businesses overseas.

(30:00) Joe says that a lot of reshoring of manufacturing is occurring in the UK. He says it was already happening due to automation and robotics, as well as rising labor costs in China, and COVID-19 has accelerated the trend. 

(31:00) Joe says that revenues at his company are up and his websites are doing well despite COVID-19. 

(32:00) To view Joe’s various websites, visit MTDCNC.com (machine tools), MTDMFG.com, swarfandchips.com, and MTD.network (supply network). The MTD podcast is available on all the podcast platforms.

Question: Is America still a good place to start a business?

Today’s guest on the show is Timo Lunceford, general manager of Swiss Productions, a 25,000-square-foot Swiss CNC shop in Ventura, California, that specializes in fluidic medical components.

Recently Swiss Productions introduced two 7-axis collaborative robots to work in tandem with two Haas CNC mills. Timo says the robots increase the production on each machine by the equivalent of 30-40 hours per week.

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Main Points

(3:00) Timo discusses his background. He Joined Swiss Productions at age 20 when he married the owner’s daughter. He has worked his way up from the very bottom to Vice President and General Manager.

(6:00)  Timo describes how Swiss Productions grew from an 8,000-square-foot shop with just 12 machines to a 25,000-square-foot facility with over 50 machines. He says 70% of the company’s business is making medical device fluidic components. It also manufactures parts for irrigation, automotive, and aerospace industries.

(7:55) Timo speaks about the company’s unique experience manufacturing parts for the medical industry. He says a major part of growing in that sector is networking and developing relationships around the world. 

(10:40) Timo talks about introducing collaborative robots to the machine shop. The company recently purchased two OB7 cobots from Productive Robotics. Timo says the company chose that brand because it seemed to be very user friendly and features 7-axis models.

(12:20) Timo says that at first employees were suspicious about the role of the robots in the shop. However, soon they realized that their jobs were not at risk and that the robots handled tedious labor, which freed them up to complete more interesting tasks.

(12:50) Timo describes how the OB7 robots help make valves for syringe pumps working in tandem with Haas mills. The robot picks up the unfinished valve, opens up the door of the machine, blows out the collet inside the machine and puts the unfinished part in the machine. Then, it opens a collet holding a finished part, takes the part out and drops it into a bucket. The robot then closes the collet, closes the machine’s door, and hits the start button on the machine. The robots can run lights out.

(14:40) Timo discusses the uniqueness of the OB7 model and how it is programmed through demonstration.

(15:45) Timo speaks about how the shop has increased the productivity of their two Haas mills by 30-35% using collaborative robots. He estimates the shop saves 30-40 production hours a week on each machine.

(16:20) Timo says that time is the most precious commodity for both the business and its employees. For the last 10 years, employees at Swiss Productions have enjoyed a 4-day workweek (10 hour days). He says that automation is playing a part to save the company money and give employees more time with their families.

(19:30) Timo says that Swiss Productions has remained operational throughout the COVID-19 pandemic because it is considered an essential business. He shows a picture of the syringe the company makes components for and describes how it is incorporated in tests for the virus. (see video above) He says last week he learned that the syringe component has been used in over 9,000 tests per day. He says that knowing that the parts his company makes save lives gives him purpose.

(21:00) Timo says he wants to understand how every part his company makes is used and how it makes a difference in the world. He says that sharing this knowledge with employees gives them purpose and motivates them to do great work. He encourages everyone in the machining business to go to work with a passion because it is an opportunity to change the world.

Question: Why are you NOT using robots in your shop?

Today’s guest on the show is Zac Bogart, founder of Productive Robotics.

Productive Robotics manufactures a 7-axis collaborative robot called the OB7. Zac says that the OB7 is different from other robots because it can’t be programmed with code, it only works by the operator showing it what to do. Also, by featuring 7 axes rather than the 6 axes of a typical robot, the OB7 has the ability to do more awkward human-like movements, such as grabbing a part inside a CNC machine while not being directly in front its door.

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Main Points

3:10: Zac shares how he got his start, creating large robots to move around special effects equipment for the film industry. His experience working with non-programmers inspired the company to build a type of robot that anyone could use.

5:15: Zac describes how his company, Productive Robotics, began developing collaborative robots in 2015. Its goal was to produce a user-friendly robot that didn’t require programming but learned through demonstration. 

6:05: Zac talks about the advantages of his company’s 7-axis robot, the OB7. He says it mimics the human arm, giving the robot more maneuverability in the workplace. For instance, the robot can reach into a machine’s door even while it is not directly in front of it.

7:30: Zac describes typical applications for the OB7 in a CNC machine shop and how the robot is used to simplify routine and monotonous tasks on the shop floor.

10:50: Zac talks about the difference between how the OB7 moves from other collaborative robots on the market. It is not programmed using a series of points like traditional robots. This can make its movement seem more natural and less “robotic.”

14:35: Zac says the OB7 has a tablet, but it does not work by inputting code like most other robots. Zac says that there is still a place on the tablet where you can see coordinates if needed, but controlling the robot is almost entirely based on showing it what to do.

16:15: Zac says other collaborative robots on the market say they have easy programming, but it’s only easy if you are a programmer. He says many people are able to learn how to program a robot using code, but they still have to spend time and energy learn. 

18:35: Zac talks about asking his son to teach him how to swing a baseball bat. He wanted to observe how his son showed him how to swing a bat. Understanding this aspect of the learning process aided Zac in designing the OB7.

22:00: Zac says that the OB7 doesn’t require an integrator to install it in most cases. For CNC machining customers, Productive Robotics includes a package that enables the operator to set it up.  

24:00: Zac says Productive Robotics emphasizes safety in its products. He says that all collaborative robots have certain standards they must comply with regarding their speed.

25:00: Zac says we are in the second inning when it comes to building robots. He says that ultimately all robots will be collaborative robots and we won’t need to program them. He says we will give robots commands and hopefully they will obey.

27:00: Zac says he prefers The Terminator 2 over The Terminator 1. He also talks about working on the special effects crew on the set of Star Wars but not knowing anything about the droids until he saw the movie. 

Question: How have you used robots in your machine shop?

On today’s show, we’re talking about manufacturing returning to the United States from overseas. Our guest is Mike Micklewright, Director of the Kaizen Institute.

Mike says we may have finally reached a tipping point when manufacturers accept that it makes sense to produce goods again in North America.

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Main Points

(2:15) Mike Micklewright explains that Kaizen is about transforming businesses to get rid of waste in their processes and building a culture of continuous improvement. He says this is accomplished by putting the right systems in place for leadership and communication.

(3:30) Lloyd Graff asks if the Kaizen Institute has its own waste. Mike says the institute needs to limit waste like all organizations and it has systems in place to try to operate by the principles it espouses.

(4:30) Mike defines on-shoring as bringing the industrial base and manufacturing base back to the closest proximity of the consumer.  

(4:50) Mike says that manufacturing goods overseas and shipping them to the consumer creates significant waste. He says companies that outsource to China don’t always look at the total cost of production. 

(6:45) Mike says that one challenge to bringing manufacturing back to the United States is that purchasing people are evaluated on a metric called Purchasing Price Variance (PPV). He says PPV signifies the actual price vs the standard price. He says the standard price sometimes means the price of an item the previous year, and purchasing people are trying to make the actual price lower than that. Making products overseas is one way to try to accomplish that goal. Mike says the purchasing people often do not look at the transportation costs or other logistics costs. He says they also fail to take into account risks such as labor strikes, natural disasters or pandemics.  

(8:35) Mike says there is a ton of data available to present to top management of companies to try to make them see the waste caused by off-shoring. He says we need to utilize various tools available to present the data, otherwise they will just choose to ignore it and keep doing what they have been doing. He says the trade war has also helped pursued companies to bring work back.

(10:20) Mike says Covid-19 and other recent catastrophes have made companies consider risk factors more than ever before. He says Covid-19 demonstrated how reliant the United States is on imports from foreign countries for its livelihood.

(11:40) Mike says Japanese companies set a good example of how to be self-reliant. They want to keep their manufacturing close to their consumers. They also don’t want to borrow money from their governments or from foreign governments. 

(14:00) Mike says the US isn’t totally ready to bring a lot of manufacturing back. He says the US manufacturing base has shrunk and the country has less people with skills and interest in manufacturing. He says implementing robots in shops and new education programs are helping to deal with the workforce problem. 

(17:25) Mike says outsourcing to Mexico is less of a problem than outsourcing to China. He says it creates less waste because Mexico is closer and its culture is more similar to that of the US. However crossing borders has challenges as well as potential for political strife between countries. Mike says bringing back manufacturing from China and putting it in Mexico is called near-shoring, as opposed to on-shoring. He says near-shoring has been occurring more than on-shoring.

(20:15) Mike says he hasn’t seen a lot of waste costs for the manufacturing industry caused by Mexican drug cartels. But, he says their influence the Mexican government could increase risk of doing business there.

(22:30) Mike says wages in China have been rising for the last 20 years, and this has brought some work back to the US. He says Covid-19 and the trade war may have finally caused a tipping point for companies to bring work back to the US. Yet, still he admits he can’t name specific companies doing it. He says some information about this is confidential.

(23:00) Lloyd says we hear in the used machinery business that US companies are quoting against China, but still he seldom hears of much work actually coming back. Mike says we need to get salespeople to understand the concept of “total cost of ownership” so when they are asked to make a proposal they are not just presenting a price tag. 

(27:00) Mike says that even though we have not seen on-shoring yet on a large scale, the issue is hitting mainstream news rather than just business news, which could mean we are at a tipping point.

(29:00) Mike says that he just bought a 1992 Winnebago to take a two week trip. He says he bought it at a good price, but then he had to pay an inspector and it needed lot of repairs. He says his purchase was a demonstration of people’s natural inclination to look only at price, rather than look at total cost. 

Question: Is work coming back from China?

Today’s guest on the podcast is Darrell Sutherland, founder and owner of Dylan Aerospace in Auburn, Washington, a Tier 1 supplier for Boeing.

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Darrell is also a professional mentor. He believes in using the Kaizen manufacturing principles for personal development as well as to improve a business. He believes in the power of mentorship so fervently that he spends over $100,000 a year on his own education.

Main Points

(3:40) Darrell talks about his personal transformation in the last decade or so. He says that for many years it was hard for him to just get out of bed because he wasn’t happy with his life, despite his success and running a business he loved.

(4:15) Darrell says growing up he looked awkward and was bullied a lot but thinks his difficult childhood prepared him for adversity later in life. He says when he was young he got into martial arts, which made him realize his passion for learning and more importantly teaching. He says he has a talent for deconstructing ideas and concepts and synthesizing them into individuals’ unique abilities. 

(5:40) Darrell grew up in Washington state. His grandfather and father worked for Boeing. His father told him to never be a “number” working for Boeing.

(8:00) Darrell says his manufacturing business had been very successful and made a lot of money for a long time before he underwent his personal transformation. He was even able to take more than 10 years off from day to day operations so he would have a lot of time to raise his kids. Yet he still wasn’t content with his life as he was addicted to food and alcohol, gaining over 100 pounds. He says November of 2009 he realized that he needed to change direction, starting with his health. Darrell says it took him many years and thousands of dollars to get the guidance he needed to fix his life. 

(11:00) Darrell in the end realized that the Kaizen principles he had embraced in his manufacturing business could be applied to his own personal life. Darrell summarizes the Kaizen principles as deciding what one wants to accomplish and then analyzing and breaking it down to its root. Then a person starts making small incremental changes at the lowest level he can, and then analyzes the result at that low level. The process makes a person more aware of certain facts about his own life that he hadn’t looked at before. Then when a person can understand the roots of what the real issues are, he can understand the challenges he needs to overcome. Darrell calls his philosophy “living Kaizen,” and in his new book he writes about its parallels with the Toyota Kaizen model. 

(14:30) Darrell says that reshoring of manufacturing is happening quickly and we as a country need to be prepared for it. He says despite Covid-19 this is probably one of the greatest times to be in manufacturing. He says that the pandemic demonstrated to everyone that the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing during the last few decades put the United States in a terrible position in the areas of infrastructure and national security. 

(15:40) Darrell says before Covid-19 he was already planning for 2020 to be a big year for his company. He says that several years ago his company started an initiative called I Love MFG. MFG stands for “Moving, Feeding, and Guarding” America and the world. 

(16:55) Darrell says that young people have no connection to manufacturing. He says they don’t think about their consumer items or modes transportation that are created through manufacturing. He says with reshoring upon us he is going to devote himself to opening young people’s minds to manufacturing.

(19:30) Darrell says that people often “stumble” into the world of manufacturing rather than set out to make it their trade. He says the question we need to ask is, how do we turn people into professional manufacturing people? He says we need to analyze how people are hardwired from birth and softwired by their community and then find the lane for them in the manufacturing space. He says he interviews his employees of all levels to help them figure out their talents and find the best way they can excel at his company.

(24:30) Darrell talks about how to find mentors and why they are so important. He says mentors are important to help us to find our weaknesses so we can fix them but to find the right mentor a person has to figure out what he wants. Darrell says to look on social media for mastermind groups to locate mentors, but he warns to watch out for life coaches who haven’t already achieved anything in their lives. 

Darrell says for more information about Living Kaizen people can go to his Website, darrellasutherland.com and lifeapprentaceship.com where he will be giving away a free PDF with an introduction to his program.

Question: Which self-help books have benefited you in the past?

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Our guest on today’s podcast is Tom Scanlan, publisher of Surplus Record, an online and printed marketplace for buying and selling used industrial equipment, founded in 1924 by Tom’s Grandfather.

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I use Surplus Record along with several other online platforms every day for our machinery business, Graff-Pinkert. But Surplus Record is unique because it combines the simplicity and transparency of an old school print publication with the convenience and speed of an online platform.

Main Points

(3:00) Tom says Leonard Graff and Aaron Pinkert, owners of Graff-Pinkert, taught him about Wickman Screw Machines when he started at Surplus Record in 1982.

(3:25) Tom says Surplus Record is the only print publication left of used machinery and industrial equipment. He says it is sent out monthly to 137,000 subscribers, 99% in the U.S. and Canada. 

(3:55) Tom talks about putting Surplus Record listings on the Web in 1995 after urging from his brother, who was in Silicon Valley. He laughs about how most of the machinery dealers at the time didn’t even know what a website was. 

(6:10) Tom says Surplus Record’s Website is constantly updated by machinery and electrical equipment dealers. He says one thing endusers appreciate about Surplus Record is that they don’t have to register to get information. Company names and phone numbers are clearly visible, unlike some other online machinery trading platforms. Also, Tom says Surplus Record’s own contact information is clearly visible on its site for endusers to call if they need credit references for sellers. He says his office gets six to eight calls per day by people asking to confirm if advertisers are legitimate. Tom says he or one of his staff personally visits 90% of Surplus Record’s advertisers, so they can stay up to date with what’s going on at their businesses and who is currently working there. 

(10:15) Tom says in the last few weeks several manufacturers have called Surplus Record to make sure they would receive their monthly print editions. They were concerned that during the COVID-19 crisis they might lose access to the Web and not be able to get the equipment they need if it goes down in the shop.

(11:40) Noah says he uses Surplus Record every day for its constantly active free bulletin board of wanted and for sale equipment.

(13:00) Tom talks about Surplus Record first accepting advertisements from auctioneers in 2005. This came about because many machinery dealers were becoming auctioneers. 

(14:45) Tom says Surplus Record is very popular for people who need electrical equipment quickly when it goes down. He says the transparent information about Surplus Record’s sellers (company name and contact information) makes it quicker and more user friendly than eBay.

(16:00) Tom talks about his father dying suddenly, which led to him running Surplus Record. He says he was trained on the job by a lot of the company’s clients.

(17:00) Tom says he is happy that his 32-year-old son, Tom IV, is now working at Surplus Record and will become his successor. He says his son still believes in keeping the print publication, but he admits that his son is much more Internet savvy than he is. He says he knows his son will come up with new ways of doing things, just like each successive generation of the 96-year-old company. 

Question: Do you prefer reading print or on the Web?