Latest / Learnings and Missteps by Depth Builder / The Goal Calabosession #5
Transcript
- 0:00The only way to engage with trades is to actually do it.
- 0:03To have real conversations and meals.
- 0:06I have some pretty good relationship with people who are working in trades.
- 0:11And I couldn't consider those people my friends, you know, as human beings.
- 0:15Like my friend who's a owner of a business and I have a friend who is a iron worker.
- 0:22And I consider them both equal friends as the hierarchy of friends go in my world.
- 0:27But I've been trying to think about that and this is how you truly engage.
- 0:32Bring these people over to your house like they're your friends because they truly are, or go to their house and even though they might be culturally different with their family, if you're truly friends, even if you don't speak the same language, doesn't matter at all.
- 0:47So I think that's really cool we get the opportunity to do that.
- 0:51I'm trying to do that more often with people we work with.
- 0:54Yeah, man.
- 0:54we gotta do better.
- 0:56I was at a lean Coffee with Skiles group yesterday with Jen, with Keyan Zandy and Buddy.
- 1:01Got to hang out with Buddy.
- 1:02He's awesome.
- 1:03And one of the things I put on the board was like, let's talk about deepened connections.
- 1:10I think it's an important point and I've seen it, I saw it again, totally different group of people.
- 1:16Same thing.
- 1:17It was two big takeaways in the little 10 minutes that we talked about it.
- 1:20I was like, guys, do y'all ever notice when you walk a job and you go to interact with a trade worker, how they stare at the ground and kind of scatter ? And everybody's like, oh wow.
- 1:32Like, yeah, you're right.
- 1:33I was like, that is because we have conditioned them to view that human interaction as punitive.
- 1:42When the people come around with the clean vests and like, you see all of us straighten up.
- 1:49Go away.
- 1:49Get off your ladders.
- 1:50Go throw the ladders in the closet.
- 1:52But we train them, we train them to go and hide.
- 1:55Now I'm not a big shot or anybody, but I'm not typically on the project.
- 2:02So if I'm walking the job I'm a new face.
- 2:05And my vest is pristine.
- 2:07My boots they're clean.
- 2:08I keep myself clean.
- 2:09So it's obvious that I'm not a working person and it's obviously I'm not part of the normal project team.
- 2:15So immediately I get treated like what's happening here?
- 2:18And I've done it, like I've trained, I've given advice, I've shown pictures.
- 2:24Hey is this guy shows up, go away.
- 2:26Go the roof.
- 2:27Oh yes.
- 2:29Collab Session number five has finally dropped.
- 2:32That is my buddy Thomas L and you are gonna notice in this conversation, it's a little more free flowing.
- 2:39A little more freestyle baby.
- 2:41Uh, Thomas brought the game.
- 2:43The first four collab sessions?
- 2:45Yes, I said four.
- 2:46So that means that there's some more for you to go in and enjoy and consume, especially over the holidays Now, the conversations were kind of framed around some notes and some ideas or some thinking rather, that Thomas put into play in preparation for you guys.
- 3:00from here forward, these next few collab sessions are gonna be a little looser, which is more my style.
- 3:06You may notice that I'm gonna be talking just a little bit more, Before you get to the rest of the conversation, I wanna ask you to give a shout out fist.
- 3:19Hugs, love, positive vibes, all of those things to our patrons.
- 3:23We're wrapping up 2022 and we've had some patrons that have been committed to us all year long, some of them longer than a year.
- 3:31They have contributed to the experience that you're having.
- 3:34Uh, so if you've enjoyed it, let us know.
- 3:37And if you haven't, like, let us know.
- 3:39Uh, patrons.
- 3:40Love y'all very much.
- 3:41Hope to spend another year with y'all and the intent is for us to continue providing some type of value, some awesome experience, uh, that you're proud to be a part of, and we appreciate you for that.
- 3:52And then we'll be calculating the amount of money that we're gonna be contributing to the Skilled Trades Alliance, because that's part of the idea, right?
- 3:5980% of whatever we get from the patrons, we're turning around and contributing that to Skilled Trades Alliance because Skilled Trades Alliance got it going on, baby.
- 4:08You gotta check them.
- 4:09and we're gonna make a little switch.
- 4:11Normally we would have a LnM Family member shout out at the end of the episode, and I'm not sure if anybody's actually listening all the way to the end, you know, who knows?
- 4:22And so I wanna make sure that the LnM Family members that are going out of their way To leave a comment or a review get recognized, and I want everybody to know that you leave a comment, you leave a review.
- 4:33We're gonna be recognizing you, baby.
- 4:35So here we go.
- 4:36This shout out is for LnM Family member Mr.
- 4:39James Gable, host of the Uncommon Communicator Podcast dropped this comment for us.
- 4:45He says, Jesse, I've really enjoyed the collab sessions on the goal.
- 4:49With Thomas Lame, keep them coming.
- 4:52I have encouraged several others to read the book.
- 4:55We all have a couple of Herbies in our lives.
- 4:59In the last collab session, we start talking about Herbie.
- 5:01We talk about Herbie some more.
- 5:03Uh, so help people understand what that Herbie is and more importantly, go out and help a Herbie.
- 5:08and before we go, one more thing.
- 5:10The Lean & Love Reflection Journal is out the final.
- 5:15Final, final edited version of it is available for you on the Amazon.
- 5:21And also, I gotta give another shout out to another LnM Family member, no BS tribe member, uh, Maria Martin and Krista Ales.
- 5:29They both went out of their way to give us feedback in terms of what the journal, how the journal needed to be tweaked.
- 5:37Their feedback has been incorporated into the final available for purchase Lean & Love Reflection Journal.
- 5:44So go to the Amazon, get you a copy.
- 5:47It's a monthly journal if you've already got one leaving us a review, some stars, um, all of the above would be deeply appreciated.
- 5:54Okay, and here we go onto the rest of collab session number five.
- 6:05And now I'm probably the one there showing the picture too.
- 6:08How do we change that?
- 6:09The only way that I can change that is to change the way I interact with people.
- 6:14And it's super hard because it takes a lot of time and when your time is limited, it is for me, I can't, I wish I could be everywhere at all places at all times.
- 6:23So how do I engage with people?
- 6:26Here's a cheat code for me it's hard to come off genuine when you do this especially if you're like the pristine boots and pristine vest and hard hats impeccable.
- 6:35It's obviously a corporate guy here.
- 6:37But you go to a crew that's doing any kind of work and hopefully not stop them from doing their work, but if there's a break in the action like tell me about what you're doing and I'm super curious about exactly how are you doing?
- 6:52What are you doing?
- 6:53And try to be super open and genuine about it.
- 6:57What do you think about that?
- 6:59Do you appreciate that as a tradesperson?
- 7:01So that's the thing, right?
- 7:03Is tell me about what you're doing.
- 7:05Help.
- 7:06Tell me what you're doing.
- 7:07The times that I've seen people do that, once they get through, like, is this a trick?
- 7:12Are they trying to trap me?
- 7:13Yeah.
- 7:13Cause I mean, that's part of the problem, right?
- 7:15Is most of the fancy boots or even the general contractor that's on site, they rarely interact with them unless they're getting on their ass about something.
- 7:24And so then they gotta figure like, is this okay?
- 7:26This is safe.
- 7:27They are happy to tell you all the intricacies about what they're doing because nobody ever asked them.
- 7:34Nobody ever asked them, what are you doing?
- 7:36How do you do it?
- 7:37What is this like?
- 7:38And that's the thing.
- 7:39So like in that conversation, I was talking to the team, they're like, well, it's kind of hard.
- 7:42I'm like, it's not that hard.
- 7:44You just introduce yourself.
- 7:46Ask them their name, ask them why they're in the trade.
- 7:50Right.
- 7:50Learn their name.
- 7:51Why are you in the trade?
- 7:53How long have you been on this job site?
- 7:55How is this job site different than the last one?
- 7:58What do you do on the weekends?
- 8:00Do you hunt?
- 8:01Do you, are you traveling?
- 8:02Are you suit casing in?
- 8:03Talk to 'em like they're a human being.
- 8:05Like you would talk to anybody.
- 8:07You're been standing in line getting coffee, standing in line at the airport.
- 8:11You strike up conversations all the time.
- 8:13Why can't we do that with the men and women out there in the field building our stuff?
- 8:18You don't to buy a expensive barbecue.
- 8:21You don't have to, have a raffle of swag.
- 8:25Don't have to post it on LinkedIn.
- 8:27, just be real.
- 8:29It's hard.
- 8:30I hope I kind of tricked you into that conversation cuz it links into chapter 20.
- 8:35Ooh.
- 8:36So our merry band of Misfits, right?
- 8:39We got the gang at Unico in chapter 20, and they have to go out into the fab and interact with tradespeople.
- 8:48They have to do this, this is now, they no longer can do their planning or evaluations with computers and simulations and talking to high priced consultants like Jonah . So Jonah does inspire them he's teaching them that, Hey you gotta distinguish between types of resources and the fab.
- 9:13That means , for every unit that goes through that bottleneck, that's the pace of the work.
- 9:19And all of a sudden you have to choose.
- 9:21And the choice, this is a difficult situation because when you start talking about bottlenecks and resources, you start talking about human beings.
- 9:30And human beings in a process.
- 9:32Paid for one 90.
- 9:33Is any resource whose capacity is equal or less than the demand placed upon.
- 9:39So Jesse, if you need to run 80 feet of sanitary line, you got eight hours.
- 9:45Yeah.
- 9:46Say we gotta cover this line up for us to start the foundation.
- 9:50, you're the bottleneck and you need 80 feet.
- 9:52That's the demand that's been put placed upon you and your crew.
- 9:56Also behind you is , a crew of 40 carpenters, laborers, rebar, dump trucks, excavators.
- 10:04But the sanitary line is 12 feet deep.
- 10:06So it's not exactly easy so , any resource whose capacity is equal or less in the demand placed upon it, and a non bottleneck is any resource whose capacity is greater than the demand placed upon.
- 10:19Yes.
- 10:19So if they got capacity that's greater than the demand.
- 10:23The demand currently in this instance is 80 feet of sanitary line.
- 10:27The capacity is, hey, we can do a whole bunch of concrete, but we can't do it because there's, Jesse's got the Grand Canal dug out, It wouldn't be safe to place a heavy excavator next to a 12 foot deep excavation so, we have ourselves a constraint, or at least the bottleneck.
- 10:44It's not a complete constraint cause you have some capacity.
- 10:47And so the exact scenario will use the same numbers and apply it to like a real life situation.
- 10:53So I know my in estimated install rate, so my estimated install rate is 10 foot of cast iron per hour.
- 11:02In that situation, in an eight hour day, I can do 80 feet.
- 11:06That's good.
- 11:07So I'm at the limits of the threshold, so I'm already a bottleneck.
- 11:14Now, just for anyone listening, who'd be like, what, 10 feet an hour?
- 11:17This seems crazy, but this is 12 feet down in a ditch in the south and today it was a hundred degrees and you ain't moving fast.
- 11:26And so things need to be hoisted down into it.
- 11:30Shoring gotta be moved.
- 11:32So estimated conditions are 10 foot an hour.
- 11:35And this is fake.
- 11:36People don't freak out.
- 11:37So I'm already a bottleneck because I'm at the threshold that does not account for any problems.
- 11:44So as soon as something a hiccup happens, I will not meet the.
- 11:49I will not meet the target period.
- 11:52Now what I've done, and it's funny cuz I've lived it, it was happening to me and then I went and did it to people until I kind of figured it out is I've been on this job, I know it's estimated at 10 foot per hour.
- 12:06I know it can be done at 10 foot per hour, but the past three months, because of the conditions on site and all the stuff, we've been hitting about seven foot per hour.
- 12:17And I'm still gonna commit to the variation that lives.
- 12:22And so here's the thing, right?
- 12:23It's like ideally we're gonna manage the variation out, but our history, like our real life recent history tells us at peak, we're only able to do seven foot an hour, but I'm gonna plan to hit 10 foot an hour.
- 12:41And we do that over and over and over again.
- 12:43I mean, the bigger scenario is, you know, projects, rough project, we're running up on schedule, we're already working overtime, we're gonna start, we're working long days, we're gonna start adding Saturdays and we're gonna start stacking trades.
- 12:56And I'm looking at my budget, my projections of manpower and dollars and I'm like going at the rate that we've been going at, I'm gonna bust by 20%.
- 13:07So the financial forecast I'm gonna make on the project is to bring it back to budget.
- 13:11That's not po Let's, that's your total denial.
- 13:15Like my history shows, given all the con, all the contributing factors, 21.2.
- 13:23is the ratio, my performance rate.
- 13:26That make sense?
- 13:27So the plan should be, we're gonna be at least 20% over budget and not surrender to it.
- 13:34But let's get real, because when I account for the plan, like really we're 20% over, we've been 20% over, and if we go 20% over, this is the actual impact.
- 13:45All of a sudden, people are gonna say, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- 13:47We can't do that.
- 13:48Okay?
- 13:49We have to make significant change to bring us back to one and even greater management and resources to keep us under one.
- 13:58So when you have that bottleneck, and if you're clicking on all cylinders, I'm gonna do 10 foot an hour, I'm gonna hit that at 80 foot in a day.
- 14:06That's not without extra effort.
- 14:08I need to have some mechanisms in place to absolutely address any variation.
- 14:15Because if I don't, we ain't gonna hit it.
- 14:17That's right.
- 14:19So your capacity is less than the demand.
- 14:22And there's a cost to that.
- 14:23Then to increase your capacity means you have to increase your operating expense.
- 14:29You need more resources, right?
- 14:30Lou straight up says this in the book, 80% of our products flow through the bottlenecks.
- 14:35Not only is there a cost, an operational expense to your third party company, there's a cost and operational expense, of your work, of your capacity, because it's also holding up this huge crew of foundations.
- 14:51And this is 1980s, it comes out to$2,188 an hour of their operating expense.
- 14:58So I think every hour that plant is down, they just burning 2200 bucks.
- 15:03. But if you think about it in this instance if Jesse's the sanitary gang is not installing at their full operating capacity and they're not meeting and they're a bottleneck.
- 15:14So now behind Jesse's sanitary gang that's 40 people.
- 15:19But that's for times the operating expense, probably more than that cuz the equipment and all the materials is super expensive, right?
- 15:26Oh that's a dollar waiting on a dime.
- 15:28. How do I know?
- 15:29Cause I've said these words, but what we do typically is we just pressure Jessie instead of lightning the load.
- 15:36Right.
- 15:37We gotta go back to her.
- 15:38What would I typically do?
- 15:40Here's what we would typically do.
- 15:41We would have you create some fun, fancy contraption shoring system that you gotta go get special order.
- 15:49That way we can set our excavator and our concrete pump right next to it so you can work safe.
- 15:54And so it's like, was that the right answer?
- 15:57The whole cost of the entire job is going up based upon our inability to relieve the bottleneck lightning, some kind of load on Jesse's sanitary crew, So, hey, all of a sudden we just found a Herbie and maybe this situation got resolved, but that's like, Hey, that operating expense didn't even increased because the work that we were gonna pay, Jesse's crew we're just gonna pay the Earth working company.
- 16:23Yeah.
- 16:23And if we did it on a time and materials basis, there's no materials.
- 16:27It's just Earth.
- 16:28So then it's just time.
- 16:29And if they're super efficient, This is a scenario everybody.
- 16:33We don't need any armchair estimators,, but the idea is lighten the load.
- 16:38We don't have to go straight to our scope of work and be like, no, you have to do this and cuz this is what you do.
- 16:43Think outside the box.
- 16:45Yeah.
- 16:45And find a bottle.
- 16:46And I couldn't figure out a situation to do that.
- 16:48So they go out into the factory and go Looking for Herbie.
- 16:53Yeah.
- 16:54Looking for Herbie . Yes.
- 16:56Not to make fun of him.
- 16:58Let's just go find Herby so we can fix, so we can help.
- 17:01Yeah.
- 17:02So Donovan he's the operation manager page 1 63.
- 17:06He goes, why don't we go ahead with the easier things right away and see what kind of effects they have while we're developing the others.
- 17:13That's what he asked.
- 17:14He's ready to go.
- 17:15And they go, okay, well we gotta find Herbie.
- 17:18So they're like, well it is gotta be in a bottleneck according to Jonah.
- 17:23So Jonah is like, anything that's in front of a bottleneck is piling up inventory, right?
- 17:28Have you ever seen inventory start to pile up?
- 17:31Oh my god, yes.
- 17:32Too many times.
- 17:34Well, and confession I've intentionally piled up inventory, but that's a different chapter.
- 17:41I wanna just point that out like you've said it, but just in case anybody missed it, let piles of inventory be an indicator of a problem.
- 17:51If you see inventory, stop investigate because are hidden problems there.
- 17:58It actually says it in the book, don't you see ? If we got a Herbie, it's gonna have a huge pile of working process sitting in front of it.
- 18:07Yes.
- 18:08He's like, Bob goes, we got huge piles of the all over the place out there.
- 18:14But you gotta find the biggest pile of inventory and then that's your leading indicator of you got a Herbie.
- 18:19And then don't get mad at the Herbie.
- 18:21Think about lightning.
- 18:22The load.
- 18:23Why do you think it's important to learn?
- 18:25You have to learn to see bottling.
- 18:26What do you think it's important?
- 19:08Well, one, I'm gonna give two points.
- 19:10One is for my experience, right before I knew what to look for or could see, it was always there.
- 19:18So I was swimming in it, right?
- 19:20Like I was swimming in the problems.
- 19:22They were all around me.
- 19:23, I was conditioned to that and just kind of dealt with it.
- 19:27And the way I dealt with it was pushing the people.
- 19:30But it wasn't the people, it was the system.
- 19:33, the system was busted.
- 19:35And so that being able to see, helped me say, oh, it's not the guys.
- 19:39It's the way we're doing things.
- 19:40It's the way I'm ordering stuff, it's the way I'm communicating, it's the way I'm planning, it's the way I'm orienting things.
- 19:46Like all of a sudden I was able to shift the way I was operating to set the guys up for success.
- 19:54And like, make their day a little bit better.
- 19:56Now, the downside of learning, there's a second point.
- 19:59The downside of learning to see is once you learn to see you can't unsee.
- 20:07It's like somebody's butt crack.
- 20:09Exactly.
- 20:10He's not.
- 20:11And that image is imprinted in your head and then ., so now that I can see all the waste, my experience was at that time I had like anxiety, like, oh my God, we're never gonna be successful.
- 20:23Everything's gonna be a failure.
- 20:25We're losing so much.
- 20:26Because I could see it everywhere.
- 20:28And the truth is it's not different.
- 20:30It's always been there.
- 20:32All this nervous energy I have, I need to apply it to redesigning the system.
- 20:37Bottom line, let's evaluate it.
- 20:39Let's redesign it.
- 20:39Let's look, let's find the biggest pile and let's go do something about that one.
- 20:43Run some experiments and make things happen.
- 20:46Let's go find us a Herbie.
- 20:48So when all processes completely fail, still don't do that.
- 20:53Just go help 'em , right?
- 20:55So you have to learn, you have to teach people how to do this.
- 20:58And this is incredibly hard because teaching people takes capacity.
- 21:01You have to have the capacity to learn.
- 21:03So if you're completely buried in all of your day to day goings on, you have no capacity to learn.
- 21:09So you have to number one, like, Hey, I'm gonna help you and this is super important.
- 21:14So whatever you're doing, you would now have permission to turn that in three days instead of tomorrow.
- 21:19Right?
- 21:19So if you're in a management position, give somebody an out a little bit, we give'em an inch and now they have capacity.
- 21:26And be like, now instead of doing that thing super tedious, let's go walk the , and I'm gonna teach you what it means to me.
- 21:34And all of a sudden it's like, oh, we got a constraint.
- 21:36Our plan was, we were doomed to begin with because we didn't plan this change, this added scope.
- 21:43Then if you find those resources that are idle, that's your inventory.
- 21:47The step in front of that idle resource, that's a constraint.
- 21:51No matter what.
- 21:51Are there lifts sitting around?
- 21:54Are there stacks of stuff?
- 21:55Are there things missing?
- 21:56But all of a sudden, like it takes the, kind of the BS out of it.
- 22:01And when you teach people that it's like going to school.
- 22:05You learn this little sick secret cheat code, like go sift through the trash, look for what's in there and what's not in there.
- 22:12And somewhere in that pile of trash and the piles of inventory and what's idle resources is the problem.
- 22:20And once you find that problem, you've struck gold.
- 22:23Yes, gold, yes.
- 22:24Like a prospector.
- 22:26And then when you find that gold, you gotta be happy about it.
- 22:29Cause it's super valuable stuff.
- 22:31But you have to figure out which of the things are slowing all of the other things down.
- 22:35And once you find that you found your Herbie.
- 22:37That's the theory of constraints, at least , the fundamental piece of it, just because it happened on the Empire State Building doesn't mean it's gonna happen on your high rise . Right.
- 22:48Or whatever.
- 22:49Right.
- 22:50You have to treat every bottleneck as a unique, problem to solve.
- 22:54And when you go into it in that mindset and not go into it alone.
- 22:58, it creates teams, it creates trust.
- 23:01There's respect because all of a sudden it's like, Hey, Jesse, your little mini backhoe, like, move the, this thing outta the way.
- 23:09We got you.
- 23:10We got you, bro.
- 23:10We got backfill list.
- 23:12We got, they have these like robot, have you seen these?
- 23:14Like the, the rover robot that like, instead of the tamper drive.
- 23:19Oh, so cool.
- 23:20We got three of those.
- 23:21Jesse, like, get outta the way.
- 23:23Just give us a signal when you pass your inspection, we'll just bury this and it'll be done in an hour.
- 23:27We just solved a problem.
- 23:29We've now alleviated the bottleneck and then we're moving forward on our original path.
- 23:34They're like, it feels good.
- 23:36Yeah, it feels good.
- 23:36And nobody was bickering, nobody got thrown off the job site.
- 23:39Like we didn't have to go down that, that road.
- 23:41No.
- 23:41We just look for the slowest part of the operation.
- 23:44The back filling process.
- 23:45Cause Jesse's, they got the line.
- 23:47They can run some pipe, but the back filling piece give that to the experts.
- 23:52But in essence how you manage your resources and how you manage your bottlenecks and how you get trashed out of the freaking way.
- 24:02It's like that's how you create flow on in a construction job site.
- 24:06At least in my experience.
- 24:08Yes.
- 24:08That's chapter 20.
- 24:09There's a couple of thoughts that triggered in my head.
- 24:13One, maybe it's one of the inventories that I forgot about until you were describing the situation.
- 24:19And so in that situation where we're behind and we're off schedule, right?
- 24:23We're consistently off schedule.
- 24:24There's a problem.
- 24:26The inventory that we get, the extra work that we get is we need a recovery schedule from you.
- 24:32So now you're gonna take my field leadership and my office leadership Oh yeah.
- 24:37To sit down and produce this stupid thing to make you feel better when all that energy could have been applied to limiting the constraint, right.
- 24:47Addressing the bottleneck.
- 24:48The other thing when you were talking about like going into the trash and invest, doing your CSI investigation of what's going on there and when we're looking for these bottlenecks, there's a magic skill that's required.
- 25:01We have to be able to zoom in and then zoom out, right?
- 25:05Because if we just zoom in and stay zoomed in we're going to assign responsibility for the bottleneck to the things that are in our immediate field of vision.
- 25:15And if we zoom out, we can see the entire system and understand Oh.
- 25:20Ah, there's some other things.
- 25:22So example, I was on a project, the steel team, they were working on building catwalks and handrails and we were supposed to be studying 'em, showed up to watch them do their work and they weren't working in the area they were supposed to be working at.
- 25:37So we walked around the building, found them, and what they were doing was they were loading, packing their stuff to go move somewhere else.
- 25:44And the young man I was walking, this was all new to him, and he is like, man, like they just don't know what they're doing.
- 25:49Look, they're just kind of hanging out.
- 25:50They don't have a plan.
- 25:52They don't know what's going on.
- 25:53And I said, ah, okay, cool.
- 25:55So well, let's keep walking to where they're going , and see what do you see over there?
- 26:00He's like, man, well it looks like those big old air handlers, they're not in place yet.
- 26:03Like, ah, okay.
- 26:05And I said, okay, what do you see down the road here?
- 26:07Quarter mile long, man, I see air handlers all over the place.
- 26:10Like, okay, why aren't they in place?
- 26:13He's like, oh, I don't know.
- 26:14I was like, okay, well let's go find out.
- 26:16So anyways, track it down and find out.
- 26:18There was a piece, the connector between the building and the air handlers.
- 26:23There was an adjustment made to them for safety reasons, and so that, that impacted, like, it slowed the production.
- 26:30So what happened is these, these, the adjustments they were making to the connector was not, those pieces had not been delivered to the site yet.
- 26:39And so since the pieces had been delivered to the site, they couldn't install the connector, they could install the air handler, therefore they could not install the handrails and the catwalks.
- 26:48And so they were just looking for work.
- 26:50That was not their problem.
- 26:52The problem was further upstream and it went, so anyways, when I showed it, he's like, oh my god, man, this whole time I've been beating them up.
- 26:59I'm like, I know that's natural.
- 27:01Is to say, well the steel, the welders, they're just lazy.
- 27:04They don't know what the hell they're doing.
- 27:05They don't have a plan, there's no sense of urgency.
- 27:07Ah, no, it wasn't them, it was further upstream.
- 27:13I mean, we could even go as far as to say it was a poor design because safety wasn't designed into that piece because people were getting hurt, installing it, and because of that, they made an adjustment.
- 27:23Oh wow.
- 27:23That impact, that impacted the plan.
- 27:25So good, good on them for making the plan.
- 27:27But for the young man that I was coaching, he was able to see like, oh, I says that's an important part.
- 27:32When you see the problem, let's zoom out and look at all the stuff.
- 27:37Let's get a broader understanding of the whole operation.
- 27:40Even outside of the point of failure.
- 27:43So what I heard was you found an idle resource Absolutely.
- 27:48And blame them.
- 27:49Yes.
- 27:50For the situation was, Hey, what are you doing?
- 27:53What are you over here?
- 27:53You're supposed to be up there like what's going on?
- 27:56Left it on the surface and didn't learn to see a bottleneck.
- 28:00That's legit.
- 28:01And that happens all the time.
- 28:02All the time.
- 28:04I've done that thousands of times myself.
- 28:06Yes.
- 28:07And mostly out of sheer ignorance.
- 28:09Cuz I don't know the constraint.
- 28:11I didn't know the issue.
- 28:12Y'all don't expect you to answer this.
- 28:13Just a thought.
- 28:14What are the seven deadly sins of constraint management?
- 28:22Oh, you were talking, I wrote, I wrote a few down here.
- 28:25No way.
- 28:27. Number one, if you see resources and you blame the human beings in that resource, sin, sin, that's number one.
- 28:35Number two, if there's a constraint that you're uncomfortable about, like you have to have an uncomfortable conversation with the authority , now you've located Herbie, you got him in your sights it's slowing him down.
- 28:49And you let it sit there, because I'm afraid that's the most cowardly thing you can possibly do.
- 28:56And then the third one is if you can't have that uncomfortable conversation, but you elevated it to somebody, They also do nothing that's worse.
- 29:07It's a double whammy, double C.
- 29:09It's not double.
- 29:10It's like exponentially worse.
- 29:12damnation , because usually when you elevate an issue, it goes through someone in leadership . And if they don't do anything that's that BS that Jen and Jess talk about.
- 29:21But there's many more.
- 29:22I wrote a couple down.
- 29:23When we get to the end of chapter 23 I'll round it out.
- 29:2721, 22, 23.
- 29:28These are the sins that they kind of talk about here.
- 29:31So let's get into 22 and they're out in the field and I'm sorry, maybe we alluded to it before, but they went and found the huge stack of inventory and Alex's and our dear friend Jonah, who doesn't even work there he's just such a sage that Ncx 10, the robot, the big oh yeah.
- 29:55Thing that's got all the big wigs up at corporate.
- 29:59There's gonna be an article in a trade magazine like this is serious business and that dang thing is a constraint . So that's number one.
- 30:06But in 20, in chapter 22 Alex is having a rough time at home, by the way.
- 30:11I really gotta put a little backstory in here.
- 30:13Seven issues at the home life.
- 30:16Mostly with his wife.
- 30:17So he is trying to regain the trust with his wife.
- 30:20Also he's trying to rebuild , the workflows at the factory and his relationships with people on the work site or I guess in the factory.
- 30:27And then also with corporate.
- 30:29We've got all this stuff around in his work life, but there's no separation at home.
- 30:34You take all that with you, whether it's in your conscious mind or in your subconscious mind, it's there and it's on your mind.
- 30:41So when you're dealing with your personal relationships, it's still, it applies no matter what.
- 30:46I don't care what you're doing.
- 30:48So he also has to spend time and energy repairing his relationship with his wife.
- 30:54So like you only got so much hours in a day, number one and two, so much energy to give is just eventually you burn out of energy and you have to lay down and go to sleep.
- 31:07So how you choose to spend that energy is incredibly important.
- 31:10So part of the prioritization that Alex Rogo was learning is , it's not all about work.
- 31:16Cause at the end of the day, if he loses his entire home life and his personal relationship, like what is he working for?
- 31:23. And I wanted to make sure I didn't skip past that, cuz it definitely weighs on people when they're trying to make improvements at work.
- 31:31But in chapter 22, he gets back, he comes in the next day and he is staggering in cause he had this long conversation with his wife, and she's staying with her family.
- 31:40And so he comes in and Bob's there and he is like, we got another Herbie.
- 31:45So now not only is the Ncx 10.
- 31:48Herbie, they got two bottlenecks because there's two sets of inventory piling up.
- 31:54, I guess the Ncx 10 is some kind of milling machine.
- 31:57And then after that parts get heat treated.
- 32:01So when you mill materials you can't be super brittle and nor can they be super flexible And you put that metal into an oven and , it sits in there and it has to go through a series of heating and cooling and heating and cooling cycles.
- 32:20And it takes a lot of time.
- 32:21So here comes old Jonah gonna sneak in here with some fluctuation.
- 32:27So if we have one bottleneck that's not outputting, in a timely manner, if you think of this heat treating oven, there's only so much space inside this oven the capacity of this oven is fixed.
- 32:38So you can't grow your oven.
- 32:40I suppose you could go buy one, but they're in the middle of a financial meltdown.
- 32:44They even like have an argument.
- 32:45They're like, why don't we just build another oven?
- 32:47So now we made a list for both heat treat and Ncx 10 as of which parts they each haven't processed in what order.
- 32:54Again, it's the same sequence of latest order to least late and a day or two, are creating, they're finding that both of these bottlenecks are creating the late orders.
- 33:04They're like, they can trace all of these late orders back to bottlenecks, either at the Ncx 10, or they can trace late orders all the way back to the freaking heat treating.
- 33:15So they're like, we gotta dig into this.
- 33:16This is a problem.
- 33:17Cuz not only is this an inventory problem, cause wait a second if there's fixed capacity in this heat treat oven, why isn't the heat treat oven full to the brim when they run their cycle?
- 33:30And they're like what?
- 33:31I'm like, yeah I'm looking at the heat treat oven and it's only filled up 60%.
- 33:36Like, what's the deal here?
- 33:37And they're like, well this order that only was 60 filled the oven, 60% is a special order.
- 33:44It's a special order.
- 33:45We had to rush through it expediter.
- 33:48Oh.
- 33:49So yes, this, the panicking mode of the expeditor so the optimal production of that heat treat oven was like fill the Dan thing up a hundred percent and run it through its cycles.
- 34:00Not every assembly needs the same heat treat cycle as every other assembly.
- 34:07You have all kinds of variations.
- 34:09But you have dependent events.
- 34:11And now all of a sudden we have a freaking bottleneck . And even worse, they're rearranging the inventory in front of the bottleneck.
- 34:19So they're making the inventory in front of the bottleneck.
- 34:23The process of redoing the rearranging is the bottleneck.
- 34:27It's not the heat treat of it, it's the rearranging process.
- 34:29They're like, you mean to tell me this expediting process is the problem But it was an to all our problems.
- 34:35. I'm like greatly summarizing, I'm probably getting half of this wrong, they start having this argument.
- 34:40The stake are high.
- 34:41Cuz if they don't figure out the problem, they're all gonna lose the jobs.
- 34:44So what do you think about that?
- 34:46Like all the sudden they learn to see the issue, and then what they see is their freaking mirror and it's pointing back at them.
- 34:53The decisions that we make as leadership are the bottlenecks, not the inventory is all these bottlenecks.
- 35:01, it's in the decisions to make all these rearrangements and rush these orders because the orders are late and the orders are late because all this variation that we created and then also we're not managing these bottlenecks and we're not running our bottlenecks at full capacity.
- 35:14So we're not even meeting our system capacity because we have bottlenecks.
- 35:20It's like this vicious cycle.
- 35:22And they finally kind of start to get it here.
- 35:26. We now have to somehow figure out a device to prioritize those constraints.
- 35:32So they do that.
- 35:34But , I'm gonna pause there cause I haven't heard anything.
- 35:37I feel like you're about to burst.
- 35:39But have you one, been in that situation?
- 35:42I certainly have two.
- 35:44What did you do?
- 35:45Oh, so the one that comes to mind how I was specific, and it's still one that I struggle with.
- 35:51It's saying yes all the time, right?
- 35:53Like, if I don't say no, I'm gonna be exhausted.
- 35:55You and I were talking earlier I'll have these intermittent burnouts because I just take on too much work.
- 36:01But, and I think everybody out there, like if you're tired all the time and you feel like you ain't got time, guess who the bottleneck is?
- 36:07It's you, it's your system.
- 36:08You're letting that happen.
- 36:09Anyhow, but the more specific one in the workplace there was a project manager I worked with at this time, I was like in charge of all the labor and distributing labor to all our projects.
- 36:19And we had one project manager who was specifically targeting owner direct work.
- 36:25And so it was real small projects, high margin and long lasting stuff, right?
- 36:31It was really good for us.
- 36:32But what he would do is when the client said, Hey, we, you know, we gotta upgrade this air handler unit, or we wanna change out all our grills or whatever, didn't matter, whatever it was, he would tell them like, can you have somebody here Monday?
- 36:44And his answer was always yes.
- 36:47And then he'd call me, oh, I got this job.
- 36:49We need three peewee, two duck guys, and we need a pipe fitter.
- 36:52And I'm like, dude, it's Thursday.
- 36:54We don't just have people hanging out.
- 36:56Oh, I gotta have it.
- 36:57This is my most important customer.
- 36:59You know the whole story, right?
- 37:01This, oh, I'm doing this for y'all.
- 37:03Whatever.
- 37:04Okay, jump through hoops, get 'em a crew out there.
- 37:08And then Monday I'm getting a call, Jess, what the hell's going on?
- 37:10Your guys are just out here standing around, they don't have any tools.
- 37:14The budget for this little project, we can't absorb this kind of downtime.
- 37:18And I'm like, okay dude, you screamed and yelled that you needed somebody Monday.
- 37:22I got you somebody Monday.
- 37:23Now you're screaming and yelling that we're blowing up the budget.
- 37:26It's a bad image, or people are just standing around.
- 37:29And we went through the, and like it was screaming matches between he and I for months.
- 37:33And finally I said, okay, time out.
- 37:35The one thing I can do is not give him the personnel that he wants cuz he doesn't know what he needs.
- 37:43All he cares about is that the client is going to think he's a star and that the client isn't going to complain and then he is worried about the budget, right?
- 37:51So what I started doing was like, okay, I'm not sending you people.
- 37:55I would send the superintendent to go scout it.
- 37:58Like go check it out, get with the owner, get with whoever you need to get with.
- 38:02So I come up with the plan and then let's you and I get together so we can align our resources appropriately.
- 38:08And I still had to fight with the project manager, but the long-term implications was, it was a good win for us financially and we still had a good relationship with the client.
- 38:16Now we finally, I'm like, look dude, we're fighting all the time and there's no point in us fighting.
- 38:22So here is my request.
- 38:24When that client tells you they have an emergency, they need us out there.
- 38:28Wawa, I need you to just ask them, can I get you somebody out here to look at it and advise us on the best course of action next week?
- 38:39Like that's all you gotta ask.
- 38:41They get to say no.
- 38:42If they say no, I need somebody Monday, let's do that.
- 38:44But just ask them that.
- 38:45He started asking 'em, and guess what?
- 38:4790% of the time they're like, yeah, sure.
- 38:50Here's my whatever, maintenance, head of maintenance, here's their number.
- 38:54Have your guy contact that guy, schedule something.
- 38:56Come look at it, come up with the plan and let's reconvene.
- 38:59And then everybody was super happy because now the superintendent that I was sending out there didn't have to drop.
- 39:06He, they were able to get that into their workflow and things worked better.
- 39:11But it was that , the inventory was there, like all this, just the way we function and the way we communicated, the way we thought about things.
- 39:18We were creating our own damn problems.
- 39:20And it took some iteration, but we finally got to a point where it's like, dude, just ask them, can I send you my guy next week to assess the situation and come with, come up with a plan that's beneficial for everybody.
- 39:34That was it.
- 39:35Not that hard, but we were the problem . We were the problem.
- 39:40And was amending it hard.
- 39:43.
- 39:43Well, for me, yeah, because, It's his damn fault kissing up to the client.
- 39:48Right?
- 39:48He don't care about, like, it was so easy for me to blame him for not caring about us and only being worried about his own bones.
- 39:57But that wasn't the truth.
- 39:58I mean, there was a system problem.
- 40:00We had no system in place.
- 40:01So he was doing what he would naturally do.
- 40:03That made sense to him.
- 40:05I was doing what I would naturally do.
- 40:07That made sense to me.
- 40:08And I had to say, wait a minute, how am I contributing to this?
- 40:11Like, oh, well, I'm giving him what he wants, knowing what the outcome's going to be.
- 40:16I can change that.
- 40:17And so little by little we had to come to terms with it.
- 40:20How about.
- 40:21When she had the honest realization from that moment.
- 40:24What was uncomfortable after?
- 40:26So the uncomfortable part after was all the guys that I would ream because they were not as productive as they could have been.
- 40:36Like, come on guys, like, you know, y'all could be cleaning, you could be order, it wasn't their fault, man.
- 40:41It wasn't their fault.
- 40:42It was my fault.
- 40:43And I had to like face that.
- 40:45Like, here I was getting the pressure from my project manager knowing that it's wrong and it's like coming from a bad place and then passing some of that onto the guys.
- 40:57Like that was, that's just not cool, but I was doing it right?
- 41:01Like, it was those kinds of things.
- 41:03The guys would be like, man you've settled down.
- 41:05I'm like, yeah, I just kind of stopped causing my own problems, man.
- 41:09, You just uncovered another sin.
- 41:11Oh, cause you nailed it.
- 41:13When you uncover a bottleneck and it's people are uncomfortable or worse, you've uncovered a constraint you're gonna face resistance.
- 41:22Oh yes.
- 41:24And don't let that resistance stop you.
- 41:27Yes.
- 41:28So the sin is like, if you're mining for gold and you gotta get to the seam, but the seam is like a mile under the ground and you stop 10 inches from the seam and you don't know Right.
- 41:41Don't let non-believers gaslight you into thinking you're the crazy one.
- 41:49If you have influence in your own personal life, If you face resistance, don't give up.
- 41:54Try again.
- 41:54You might have to try a different tactic.
- 41:56So that's kind of like the summary of chapter 22 , there's some arguments happening, some shouting matches.
- 42:02Because we need those parts now, not tomorrow.
- 42:07the non bottleneck parts we might not need for weeks or even months, maybe never.
- 42:12So by continuing to run the non bottleneck parts, this guy was actually interfering with our ability to get an order out the door and make money.
- 42:20He's like, this guy is the reason why we're losing money at this plant.
- 42:24If you're gonna start prioritizing your constraints, be also prepared to design in a system for conflict resolution that like walk together . That's chapter 22.
- 42:34What do you think?
- 42:35Oh man.
- 42:36So the idea here takes me back to what we're talking about a little while ago in learning to see, right?
- 42:43Like the tactical patience required for a change agent is enormous.
- 42:50Right?
- 42:50And a method or system.
- 42:53To facilitate the change with the naysayers and maintain because you are the tip of the spear, so you are going to hit all the friction first now that you can see it.
- 43:06No, you gotta assume nobody else can see it.
- 43:09And changing it, even though you understand it's an improvement, is going to change the way people function, period.
- 43:17Like period.
- 43:18All the business sense it makes is great.
- 43:21It doesn't matter because if I have to change the way I behave, the way I've been showing up, the way I've been doing things, the way I, my universe has changed all of a sudden, and I don't under, I don't want that.
- 43:33It's gonna take extra energy.
- 43:36And so just because you can see, you need to like pump the brakes big time because people, they can't see.
- 43:44And so you're this crazy profit saying that the world's flat or the world's not flat or whatever, you know what I mean?
- 43:51You got this idea that nobody else understands.
- 43:53Where in the world are you coming from?
- 43:55You're crazy.
- 43:56Why would they change?
- 43:57And if you're not patient and respect the people and meet them where they're at, you are going to give up.
- 44:04You're going to quit or you may get fired.
- 44:07Right?
- 44:07I think about the people that were like lean champions within their organization that are now consultants, , and some of them, not all of them, some of them got sick and tired of swimming uphill with an organization that wasn't open to that kind of change.
- 44:25And so they blamed the organization saying, well, they just didn't wanna change.
- 44:29You were the zealot, raising hell, pushing, screaming, and yelling.
- 44:35So yeah, maybe they didn't wanna change, but also what was your organizational patience?
- 44:40How much tactical patience did you apply?
- 44:43By the way, there's some tactics about to get dropped, I grabbed the book by Jaco Willin, it's Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and it really talks about that.
- 44:52, you gotta know how to flank 'em, right?
- 44:54Not everybody goes and becomes a consultant.
- 44:56Some of us just go , roll back into operations.
- 44:59Yes, if you're into this continuous improvement or like, good on you for doing that, because that is a super risky psychologically unsafe position to have a such different mindset about your work than everybody else, and you are like the few, the proud, the lean champions, But it won't happen overnight and you can't just assume people see things the way you do.
- 45:25So if you haven't, this is the tactic.
- 45:27You have to also design in a system for conflict resolution.
- 45:31And you also have to design a system and to do these silly simulations, right?
- 45:37So people can learn how to see waste and learn how to see bottle.
- 45:41Yeah.
- 45:41So man, that's incredibly powerful statement.
- 45:43So let's talk about the tactics Alex and the gang do.
- 45:47So they use the coloring system.
- 45:48They use signaling.
- 45:49They do two markers.
- 45:50They say, okay, we got working process.
- 45:54We're gonna tag the bottleneck workflow we're gonna give that a red tag.
- 45:59And if it goes through a non bottleneck, so it doesn't go through ncx 10 and it doesn't go through heat treat.
- 46:05It gets a green tag.
- 46:06So , if you're at your workstation and two sets of inventories roll in, you have a choice.
- 46:14But now we've taken that choice away.
- 46:16We've designed the system to remove the choice.
- 46:18We've also designed the system to remove our bottleneck.
- 46:22The expediting process.
- 46:24Say no more expediting.
- 46:27There's, one choice.
- 46:28If it's red, you do it first because whatever your part of the production is, that's the critical, cuz that has to go through the ncx 10 or it has to go through heat treat or both rule one, rule two, green.
- 46:42If it shows up, you don't have anything.
- 46:44There is no reds.
- 46:45Then work the greens.
- 46:47So they're like, we're removing the first bottleneck that we've discovered that we created in this decision making system.
- 46:53We've limited decision making system.
- 46:55We're gonna use signals.
- 46:57We're gonna say red do first, green only if there's no reds, yep.
- 47:02You know, this is gonna be maybe a stretch and I'm thinking about it because it reminds me of the first job you, I walked together when I was onboarding.
- 47:10Ooh.
- 47:11The smell of pan oil is a signal to me.
- 47:15You know, when they'd spray the panel on the sh or the pan when the pouring, it's a very distinct smell.
- 47:20Yeah.
- 47:21Yeah.
- 47:21I love that smell.
- 47:23I know that's weird, but to me it's like, oh yeah, we got a brand new baby.
- 47:27For me, it was like, it was right.
- 47:29We got right.
- 47:30Hey, check can get ready.
- 47:31Who's gonna come in at two in the morning for the damn poor?
- 47:34Like, that was what it signal.
- 47:35Ah, mm-hmm.
- 47:37. That's a good one.
- 47:38I didn't even think about that smell.
- 47:40Mm-hmm.
- 47:40. my favorite signals are for issues.
- 47:43So if there's some kind of problem, you flag it.
- 47:46Flag can be many things.
- 47:47That signaling process resolves so many.
- 47:50Yeah..
- 47:50So the signaling tactic . The red and , the green tags or the smell, I guess . . I like it is important.
- 47:59And if you have those tactics, make sure that they're implemented and implemented well.
- 48:04So chapter 22 talks about quality control.
- 48:08Oh, damn.
- 48:09Is quality control a constraint?
- 48:11But here's the thing.
- 48:12What they did was, okay, so we have this constraint our decision making, our expediting system is causing all kind of problems.
- 48:20Boom.
- 48:21Fix that.
- 48:21All right.
- 48:22What's next?
- 48:22Heat treat is not running at full capacity.
- 48:26And even though we're now filling it full, the capacity's not meaning the demand.
- 48:30It's still a bottleneck.
- 48:32And we don't have the capability from corporate to go build another eat treat machine.
- 48:38However, we do have the capability to, subcontract out the heat treat process.
- 48:45When these set of red tag parts sits in front of the heat treat machine, every day at one o'clock we're gonna have a truck pick, pick whatever inventory's in front of it and ship it to this vendor.
- 48:58And that way the next day, all of the parts are through heat treat, no matter what.
- 49:03They went through the third party.
- 49:05And yes, it's a premium to go to third party, you're actually saving money in the long run if you get everything through the bottleneck.
- 49:11So , they come to that realization.
- 49:13So they're like, okay, damn, we're kind of like on a roll here.
- 49:16And this is when you have to engage with your field leadership or actually trades.
- 49:24The people who actually do the machining that aren't robots have to know how to use all kinds of micro millimeter make adjustments they're not as productive as the robot, but the robot is a bottleneck.
- 49:38We have idle resources.
- 49:40We have some of our machinists just sitting around doing nothing who could be operating these manual machines.
- 49:46Mm-hmm.
- 49:47. Oh damn.
- 49:48Now all of a sudden they found the Herbie and they found the capability to lighten the load off of Herbie with an old school method.
- 49:58And I think that's incredibly important.
- 50:00I wonder how much that's designed into this book.
- 50:03But, as you go out, you find the bottleneck and you're like, well, how are we gonna make this machine better?
- 50:08And then the actual solution, or at least a partial solution to the problem was let's use a completely manual method that was like, we've been doing this since like LeBron age.
- 50:22Right.
- 50:23So you take a completely traditional approach , to a completely like old school method is the solution.
- 50:31That's a good story.
- 50:32Yes.
- 50:33Have you done that?
- 50:34Sometimes.
- 50:35Oftentimes the solution is right there in front of you.
- 50:38Super simple.
- 50:39Or the person, the guy who you think is like crusty and stuck in their way and super old school doesn't like technology.
- 50:52They got the solution.
- 50:53They got it.
- 50:55Yes.
- 50:55This is gonna seem silly, but, remember when lasers all of a sudden you had these little remote lasers they could transfer a license.
- 51:01I love 'em.
- 51:02I love 'em.
- 51:03Yeah, right when it first came out, it's like, man, right.
- 51:05We can lay out, it'll make lay way faster.
- 51:08And there was a whole bunch of sheet rocking stuff in the way so that we couldn't really get our points so that we could have a laser transferred up on overhead.
- 51:18Right.
- 51:19Cuz we had to do a bunch of stuff, some intricate stuff overhead and that laser was gonna help us.
- 51:23And man, I'm like, all right, let's , go get the pipe fitters so we can move all this stuff and let's get some more people.
- 51:28And old boys looks at me, he's like, dude, like really?
- 51:31You're gonna move all of this stuff so you can get your little laser out there that we can barely see because the sun's.
- 51:37I'm like, well, yeah, but this is what we need to do.
- 51:40And he's like, yeah, but you don't need a laser man.
- 51:42He says, you got your plum bob.
- 51:44I'm like, man, I don't wanna use a plum Bob going up.
- 51:46And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
- 51:47He says, do you have your plus?
- 51:48Yeah, I got my plum bob.
- 51:49He said, okay, let's mark a point here and mark a point here.
- 51:52Okay.
- 51:52I'm following you.
- 51:53So we just marked two points, transferred him from the ground up overhead, and we use the string on Mym.
- 52:01. Woohoo.
- 52:01Right?
- 52:02Like it's a string dummy.
- 52:04Never.
- 52:05I'm thinking I'm bringing all kind.
- 52:07We need higher powered lasers.
- 52:09We need the green laser that you can see in the daylight.
- 52:12We gotta move all this, but like, no dummy, just use a string, bro.
- 52:15Like, okay, I'm gonna shut my mouth now.
- 52:17You got it.
- 52:18. They used the plum bob.
- 52:20There's actually artifacts of that technology being used in pyramids.
- 52:25That's a tried and true method.
- 52:28Like it's been used for thousands and thousands of years.
- 52:31That's awesome.
- 52:32Yeah, man, and it works and it function.
- 52:34But here's the thing.
- 52:35The only way to learn how to use a plum, bob, gotta learn how to use a plum.
- 52:39Those are awesome.
- 52:40But the last paragraph of chapter 22, it's, I think it's my favorite paragraph in the book.
- 52:46I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I'll read the last they bring in these ancient milling machines in the maintenance man connects the power cable to an outlet on nearby steel column.
- 52:57Bob reaches for the power switch and hits the on button for a second.
- 53:01Nothing happens.
- 53:02Then we hear a slow gathering word from somewhere in the guts of the old machine, poofs of desk blow out of the antique fan hosing.
- 53:10Bob turns to me with a dumb grin in his big face.
- 53:13Guess we're in business.
- 53:15like, yeah, this was Bob's idea.
- 53:18So think about that.
- 53:19You've just invested like some serious social capital and trust into these craft workers people are gonna be like, okay, we're gonna get excited.
- 53:29This is a reinforcing effect.
- 53:31This is our most profitable line and we're gonna trust you to do this manually.
- 53:38, we took these machines away from you and gave you this robot.
- 53:41Now we're gonna bring these machines back and we're gonna trust you to do this as effectively to make sure that we become super productive.
- 53:48It's an important part of this chapter.
- 53:51So in this chapter, Ralph Nakamura is the plant data manager.
- 53:56He's the numbers cruncher in terms of production.
- 53:58He knows exactly when things turn on and off.
- 54:00All this manufacturing facility, we build them all the time, all kinds of controls on them and sensors and stuff.
- 54:06So Ralph comes in everybody's high fiving.
- 54:08They're like, oh, we're gonna save our jobs.
- 54:11Ralph's like, we're still not doing good.
- 54:14, he ruined the whole party.
- 54:16I'm gonna summarize here a whole bunch, but he's like, Hey, you know what's happening is that, yeah, you've eliminated some bottlenecks, but we haven't completely resolved it and now it's worse because you're bottlenecks keeps switching.
- 54:30So they go in CX 10 and it's like heat treat and it goes over here.
- 54:34That just keeps moving around cuz they haven't completely optimized the system and figured out what is the optimal resource capacity.
- 54:43, where are the true constraints?.
- 54:44He said, Hey this is great.
- 54:46We got these machines rolling, but here's the problem.
- 54:49This NCX 10 machine still needs to run.
- 54:52And if we're running these machines with machinists, the machinists used to set up the robot, they used to do the setup.
- 55:00So now it makes the robot even less productive because the guys are over there running these these milling machines by hand, and they're not being super productive on the CX 10.
- 55:11And he's like, well, that's only part of the time though.
- 55:15You only have to be over there setting up the ncx 10 when you have to do a changeover or a setup.
- 55:21And Bob goes, what happens if stealing people turns non bottlenecks into bottlenecks?
- 55:27So he's like, Hey, if we pull people off one and send 'em to the other one, and even though they're on a non bottleneck, , does it just switch?
- 55:35Do we just change the bottleneck?
- 55:37So you have to think about this because once you start to do optimization, you can't even let off the gas.
- 55:43You almost have to double down.
- 55:45That's whyt planning comes into play.
- 55:48You can't do tack planning on a non-optimized system.
- 55:52But once you have some just minor levels of optimization and you apply tack, now you start to see all your bottlenecks start to show up, then you start to make adjustments and you add buffers and do that stuff.
- 56:03This is exactly what's happening in this chapter is don't let up.
- 56:07Don't let off, and don't give up . So they start to talk about.
- 56:12This magical word called flow Just think about flow.
- 56:16It's like water.
- 56:18And you think about a stream, and if you think about a stream having a boulder in it and in front of the boulder, there's another boulder , but it's smaller.
- 56:28If you spend a whole bunch of your energy removing one of the boulders, do you not still have a roadblock?
- 56:35Right.
- 56:35You still do, so you can't let off.
- 56:38But perhaps the process of removing one of the boulder slow down the flow enough.
- 56:44I forgot who told this to me.
- 56:45It was so genius.
- 56:46I'm like, maybe the flow was wrong to begin with , like if you would've just slowed the flow down just slightly, we could've just removed one boulder but instead we went after this big, huge, nasty boulder.
- 56:59, you have to start understanding that when we're dealing with flow and you're dealing with bottlenecks, bottlenecks might move around and stuff.
- 57:05We have to think about that optimization piece and we have to think about starting to prioritize.
- 57:10But the only measurement we should worry.
- 57:13instead of these the tactics that we said, Hey, only work on the red.
- 57:18That tactic was right when we started it.
- 57:21Now that tactic created new bottlenecks.
- 57:24Because of this decision we make.
- 57:26So they start to look at heat treat.
- 57:28They look at the stacks of inventory . It's like, oh my God we're overlapping batches.
- 57:34So our priority system was good , but now it's flawed because we've changed the flow of the work.
- 57:41. Yeah.
- 57:41We've started to pick up the speed of the work, but we haven't really fixed the solution.
- 57:46So now we have non bottlenecks becoming bottlenecks.
- 57:48They're moving around on us.
- 57:50Yep.
- 57:50So the rule that Dr.
- 57:52Gold teaches us is that, hey, when you remove a bottleneck or you remove a constraint, another one's going to appear and you have to be ready for that.
- 58:02It's okay, right?
- 58:04Like it's a natural occurrence.
- 58:07It's not because people suck.
- 58:09It's not because you pick the wrong one.
- 58:11It's not because you're doing it wrong.
- 58:14It's because when you remove a bottleneck, another one will appear always, every single time This is deep and this is important to kind of think because you're gonna do optimization, you're gonna have some early wins.
- 58:27But oftentimes the the changes create more capacity. So now we say we've unloaded Herbie, but now we've overloaded one of the faster kids and now that kid's getting tired.
- 58:41Yep.
- 58:41We have a new Herbie well, the problem was that it wasn't even Herbie's fault, it was the fact that we didn't plan out what exactly how we're gonna load the kids.
- 58:52Right.
- 58:52, that was the problem.
- 58:53, I guess that's the parent's fault.
- 58:55, I don't know, go down that far.
- 58:56But that's the idea that if you have constraints and you create changes,?
- 59:01You gotta set up work I think that's entirely important.
- 59:04That's a new rule, . So when you do work on constraints and you don't set up the next task for success, they might have been the A player before no more.
- 59:18But now , we've changed the rules and the A players, now the B players rank people.
- 59:24But , that's often what's happened.
- 59:25So you have to not only be like, Hey, we gotta, we gotta start this next.
- 59:31And we now have to be like, now Jesse's crew is not doing 10 feet per day.
- 59:36He's got, he can do 30 feet a day and now all of a sudden he's out.
- 59:41He's almost to the street.
- 59:42Like we, he wants to do his hookup.
- 59:44I don't have a permit Yep.
- 59:46To do the hookup Yep.
- 59:48To make the connection in the street for his sanitary line, because I haven't paid the bill for the water department.
- 59:54Yes.
- 59:54I think your, I think your brother does this right?
- 59:56? Yeah.
- 59:57Yeah.
- 59:57He works for the, for the local water system.
- 1:00:00Now, you know, this reminds me, Thomas, and remember when you said it, but, but now it's a new constraint.
- 1:00:05Like if you haven't thought about, oh, damn.
- 1:00:07Jesse's crews like getting, he's knocking down the park.
- 1:00:09He's like, he's almost ahead of schedule.
- 1:00:12Like, oh, hey, did you did you get the permit yet for the city to come make the tap?
- 1:00:17Oh shit.
- 1:00:18Right.
- 1:00:18, how do I know this cuz I've said those words.
- 1:00:20Yep.
- 1:00:21But now I've just placed a constraint, Jesse, because I didn't plan the work ahead.
- 1:00:25So you have to think about, you can't only just think about the, the bottleneck, but you have to think about if we've removed this bottleneck, what's the thing that the next constraint that's gonna, yeah.
- 1:00:37That's gonna come up.
- 1:00:38So you can't ever get up or ever start high fiving himself and, and Ralph Naam mirror kind of like blows their candles out.
- 1:00:47But it's a, it's an important learning moment, I think.
- 1:00:49Yes.
- 1:00:50Yes.
- 1:00:50Well, so couple things.
- 1:00:52One, you um, I remember we were in Chicago, we were at a face to face with all the RLMs and you said finishing early is waste.
- 1:01:03Is this the infamous like CPM summit?
- 1:01:06No, no, no, no, no.
- 1:01:07I think it was before that.
- 1:01:08Think it was before that.
- 1:01:10But you sat there and you said, finishing early is waste.
- 1:01:14And I was like, Finally somebody that I can relate to because I have a problem with the finishing early thing.
- 1:01:21Like if the, if the next thing isn't ready to go.
- 1:01:24So what?
- 1:01:25Yeah.
- 1:01:25So what if you finished early?
- 1:01:27Yeah.
- 1:01:27Um, if you're, anyhow like a big discussion, right?
- 1:01:31With the whole crew.
- 1:01:32Oh yeah.
- 1:01:32People get, people get all off the rails there.
- 1:01:35Luckily I didn't give up . Yes.
- 1:01:37I wasn't ding into thinking I was crazy cause I had No, no, no, no.
- 1:01:41It's, it's a problem.
- 1:01:43Yeah.
- 1:01:43The other thing you mentioned earlier, finishing early and is not necessarily bad, finishing early and not having a plan for that crew to finish early is now waste because you just, the whole point of, um, finishing early is defeated.
- 1:01:57Yeah.
- 1:01:57You accomplished nothing if that's, you've, you've, you may have received a, the gold star for pro production, but the next week, um will have idle constraints again.
- 1:02:09And there we go.
- 1:02:10Here's a mortal sin.
- 1:02:12Give constraints, resources, . Yeah.
- 1:02:15Don't let 'em sit idle.
- 1:02:16And if you're uncomfortable or afraid, go find help.
- 1:02:19And if they're, if they're afraid, then we're screwed.
- 1:02:23don't, don't let up.
- 1:02:25And I'll tell you like, um, that company that we used to work for, they actually got, had a constraint that was so big.
- 1:02:32This is a hospital project that they were working in, in Aurora, Colorado.
- 1:02:36Um, needed an act of congress, an act of congress in Washington DC and needed an act of Congress to restart that.
- 1:02:45Talk about, oh, man.
- 1:02:46Like, talk about, like, I'd probably flip that one up to the top of the constraint list.
- 1:02:51Yep.
- 1:02:52That's a big one.
- 1:02:53So, um but yeah, like, don't let off like, and keep elevating, keep elevating.
- 1:02:58Hey, your boss doesn't wanna do anything.
- 1:03:00Get outta the way.
- 1:03:01I'm gonna go talk to the general manager.
- 1:03:02General manager.
- 1:03:03Right.
- 1:03:04You don't like it.
- 1:03:04We'll go talk to division manager.
- 1:03:06Get to Division . That's, that's called managing up and down the chain of command.
- 1:03:11Yes.
- 1:03:11That's a, that's, that's a, that's a extreme ownership reference, but yes.
- 1:03:15Um, that's man, that's, um, important.
- 1:03:18So yeah, that's why it's that's a soup super long.
- 1:03:21Thank you for triggering me.
- 1:03:22Why finishing early is, is bad.
- 1:03:26It's be, and it's only bad if you're not ready for that.
- 1:03:30So if you just be like, Hey, they finished the three weeks early.
- 1:03:32Congratulations is, did we, when we update the, the critical path that we pulled in by three weeks, well, big deal.
- 1:03:39Well, what?
- 1:03:40Right.
- 1:03:40What you do.
- 1:03:41Yes.
- 1:03:42I'm definitely go congratulate that crew for doing a good job.
- 1:03:45But yeah.
- 1:03:46Yeah.
- 1:03:46Absolutely.
- 1:03:47The other thing you mentioned, perhaps they could have worked six hours instead of eight or, or whatever.
- 1:03:52Or the crew, right.
- 1:03:54Clean the corners or maintain their equipment or sharpen blades or do that kinda stuff.
- 1:03:59Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- 1:04:02The other thought that you, that's chapter 25.
- 1:04:04I'm like, it's so press the brake, but we gotta talk about when Alex Rogo gets hammered.
- 1:04:09Oh, we have to put that in first.
- 1:04:11Yes, yes.
- 1:04:13I don't know anything about that, but that the, what I think there's, there's so many lessons to be learned there.
- 1:04:20You have to learn how to see problem.
- 1:04:22Once you see problems, don't trust that you know that that's the problems you, to let the facts and data tell you that your assumption is correct.
- 1:04:30And then when you find that assumption is correct, you make a decision.
- 1:04:35You move the UDA loop, do the , and sometimes those solutions might be highly manual and then don't stop there.
- 1:04:44Keep going.
- 1:04:45Because when those solutions are going to change the flow of work, they're gonna change capacity of, of processes, of dependent events.
- 1:04:54And when those those changes happen, stuff's gonna finish early and wait, . Yeah.
- 1:05:00So you have to start anticipating those.
- 1:05:02So how do you anticipate those start looking, start doing, um, time in motion study on your a crew?
- 1:05:09Yes.
- 1:05:10You don't, they're, they're three weeks ahead scheduled.
- 1:05:12Thomas, why are you doing time in motion study?
- 1:05:14I'll be like, because the, when this crew that's behind them is now doing work at twice their rate, they're going to catch them.
- 1:05:23Yes.
- 1:05:23. And that happened in the, in the, the, the, my, my construction project Yeah.
- 1:05:28Yeah.
- 1:05:29Actually found that.
- 1:05:30And what happened was we found that the the drywall, so the dr you know, like the, the drywall early on had, didn't work at a very productive rate.
- 1:05:43And if you, if you've done high rise work or at least vertical work, it's the first few floors are really difficult because just the capacity is different.
- 1:05:53Your crew is smaller, it's hard to get in the building.
- 1:05:56Things are still rough because the project is set up for structure.
- 1:06:00So set up for hoisting things in the air, now all of a sudden we're putting finishes in permanent.
- 1:06:06Studs and drywall.
- 1:06:07And especially the drywall piece because it's a very fragile and, and yes, it gets ruined with moisture.
- 1:06:17Yes.
- 1:06:17So what we had was, hey, and the initial plan was you always do the enclosure, make it dry temporarily, and then you put the drywall in.
- 1:06:27Well, we had a problem on our project with supply chain . Yep.
- 1:06:33Um, and I won't get into the ins and out of it, but we had a supply chain.
- 1:06:37We had actually, we had many supply chains, so we had to make a decision.
- 1:06:42And this is that, this is the, the moment when we had to make this decision, and this decision had to be made by project leadership because it had, it, it became a, we had to spend some money on our idea, and this money was not insignificant, but we, we decided that if the enclosure and the drying part of the project was the bottleneck, and it, and it is, because you can't install drywall, even in California, it's gonna get rain, it's gonna get moldy.
- 1:07:11It's bad.
- 1:07:12You don't want the good people at LinkedIn to have a unhealthy air quality.
- 1:07:16So , um, we made sure that none of that drywall got destroyed with rain by having a temporary enclosure.
- 1:07:25And this temporary enclosure was like shrink wrap.
- 1:07:27You know, like when you winterize a yacht or like you put, put this really heavy duty, um, plastic wrapping and then you heat it up and it shrinks.
- 1:07:37We did this on a building in San Francisco and it wasn't perfect.
- 1:07:43It was, it was, it had all kinds of issues, but what it did was it kept water when rain would come out, kept it from getting into the building.
- 1:07:52Touching the drywall.
- 1:07:54And what that allowed us to do was open up flow, because now we're not waiting for this supply chain issue of enclosure.
- 1:08:02We're gonna put a temporary enclosure on it.
- 1:08:04That's the work, that was the work around, but it's not such a workaround where it's gonna get us in trouble, right?
- 1:08:11We're gonna manage our water with this temporary enclosure.
- 1:08:14And we made a decision.
- 1:08:15It was like, damn.
- 1:08:17Then all of a sudden, drywall was able to pass the the enclosure crew, and they were, they're, now they're like, there's nothing stopping us, cuz we're not waiting on the enclosure piece as everyone building behind me.
- 1:08:31That's maybe not, but there's nothing, there wasn't anything stopping them.
- 1:08:34So now the, the, the, their capacity like went exponentially huge and now they can add all kinds of resources to it.
- 1:08:41So their crew size got huge and their production went, if you were charting it, like I was on a, on a line and it went, the pitch changed very significantly and they were able to move up that building incredibly fast.
- 1:08:57So that they actually caught the, the next constraint was the fire stopping, you know, they looks like oatmeal.
- 1:09:05And if you remember my previous story, the fire stopping was constrained by concrete.
- 1:09:10Yes.
- 1:09:10So like we were starting to tighten through looking for bottlenecks.
- 1:09:15We were starting to increase our, increase our capacity through looking at bottlenecks, making decisions, creating temporary stretches, whatever it is, by thinking out outside the box, executing it, making decision, going, doing that operation, spending the money.
- 1:09:30Yep.
- 1:09:31We were better for it.
- 1:09:32And that like, I'm not saying everybody here like goes shrink wrap.
- 1:09:35Your building has a solution.
- 1:09:36It only works in this specific test case.
- 1:09:39Um, but and it wasn't perfect.
- 1:09:42It had all kinds of issues with it, my God.
- 1:09:45But we had to look at the, the brutal facts and make a decision and not lean on the people, the trades being like, Hey, you guys are super slow.
- 1:09:56You should work faster, . So, um, that's that's kind of the chapter 24 and a little, a little preview 20 or chapter 23.
- 1:10:04Little preview 25.
- 1:10:0525.
- 1:10:06Ooh is so good.
- 1:10:07But yeah, we got about, we gotta talk about boozing it up Chapter 24.
- 1:10:12So, yes.
- 1:10:13Um, that Bob, let me, let me get to it.
- 1:10:17. But they started to have some wins and they're like, we need to toast.
- 1:10:23We need to have a toast.
- 1:10:24So they break out the the bottle of Amber liquid in the office.
- 1:10:28This is, this is day drinking at work.
- 1:10:31. I guess it's, I guess it's champagne.
- 1:10:33Yeah, I get the, the champagne in the coffee cup.
- 1:10:36I may or may not have done this.
- 1:10:38You just, we'll just let that line.
- 1:10:39Yeah.
- 1:10:40Yeah.
- 1:10:40, no witnesses.
- 1:10:41You're good.
- 1:10:42Yes.
- 1:10:42There, there may have been some amber liquid in a coffee cup once, once or twice, but, um, only in an office.
- 1:10:49Never on a job site.
- 1:10:50But so they, they start to have a, have a, have a few and they're starting to feel the , feel the effects and Bill Peach calls.
- 1:11:00And wanted to thank Alex for, Hey, you really came through on that, that shipment, that Johnny Johns, he's super happy about it.
- 1:11:10And he is starting to turn the ship around.
- 1:11:12They're like, they're.
- 1:11:12Like even their little improvements that they're making customers at the end of the line, these, their, their end customers are starting to notice and they're starting to notice like very rapidly.
- 1:11:25And not only are they feeling the effect, so this is that reinforcing effect.
- 1:11:30It feels good, the team gets involved, we start being more productive.
- 1:11:34This is like, really feels good.
- 1:11:36And, um, it ha it starts to start to have indicators.
- 1:11:41And usually we're in my job, especially as a quality leader, that indicator is satisfied customers.
- 1:11:47And that that's, and like people on the end who pay our bills become satisfied and they tell us about it.
- 1:11:54Yes.
- 1:11:55And I have no greater satisfaction than taking those calls and, and then being like, Hey, and going back to that team and being like, Hey, like, like great job and here's why.
- 1:12:06And I wanted to tell you that, that I was on your case before and now I'm sorry.
- 1:12:12So now like a, like a weight has lifted and through this optimization, peach, peach, bill Peach, I guess he's like the CEO of the division and Alex the plant manager are repairing the relationship and it was super strained.
- 1:12:28Yep.
- 1:12:29Before.
- 1:12:30So, yeah.
- 1:12:30So , what do you think about that ever been?
- 1:12:33Now, now Alex goes on to have a few too many and he gets a ride home with his with one of his female coworkers, and They walk in the door and there's a, there's a, there's a moment and it's very light.
- 1:12:48It's not serious, but they, they fall on the floor and his wife who comes home and is trying to surprise him, finds him hammered and on top of his, his female coworker.
- 1:13:00And they're laughing.
- 1:13:01Yes.
- 1:13:01Dangerous.
- 1:13:02Yeah.
- 1:13:03You gotta, you gotta, um, you gotta take everything with moderation, what I'm trying to say.
- 1:13:08But, um, it, it does feel good to, um have a reinforcing effect and it, and it starts to build upon itself, and then there's output from it.
- 1:13:18Um, but you still gotta take, take that home.
- 1:13:21Take that win home.
- 1:13:23Don't just, don't just let the good times roll at work and then come at home and just blast it in front of her.
- 1:13:29Um, because the people at home don't know that you won or they don't know that you, you're feeling good.
- 1:13:36You gotta tell them.
- 1:13:37And if you, if you just go out there and you, and you tie one on, and then you come home in a puddle, that's all they see is you intoxicated in a puddle.
- 1:13:47And it's it doesn't, right?
- 1:13:49There's that transition piece when you go from work to home and there's pain that goes, that's associated with that.
- 1:13:54So I think that's, it's kind of like the, I don't know the lesson to be learned when you think about that.
- 1:14:00Yeah.
- 1:14:00I, I, there's a bunch there, right?
- 1:14:02So I know for me, when I was in miserable states, there's one project, like the worst one I was ever on.
- 1:14:08I was in a relationship and I told her, I was like, Hey, I gotta go dive into this lake of misery, so I'm not gonna be available.
- 1:14:16And I didn't call her for five months.
- 1:14:18Um, and then I called her after five months, which was awkward.
- 1:14:21But to me it made perfect sense because I said I'm gonna be busy.
- 1:14:24Um, and but the, and the learning I had, which is relative to what you're saying is.
- 1:14:30The people in our lives care about us and they want the best for us.
- 1:14:34And we usually don't mind sharing our misery with them, but we're horrible at sharing our wins with them.
- 1:14:41And in this situation, he, he was celebrating the win with his team, but hadn't planned or had anything in place so that he could celebrate the wins with his wife at home.
- 1:14:54And I know, cuz I, I'm guilty of this, like, no, no, no, no.
- 1:14:58I separate, I leave my problems at work and, and I don't bring them home.
- 1:15:03Maybe I don't, just because I'm not talking about 'em doesn't mean I'm not bringing my problem home.
- 1:15:08Because if I'm short and I'm frustrated and I'm distracted, I may not be talking about my problems at work, but I'm bringing my problem home and they are living through that mm-hmm.
- 1:15:18and then all of a sudden I'm in a good mood and they're like, what the, what, what are you smoking bro?
- 1:15:23Like, what's going on?
- 1:15:24Literally.
- 1:15:25Right.
- 1:15:25Like, what is happening with you?
- 1:15:27And so we we're human beings.
- 1:15:31We cannot completely separate.
- 1:15:34Right.
- 1:15:35What's the word you use?
- 1:15:35Like it permeates, it gets through the membrane.
- 1:15:38Membrane.
- 1:15:38There's no membrane.
- 1:15:39There's no membrane.
- 1:15:40Or the membrane is porous.
- 1:15:42Yeah.
- 1:15:42Yes, yes.
- 1:15:44And so when we're having a tough time at work, our family feels it.
- 1:15:48The people they care about, they feel it.
- 1:15:50They see it.
- 1:15:50And, and they're there for you during that time.
- 1:15:54And when you have a win, let them be there with you.
- 1:15:57Yeah.
- 1:15:57For that time also.
- 1:15:59Like it takes a conscious effort to really make that and do that well.
- 1:16:03Yeah.
- 1:16:04And give a little credit to Alex.
- 1:16:06He didn't know his wife came home to surprise him, but I guess these days would be like, Hey, gonna go have a couple pops with my friends.
- 1:16:14We had a good day at work.
- 1:16:15Be home late.
- 1:16:16You know, give somebody a heads up.
- 1:16:18And then they, that's the communication piece that hey, we, we've, my mood has changed because we've had, we've had, I've had a shift in mindset and we've done this, all this cool stuff, and I want to tell you about it.
- 1:16:31But instead, he didn't do that because he left, put a, he put a wall in between his work and his, his home life.
- 1:16:38Yes.
- 1:16:39And there's consequences.
- 1:16:41There's consequences.
- 1:16:42. And all his wife saw was him walking in with his with Stacy, I guess she's like a, one of the expeditors.
- 1:16:48And I was like, what the heck?
- 1:16:50And she hasn't been home.
- 1:16:51Like, what does that look like?
- 1:16:52That doesn't look like horrible.
- 1:16:54Oh, good at all.
- 1:16:54Even though it was all innocent, it don't look good.
- 1:16:57Yeah.
- 1:16:57So, um, yeah, it's there's a lot of lessons that unpack there because you're having a good day at work.
- 1:17:04You're gonna, you're gonna hopefully take that home and have that good day at the rest of the night.
- 1:17:09But if you don't, um, you might also have problems at home that you're going to run into, and then you'll, you'll feel it.
- 1:17:15And then also, if you have a bad day at work, you're gonna bring that in you.
- 1:17:19And whether that's in your conscious brain or in if it's in your subconscious, it's still gonna come out . There is no membrane.
- 1:17:26And, um, we have to, um, we have to carry that and communicate our emotion no matter where we are in our world.
- 1:17:35Yes.
- 1:17:36I think that's incredibly important.
- 1:17:37And, and that's true for me.
- 1:17:38And I still need to work on that so much.
- 1:17:41Um, but I, I, at least I try to, now we have good days.
- 1:17:45We have, we have rough days that we, we share that, that way, um, you come into the conversation kind of understanding what's, what the mood is.
- 1:17:55But that's 24 25 My summary, that's all I wrote.
- 1:18:01Stop.
- 1:18:02Futile work.
- 1:18:04Oh, oh, yes.
- 1:18:06Jonah comes back right outta the gate.
- 1:18:09Jonah, they pick him up at the airport.
- 1:18:12Jonah is doing a sidewalk.
- 1:18:15He is going.
- 1:18:16And scene Genbutsu gets boots on.
- 1:18:20Jonah's got, he's got questions.
- 1:18:23He's got questions.
- 1:18:24He's doing the David verbal thing, questions.
- 1:18:27And so they're, they're walking around and they've had some wins, like, they're like, Hey, this is awesome.
- 1:18:31Like, we check this out.
- 1:18:33Like we have these bottling, we have this, we have this robot, and we have the machinists helping out with capacity.
- 1:18:40We got the heat treat.
- 1:18:42We send the, the excess stuff to the third party.
- 1:18:45And then at the end they're like, they're all like thinking they're gonna get high fives by Jonah, but, oh, no, start, they're starting, they're bragging.
- 1:18:53And this is probably like half the sidewalks I've been on with my management.
- 1:18:56They're like, this is, this is not great, Thomas, but I'm thinking I'm just the be's knees . But they start bragging about their tag system, their signaling system.
- 1:19:06And it's again, he goes, he starts to challenge Jonah.
- 1:19:11This, this jet setting consultant starts to challenge the signaling system.
- 1:19:15He starts to challenge it.
- 1:19:17And he says, you're only getting so many works out of the day.
- 1:19:22Like, you're only, like, you're, you're like, how do you know that the red is the true?
- 1:19:27Like, like how do you even know?
- 1:19:28And.
- 1:19:29He starts to challenge us and they actually find an error.
- 1:19:32They find somebody doing green tag work when there's a red tag stuff and he is like, Hey, well we got, we got this problem , and it's right there in like right there in front of Jonah.
- 1:19:42And they start to see inventory again.
- 1:19:45Oh.
- 1:19:46Oh.
- 1:19:46And they're like, it's, and I like this.
- 1:19:48It's, it's, um, it's page 2 75 and it's like, it's stacked as high as the, the biggest forklift can reach.
- 1:19:56It's not just a mountain, but a mountain with many peaks . Yep.
- 1:20:00Piles are even bigger than before.
- 1:20:02We identify the machine as a bottleneck, we tied to every bin hanging from every pallet is parts is a red tag and somewhere behind it all it's own hugest, obscured from our view is the Ncx 10.
- 1:20:17So they, even though they were like, we got this figured out, they just, all that they did was create more inventory.
- 1:20:25They haven't mastered the they haven't mastered throughput yet.
- 1:20:29Yeah.
- 1:20:29And it was only through like a, like a series of questions that Joe, they actually see this.
- 1:20:35So John goes, by the way, do you remember when I told you that a plan in which everyone is working all the time is very inefficient?
- 1:20:42Cause they're like, Hey, everybody's back on task.
- 1:20:44We got, we got capacity over here.
- 1:20:47These guys are doing this.
- 1:20:47We're Santa step off at third parties.
- 1:20:49Boom, boom, boom, we got this.
- 1:20:51And we're like, Jonah's like, now your back to where you were.
- 1:20:54Everybody's working again.
- 1:20:56Like this is bad.
- 1:20:58Mm-hmm.
- 1:20:58. So he, um, oh God, this is so good.
- 1:21:01I wanna read this whole chapter,. Well what do you think about that?
- 1:21:04Let, let me read ahead.
- 1:21:05What do you think about.
- 1:21:07When you think you've, you've got it down and you have somebody be like, what's up with this quality control process at the end?
- 1:21:17And like, why are they reworking red tagged things like this.
- 1:21:23This assembly has defects and it's went through a red tag process.
- 1:21:28So that means it got priority and that it went through here, it went through this machine.
- 1:21:33We did all this stuff.
- 1:21:34We had all this stuff, we had all these conferences and like, and at the end of the day, we're still throwing away a part of, part of the we're having to send these defective parts back through machining again because they didn't pass quality inspection.
- 1:21:48Is that an issue?
- 1:21:49? Yeah.
- 1:21:50Yes, yes, yes.
- 1:21:52So yes.
- 1:21:53So, um, Jonah gets a piece of chalk and he writes it on the floor and he starts to, starts to, starts to write this equation on the floor.
- 1:22:02And he starts to draw like, oh, see this problem right here?
- 1:22:06Then this is defective piece.
- 1:22:07It goes back and like, you don't have 600 hours to do it.
- 1:22:13You only have 450 hours because of all this rework.
- 1:22:17Yep.
- 1:22:18Yeah.
- 1:22:18So it's, um, again, they have what's 600 must for, they have 150 hours of idle resources Because of quality errors.
- 1:22:28Yes.
- 1:22:28Because they put their quality check at the end.
- 1:22:32Yes.
- 1:22:33Oh yes.
- 1:22:35This is why, this is why this is my favorite chapter.
- 1:22:37Cause this, this, this cuts deep.
- 1:22:39Yes.
- 1:22:39Cause, um, if you're only inspecting quality, like looking for errors in defects at the end of that entire production, All that entire production crime run that has defects.
- 1:22:51You just created trash.
- 1:22:52Yes, yes.
- 1:22:53Or you created something that you have to go run it again.
- 1:22:56Doesn't that suck?
- 1:22:57It does.
- 1:22:57It brings, they hate it.
- 1:22:59Hate it when the quality guys shows up and you're like, ah, crap.
- 1:23:02You we're gonna fail in an inspection.
- 1:23:04Never failed in an inspection.
- 1:23:06Oh God, yes.
- 1:23:07You know, we had, oh, nightmare.
- 1:23:10Two things it reminds me of.
- 1:23:12It was a project and, and I was, we were, our production planning was very tight, and it was just internal.
- 1:23:19It wasn't with the GC was just trade.
- 1:23:20And my, the foreman asked me, he's like, Jess, so how many, like, your plan doesn't account for leaks?
- 1:23:27I'm like, okay.
- 1:23:28He says, so how many leaks are acceptable?
- 1:23:31And I'm like I don't understand the question.
- 1:23:34Like, none.
- 1:23:35Like there's no leaks in the drawings.
- 1:23:38There's no spec item calling for leaks, so we don't need to install'em like we don't have to for real.
- 1:23:46Um, which was kind of funny.
- 1:23:47It wasn't funny to him, but it was funny to me and what we did, and to this perfect example of what you're talking about, because of the way the build, there was a whole bunch of stuff going on on the first floor of this building.
- 1:23:58It was a renovation of a old historic brewery.
- 1:24:02And the design hadn't been worked out.
- 1:24:04Elevations hadn't been worked out, but they wanted to hurry up and go with the guest rooms.
- 1:24:08So there was hotel rooms up above.
- 1:24:10Okay.
- 1:24:11So we go to town roughing in all the cast iron for all of these guest rooms.
- 1:24:15But because we weren't tied into the bottom, the decision was made.
- 1:24:19And I was ignorant.
- 1:24:20Like I didn't pay close enough attention to not to continue installing without.
- 1:24:25So we installed a whole stack of rooms because you know what?
- 1:24:29They're gonna get the answer next week.
- 1:24:30Next week, Kane.
- 1:24:31They still don't have the answer.
- 1:24:32Okay, well let's do another stack of rooms and another stack of rooms.
- 1:24:36While Tommy knew it, we had like, who knows, I don't know, 40 units roughed in.
- 1:24:41None of them had been inspected at this point.
- 1:24:44It's like, okay, they're never gonna fig, like we cannot be waiting for them anymore.
- 1:24:48We gotta test.
- 1:24:49We can't test with water because there's nowhere to dump the water because we can't install the mains.
- 1:24:55So we start testing with air.
- 1:24:57It's very difficult to find your leaks on a no hub, cast iron system when you're testing with air and you have, I don't know, 3000 joints to find them and what we, what we just, so it was a, it was a bear, right?
- 1:25:11We had to hunt in for Lee.
- 1:25:13Wasting time, wasting time, wasting time.
- 1:25:16Anyways.
- 1:25:16Got to the source of it.
- 1:25:18Cuz we kept installing No, no, no, no, no.
- 1:25:20I said whoever's in like, is it the same crew?
- 1:25:21Yeah, it's the same crew.
- 1:25:22It's like, okay, stop.
- 1:25:24I'm like, what do you mean?
- 1:25:25Like we gotta, I said, no, no, no, no.
- 1:25:26Stop.
- 1:25:27Cause they've installed all of these leaks.
- 1:25:29like they're doing something, something in their process is creating these leaks.
- 1:25:35Oh, come on Jess.
- 1:25:36I'm like, man, it's not a curse.
- 1:25:38Like this is, let's just go watch what they're doing.
- 1:25:42So what ended up being, they had one of the helpers on the team, on that cast iron team when he was ins, when he was assembling the bands.
- 1:25:49He wasn't torquing them down.
- 1:25:51He was using this, we bought these torque mil, fancy Milwaukee torque screw guns.
- 1:25:57They weren't screw guns, but they were specifically for no hub bands and they, they had a certain torque adjusted a tight to the right torque.
- 1:26:03Oh yeah.
- 1:26:04He had his own little Milwaukee drill that he used.
- 1:26:08I.
- 1:26:08Like an impact.
- 1:26:09Yeah, yeah.
- 1:26:10Like just a little impact or something.
- 1:26:12It looked, it wasn't calibrated.
- 1:26:13Yeah, it wasn't calibrated.
- 1:26:15So he was going to town with this drill, but it never torque the damn bands.
- 1:26:19So every damn band he installed had a leak.
- 1:26:23Yeah.
- 1:26:24And so to your point, right, the quality check was at the end of the installation.
- 1:26:29And so, you know, of course I lost it a little bit.
- 1:26:32Had to go, come back, walk off, come back and say, all right guys, I, I, I'm sorry, but this is the deal.
- 1:26:39We've lost 120 man hours testing and we still haven't found all the leaks.
- 1:26:45We testing is not a very productive use of anyone's.
- 1:26:48Not at all.
- 1:26:49Not at all.
- 1:26:50It's still filling it up with water.
- 1:26:51Yes.
- 1:26:52Looking for errors.
- 1:26:53Yeah.
- 1:26:54Yes.
- 1:26:54So I said, let's, I want to, let's go through, let's get two pieces of cast iron.
- 1:27:00I want you to cut it and I want you to assemble it.
- 1:27:03And I wanna watch how y'all are doing.
- 1:27:04Damn.
- 1:27:05You did a mockup.
- 1:27:06Yes.
- 1:27:07Because I'm trying to figure this out.
- 1:27:09And that's when I realized like, wait a minute, I see what the, and I had my own old school torque wrench, right.
- 1:27:14To make sure, cause I was automatically just blaming the tool.
- 1:27:18Oh yes.
- 1:27:19Right.
- 1:27:19And so I said, person A, go for it.
- 1:27:21Boom.
- 1:27:22To torque.
- 1:27:22Okay.
- 1:27:23Okay.
- 1:27:23Good.
- 1:27:24That one's a good one.
- 1:27:24Next one, person B.
- 1:27:26Torque tort.
- 1:27:26Okay.
- 1:27:26Good person.
- 1:27:28C.
- 1:27:28Like, oh man, I still, I had to crank down on it and I look, I say, oh man, it's your drill.
- 1:27:34Son of a gut.
- 1:27:35Like, like, dude, how long you been using the drill?
- 1:27:37Since I got here?
- 1:27:38Like, he was excited.
- 1:27:39I just bought it.
- 1:27:39I'm like, calm down.
- 1:27:41It's like, all right bro, I love your drill, but you cannot use that drill on this system.
- 1:27:46I'm not blaming you, but I'm going to bet that that's the source of our leak.
- 1:27:50No, it's not.
- 1:27:51Check it out.
- 1:27:52Okay.
- 1:27:52Let's do another.
- 1:27:53and then I want you to use my torque wrench to torque to see if it's set.
- 1:27:56Okay.
- 1:27:57He did the other one.
- 1:27:58He is like, oh, and he like turned over.
- 1:28:02Yeah.
- 1:28:02Yeah.
- 1:28:02I was able to, he was able to give it a couple turns.
- 1:28:05He was like, oh, like, you know, he didn't do it on purpose.
- 1:28:08Just didn't know.
- 1:28:09And we hadn't designed like from that.
- 1:28:12My takeaway was like, man, how often, how many times have I put somebody to install cash down or run domestic water, pro press, soder, doesn't matter, whatever system we're using, and just said, go do it.
- 1:28:23And didn't verify that they had the right tools or the right technique to use that system.
- 1:28:29So by failing to do that, that little introductory, Hey, when you're running cast iron, this is what you do when you're soldering copper.
- 1:28:36Use this size tip, not this size tip for this size copper.
- 1:28:40We don't do that.
- 1:28:42We just say go run it.
- 1:28:43And then we got leaks and we're wonder, or my favorite is, um, threaded pipe.
- 1:28:48I love running thread.
- 1:28:49That's my like, ultimate favorite is to run screw pipe.
- 1:28:52But you gotta check the threads every like eight to 10 joints that you make because the threading dye it, it's got some wiggle in it.
- 1:29:02And after you've threaded so many joints, you gotta adjust it again.
- 1:29:05You got Oh, the machine.
- 1:29:07Yes.
- 1:29:08Teeth of the dye, the threading dye.
- 1:29:10You gotta adjust it.
- 1:29:11And I was really good at it because I would do that and I wouldn't have a lot of leaks if people thought I was just like super strong and would tighten the hell out of it.
- 1:29:19No, it wasn't that.
- 1:29:20I was always checking my teeth to make sure they were the right.
- 1:29:23Yeah.
- 1:29:24And so anyways, moving that quality check to the back end of it cost it was, it was a damn nightmare.
- 1:29:32Gave me a couple ulcers.
- 1:29:33, yes, but okay.
- 1:29:35Boom.
- 1:29:36You nailed it.
- 1:29:37While you were talking, I wrote down some rules, some summary points that was kind of rambling, but.
- 1:29:42Page.
- 1:29:42He Jonas says exactly what you said.
- 1:29:46Um, he says and, and the example you were saying was, Hey, we had a, we had a quality problem because the torque, um, the machine that we're using didn't torque it, right?
- 1:29:56Yep.
- 1:29:56Torque it down to the specification that was required, and we made a mistake and we didn't stop the futile work.
- 1:30:03The futile work was the guy thinking he was twerking into specs, but not, and then not checking it.
- 1:30:09Yes.
- 1:30:10So, um, so Jonah has the same issue because they got, they have, we're like, we're so productive with this red tag green tag system.
- 1:30:18Now we're killing it.
- 1:30:19And he's like, you got piles of inventory, . This is not a good idea.
- 1:30:23He says, create a simple rule.
- 1:30:25He goes, , we can form a simple rule, which will be true in every case.
- 1:30:29The level of utilization of a non bottleneck is not determined by its own potential, but by some other constraint in the system.
- 1:30:39So if you have a non bottleneck, you got, what's the thing on a horse?
- 1:30:44The rains.
- 1:30:46The rains, slow it down.
- 1:30:47I don't ride horses, but I do watch Western movies.
- 1:30:50So they pull on the rains to slow the horse down.
- 1:30:54Um, and the horse is trained that, that it knows that when the rains get pulled, it's supposed to slow down.
- 1:30:59So what he says is, you guys, if you have non bottlenecks, don't work them.
- 1:31:04And it's like, oh my God, no, not possible.
- 1:31:07What do you mean?
- 1:31:08And then like, they're like, what do you mean if we don't keep our machines and our workers productive, we will get bad production numbers.
- 1:31:17And those go to.
- 1:31:19Like it's fear now.
- 1:31:20It's like, it's like, guys, you're not, so the note I wrote was kind of cryptic here.
- 1:31:26Um, do not pursue an activity that, that does not progress towards the goal.
- 1:31:33Mm-hmm.
- 1:31:34do not pursue an activity that is not lead to achieving the goal.
- 1:31:41Mm-hmm.
- 1:31:41, repeat, stop futile work.
- 1:31:46Yes.
- 1:31:47Um, and it's hard because oftentimes raining in the the, the thoroughbred is not allowed.
- 1:31:56Yeah.
- 1:31:56Or there's consequences.
- 1:32:00Yes.
- 1:32:00Um, be because of the traditional mindset of things.
- 1:32:03But what Yes.
- 1:32:04I wanna say is that if, if you have non bottlenecks working even at a lower, even lowering, and they're still producing and they're producing inventory and the inventory's getting all piled up, you're just creating waste.
- 1:32:17Yep.
- 1:32:17Take that a team . Yep.
- 1:32:19And have 'em, have 'em go do training or Yeah.
- 1:32:24Deep clean or go torque test the bands.
- 1:32:29Yes.
- 1:32:29On the, or do let's do extra water testing so that when we do the water tests in front of the inspector, no factor good to go.
- 1:32:39Right?
- 1:32:39Yes.
- 1:32:39So it's, it's, you have to stop futile work.
- 1:32:44And this is a, this is a rule or a law.
- 1:32:48I don't know what it's, but, um, if you're, if, if, if you don't take that step, you'll have.
- 1:32:54You might be super productive and everybody's humming along, but your, your, your operation will be not running at optimum capacity because all you're doing is creating inventory and getting them the way, and you're burning people's energies for nothing.
- 1:33:09For nothing.
- 1:33:09And then also when you have inventory, here comes the secret about overproduction.
- 1:33:16It leads to all of the other eight or seven waste.
- 1:33:20It's the mother of all the waste.
- 1:33:22It'll lead to all your quality problems.
- 1:33:24So if you have any inventory laying around, you're gonna have quality problems.
- 1:33:28So guess what?
- 1:33:29Quality leader of, of a very large general contractor, what is my indicator for quality problems?
- 1:33:36Overproduction, any kind of overproduction that's happening.
- 1:33:38I already know.
- 1:33:39I already know.
- 1:33:40I don't know what the situation is, but I already know there's gonna be some errors and defects and that we're gonna do forensic analysis on that inventory.
- 1:33:48And that's what they do here.
- 1:33:49That's what they do in this chapter.
- 1:33:51They stopped futile work.
- 1:33:52So ? Yes.
- 1:33:54And guess what it is?
- 1:33:55This is the, this is the zinger.
- 1:33:58Um, and it's right here on, I dunno what it's trying to find it real quick, but it's, um, so you don't do the inventory.
- 1:34:06And then I wrote, do not optimize Hollywood metrics.
- 1:34:12Ooh,.
- 1:34:13But I, what I mean by Hollywood is that it's an actor or it's it's fiction.
- 1:34:18Yes.
- 1:34:19Or it's, um, it's a metric that looks cool on a dashboard.
- 1:34:23I, um, and it makes it feel, it makes us feel good.
- 1:34:26It's like, damn, the guys are super productive.
- 1:34:28They're knocking it outta the park.
- 1:34:30If that, if that metric doesn't lead us towards the goal, if it's only a local optimization, it.
- 1:34:36So don't even pursue it.
- 1:34:37Don't even put it on your dashboard.
- 1:34:38Throw that thing, delete it off your power BI or your whiteboard or whatever it is.
- 1:34:42Whatever.
- 1:34:43Yep.
- 1:34:44don't, so don't pursue it.
- 1:34:45Creating excess inventory and two, don't even measure that.
- 1:34:49Just not even worth your time.
- 1:34:51So he's such a, he's such a sage.
- 1:34:54Yes.
- 1:34:55But he, he literally stops that group.
- 1:34:57We're like, and puts 'em in place, but only, he's like, I understand these, like, these simple rules and I'm trying to learn, trust me, like if I walk on your job site, I see inventory.
- 1:35:06I'm not gonna be like, oh, we got issues here, . But, um, I, I always, constantly are like, let's not try to chase down these Hollywood metrics that just look cool.
- 1:35:17Yeah.
- 1:35:18What do you think about that?
- 1:35:19I think here, I'm gonna say something controversial.
- 1:35:21The Hollywood metrics of contractors, project teams, general contractors, trades of, we finish on time and we finished on budget.
- 1:35:32I especially, oh yeah.
- 1:35:34, especially for GCs.
- 1:35:36I say it's a Hollywood metric for two reasons.
- 1:35:39One big fricking deal.
- 1:35:41You were under contract to do that.
- 1:35:43Two at what cost?
- 1:35:46Right?
- 1:35:46Because general contractors, most of their staff are salaried, so they're not, they have no idea how many hours their people are working.
- 1:35:57And so how many of their people are on their second or third divorce or on the verge of their first, how many of their staff are self-medicating?
- 1:36:07How many of their staff are freaking miserable?
- 1:36:10But they're touting on scheduling.
- 1:36:12Oh yeah.
- 1:36:13That on schedule and on budget don't mean jack when your people are unhealthy and falling apart.
- 1:36:17So it's like, I've always, I've asked this question several times, like, why, why can't we track the number of hours people are working?
- 1:36:24Like I'm, I understand like it's not a time thing cause they're salary, but you're celebrating something and you think you're winning, but you're not.
- 1:36:32You're killing your people.
- 1:36:33Yeah.
- 1:36:34And we can very easily with smartphones.
- 1:36:37Yeah.
- 1:36:37So easy.
- 1:36:38And every time I brought that up, people I'm like, I mean, come on.
- 1:36:43Okay, maybe let's not track their hours.
- 1:36:45Let's look at how many ball games they didn't go to.
- 1:36:49How many vacations they rescheduled or canceled, how many rehearsals they didn't go to.
- 1:36:54Let's look at that.
- 1:36:55Nobody wants to look at that.
- 1:36:57That was harder to Yeah.
- 1:36:59Yeah.
- 1:37:00It's invisible.
- 1:37:00Almost invisible.
- 1:37:02Yes.
- 1:37:03Yeah.
- 1:37:04But so big deal on time and on scale.
- 1:37:06But that, that weighs in, that weighs in, um, the, this week, um, the Lane Foundations podcast.
- 1:37:14Oh yeah.
- 1:37:14I was on it to it.
- 1:37:16Yes.
- 1:37:16And I actually talk about that.
- 1:37:18Yep.
- 1:37:18But I was saying, I, I couldn't raise, like I was, I thought I could be more productive and have more capacity by working more.
- 1:37:28Nope.
- 1:37:28Right.
- 1:37:29That's what I thought.
- 1:37:30And then I was working on a project that was huge city center, massive.
- 1:37:33Like it ran 24 7 and um, I wasn't.
- 1:37:37Rockstar or any anybody special out there at all.
- 1:37:41Um, but I thought I could like grow my brand by just grinding.
- 1:37:45Just, just grinding.
- 1:37:46Just getting after it and getting into, getting into everything, all the stuff.
- 1:37:50And it was seriously, it was like they were like, people were appreciate appreciative.
- 1:37:55Yeah.
- 1:37:55Of, and I was promoted and given raises and all kinds of stuff.
- 1:37:59And but what I told Walker and Davis was, um, I wasn't raising my capacity.
- 1:38:06I was taking out my energy for personal relationships.
- 1:38:12Yep.
- 1:38:12And whatever, like all like having a good home life, like all this stuff.
- 1:38:16I didn't burn that out.
- 1:38:17Like I had no hobbies.
- 1:38:19I, what did I do?
- 1:38:20I went to work, I went to bed, I went to the bar and then went back to work.
- 1:38:24maybe not in that order, but like those were the, the things that was it own a home.
- 1:38:28Um, like it was very, my life was very work focused.
- 1:38:34And like, I don't even look at pictures when I, of, when I was very few.
- 1:38:41I mean, I'm a hundreds or thousands of work photos in the album, but very few, um, photos of like, when I went to Bryce Canyon for a weekend, or the Grand Canyon or Death Valley, like all these places are around that area.
- 1:38:56So, um, it's, and that's a hard one because it's like you're also building your career that way.
- 1:39:01So, but I guess my, my thing was to them was like, yeah, you gotta manage that and don't, don't let your own ego take advantage.
- 1:39:09Yes.
- 1:39:09Of that.
- 1:39:10So be, become more effective.
- 1:39:12Don't just work harder.
- 1:39:13what I was trying to say, learn these techniques, like in this book by Dr.
- 1:39:18Gold.
- 1:39:18They are, they're very sage advice.
- 1:39:20So let's do chapter 26.
- 1:39:22I think we wrap it here cuz it's, um, this is genius and this is why the home life, it trickles in and I'm like walking in.
- 1:39:32Um, and he actually does it.
- 1:39:34They're, he's having breakfast, breakfast with his daughter and his son at the table.
- 1:39:41And he actually is honest with him.
- 1:39:42He's like, I gotta, I got, I got, I got a problem.
- 1:39:46Yep.
- 1:39:46I got a problem.
- 1:39:48We got two herpes.
- 1:39:49And they, the kids know the Herbie story.
- 1:39:51He's like, we got, we got two herpes.
- 1:39:54Um, but how do we keep the line from spreading?
- 1:39:57So he is like, okay, each of you 10 minutes, go into the room and come with, come up with an idea of how we're gonna do with Herbie.
- 1:40:08So they do, they do this.
- 1:40:09He's like, the, the, the winner gets a present or something and his daughter comes back, Sharon daughter.
- 1:40:16He's like, okay, what's the what's the solution?
- 1:40:20And Sharon goes, you need a drummer.
- 1:40:22It's like, you know, like in a parade.
- 1:40:24He's like, yeah, there's, she's like, I think I get it.
- 1:40:27Like there's no gaps in a parade.
- 1:40:30Everybody's marching in step.
- 1:40:32Yeah.
- 1:40:32And then Dave goes, but how do you keep the people in front of Herbie from setting the faster pace and Sharon Wise, beyond her years, Yes.
- 1:40:44You gotta give Herbie the drum.
- 1:40:47Oh, awesome.
- 1:40:48Right?
- 1:40:48Like, okay, who sets the pace?
- 1:40:51Herbie, who sets the pace in front?
- 1:40:54Herby.
- 1:40:54So even if Herbie's in the middle of the line, the signal, the drum.
- 1:40:59Yes.
- 1:41:00You know that signal?
- 1:41:01That's the signal to go.
- 1:41:03Mr.
- 1:41:03Schroeder would call that tact, but yep.
- 1:41:06I think that's a German word.
- 1:41:07But, um, the drummer, so that way Herbie, even if he's not in front of the line, he signals the whole line how we, um, how we keep together.
- 1:41:18And that's why it's so good.
- 1:41:20And children, they just know.
- 1:41:21Yes, Dave, Dave hits this is like a one two punch.
- 1:41:26And this gets, um, this is another book by gold rat.
- 1:41:29But, um, let's, maybe we'll do that another year.
- 1:41:33. The way we're going here, , Dave goes, that's really good.
- 1:41:37I have a better idea.
- 1:41:39You use rope like mountain climbers.
- 1:41:42You know how mountain climbers I don't know if you watch mountain climbers.
- 1:41:46Um they used to do this in iron workers too.
- 1:41:49So you type people together with rope.
- 1:41:50That way if one person falls, Yeah.
- 1:41:52The other person jumps the other way.
- 1:41:54And then you, you know, you fall.
- 1:41:56Right?
- 1:41:56So, but if you have a drum, people perhaps might, you know, be like, ah, that doesn't apply to me.
- 1:42:04Yeah.
- 1:42:05These rules, these, these, these are rules.
- 1:42:07I don't, they don't apply to me.
- 1:42:08I'm, I, I need my freedom.
- 1:42:10But if you hadn't rope mm-hmm.
- 1:42:12, no one can left behind because you physically can't.
- 1:42:15You're physically bound.
- 1:42:16Yes, So he is like, oh, come to think of it.
- 1:42:19The rope makes it sound like having physical links between all the equipment, which is like a assembly line.
- 1:42:25Dave's like, yeah, an assembly line.
- 1:42:27Didn't you tell me once that assembly line is supposed to be the best way to make things?
- 1:42:31He's like, well, it's, he gets, he's like, oh, I'm Henry Ford.
- 1:42:34Now , the problem with the assembly line is it doesn't work through the whole plant.
- 1:42:38Like you can't literally, right.
- 1:42:40We have too much variation.
- 1:42:41We're not just building model tsr.
- 1:42:43So like they, he's sitting here doing corporate level problem solving with these two children who are like eight and 10 years old.
- 1:42:51Um, so to keep the line from spreading, you gotta get everybody to march in the same step or tie 'em to rope.
- 1:42:58Like, so herbes like signaling in front that the people in front of him, its like we just tie the rope from Herbie to the kid at the front so that everybody else along the middle stay in there.
- 1:43:11They don't have to be tied together.
- 1:43:13They can, they can have variation.
- 1:43:16What's important, what's important is the piece of rope from Herbie to the front.
- 1:43:22Yep.
- 1:43:23This is, this is like, oh my god.
- 1:43:25What does that create?
- 1:43:27Mr.
- 1:43:27Schroeder . Yep.
- 1:43:29So if you have, if you have the drum, I got a rope from Herbie to the front line.
- 1:43:33So my, my inventory does not grow.
- 1:43:35I'm prevented from increasing inventory.
- 1:43:38Yep.
- 1:43:39It's impossible.
- 1:43:39I created a rule.
- 1:43:41Um, they have the signals, but the people, the people in the middle between Herbie and the the person in the front, they all have buffer.
- 1:43:50Because they, they can fluctuate.
- 1:43:52Yep.
- 1:43:52They can, they can only fluctuate in between each other when they start running into each other.
- 1:43:57But they're all working on this drum buffer, rope drum, buffer, rope drum buffer, rope drum, buffer rope.
- 1:44:05This is the underlying production theory that, that is theory of constraints.
- 1:44:10And they're, this is fictional, but it was figured out by , by a, by a plant manager and two children.
- 1:44:16Yes.
- 1:44:17So it's like if we can hold material for red parts instead of pushing them back out, as soon as the first bottleneck has nothing to do, the million machines will then have time to work on the green parts and the parts we're missing.
- 1:44:27We'll reach assembly with no problem.
- 1:44:30We have a drum system that keeps everybody in place and check that way.
- 1:44:36We don't ever grow inventory.
- 1:44:38So if, if the drum don't beat you, don't take a step, stop.
- 1:44:42If there's problems, we stop the line.
- 1:44:44And how do we stop the line?
- 1:44:45We gotta rope from the, from the bottleneck all the way to the, to the front.
- 1:44:51Yes.
- 1:44:51That way we can stop the line if there's a complete constraint.
- 1:44:54But also there's variation.
- 1:44:57We are also designing the variation in between the front of the line and Herbie, people can float.
- 1:45:03There's some float time.
- 1:45:04So that way you can choose to work on bottleneck, work on non bottlenecks, but only when it's the beat is happening.
- 1:45:13This is the theory of constraints.
- 1:45:16It's drum, everybody worked attack buffer design in fluctuation for statistical variation and a rope having very specific rules about not over producing . Yes.
- 1:45:29And then.
- 1:45:30How, what, what metrics are we gonna measure?
- 1:45:32We're gonna measure inventory, we're gonna measure operating expense.
- 1:45:37Yep.
- 1:45:37Right?
- 1:45:38And that's, that's how we, um, we don't pursue any other Hollywood metrics if that, that metric isn't allowing us to move towards our goal is waste.
- 1:45:48We stop doing.
- 1:45:49Yes.
- 1:45:50.
- 1:45:50Yes.
- 1:45:50So like Alex goes back and he tries to implement this in the factory and he is like, this is genius.
- 1:45:57Where did you come up with this?
- 1:45:58Well, the kids, he's like, well, you know, I'm just such a, um, but that, but I, I think that was really cool.
- 1:46:04But I think the, the, the, the thing that is important and the, the work life balance thing and for me is especially true, is you gotta do that night thinking.
- 1:46:16Mm.
- 1:46:17You gotta do the night thinking.
- 1:46:19Yes.
- 1:46:19Um, or if, what I mean by that is like, you have to like, introduce diverse sets of inputs into your train of thought or else you get trapped in this mind.
- 1:46:32So if you're at a conference, oh, like, perhaps gonna happen, the most important conversation is not the one that you listen to, it's the one that's out in the hallway.
- 1:46:41Yep.
- 1:46:41The one after your like sixth IPA at Toots, you're in Nashville, . Um, so, so it's like, don't just get tied up in your own, um, traditional ways.
- 1:46:53Obviously we wanna have, um, we wanna attack these problems in very systematic ways, but also like when we're doing problem solving, we want to have a diverse set of inputs, including children in this case, my God, But then also if they have a really good idea, That makes, that makes systematic sense.
- 1:47:09A minute.
- 1:47:10Let's do it.
- 1:47:10Let's try out.
- 1:47:11So yes, I wanna leave it there cuz that is, that is great.
- 1:47:15So we have now introduced all these production rules.
- 1:47:20Don't let resources sit idle.
- 1:47:22If you have constraints, you have to focus on them, even if it makes you uncomfortable, even if it makes the person that you're going to talk about uncomfortable.
- 1:47:31And then when you approach that improvement, I'm kind of summarizing my rules here.
- 1:47:36If you, when you approach that improvement, you only use data.
- 1:47:40Yes.
- 1:47:40Is data.
- 1:47:41So if there's any kind of assumption that you gotta go test it out, you gotta be like, Jesse, you gotta be, Hey do this.
- 1:47:47Um, what was it?
- 1:47:48Ductal iron connection in front of me or a hub?
- 1:47:51Helpless.
- 1:47:52Do the hub connection and show me how you do it.
- 1:47:55Don't just rely on assumptions because the red Milwaukee impact and, and the special one for that hub device, they look almost the same.
- 1:48:04Yep.
- 1:48:04And then, um, you gotta set up your work ahead of the constraints.
- 1:48:09Yep.
- 1:48:10You gotta, you gotta set up.
- 1:48:12So if, hey, if I gotta work, I'm gonna relieve this constraint.
- 1:48:15The next phase.
- 1:48:16So that means your A team, you gotta watch them too . Yeah.
- 1:48:20You gotta measure everybody.
- 1:48:22Yes.
- 1:48:23So not only don't always do the force ranking.
- 1:48:25In fact, if you have an A team and they're not willing to work on constraints, they're not the A team.
- 1:48:31They're cheaters.
- 1:48:32Yes.
- 1:48:33Signaling drum set up a signaling process.
- 1:48:36Signals are so important.
- 1:48:38Apparently there's a new one.
- 1:48:39Smell.
- 1:48:39Yeah.
- 1:48:40. Um, but don't let signals only be written word or audible.
- 1:48:46It's gotta linger.
- 1:48:47That's why I smell.
- 1:48:48It's got, it's getting late.
- 1:48:50We're getting late.
- 1:48:50We're gonna punch you here.
- 1:48:51But it's got a linger.
- 1:48:52That means like, it's gotta, it's gotta, you have to be able to see it or sense it without somebody being there to tell you.
- 1:48:59And the same thing, when that issue is resolved, the signal tells you it's like a drum.
- 1:49:04And if you don't hear the drum, you don't take a step.
- 1:49:07So if, if you're creating inventory, don't over build it.
- 1:49:10You're creating waste.
- 1:49:11You're gonna create errors.
- 1:49:13You're going to, you're over producing something.
- 1:49:16And that's the mother of all waste.
- 1:49:18Being early is bad . Yes.
- 1:49:22And then don't pursue an activity that doesn't lead you to the goal.
- 1:49:27And I'm gonna leave it there.
- 1:49:28So if we're pursuing an activity that looks cool, um, or maybe it's, you know, we're trying something new, but it's, it's led by an initiative that's not leading us to the goal, we should challenge that.
- 1:49:41We should always challenge that.
- 1:49:43And also be like, if, if there's a traditional method or an old school way, then we're gonna go get the get the old World War II milling machines out.
- 1:49:53Yep.
- 1:49:54If that's the solution, then take action on it and go do it.
- 1:49:57. Yeah.
- 1:49:58I'm wanna leave it there.
- 1:49:58Cause that, like, those gets us at chapter 27.
- 1:50:01But it's like, you learn this method.
- 1:50:04You're convinced through a series of simulations.
- 1:50:07You go try, you do implements, you run experiments, you get wins.
- 1:50:12You're, you understand that your winds aren't, are just like the tip of the iceberg.
- 1:50:16And you need that third party.
- 1:50:19You needed Jesse Hernandez to come in because me, as operational, I'm only, I can only see the boundaries of our work.
- 1:50:28And you need that third party because that third party will challenge your assumptions that you're blind to just because it's just how a human bias works.
- 1:50:39Yeah.
- 1:50:40It's so important.
- 1:50:41And at this, at this point in the book, it's like, oh, damn, we have a system.
- 1:50:46The system is so simple, it can be improved by eight and 10 year olds that have no concept.
- 1:50:52No MBAs not even what's a 10 year old, like fifth, sixth grade?
- 1:50:57Sixth grade.
- 1:50:58Yeah.
- 1:50:59So it's, it's this very simple, almost universal process.
- 1:51:03If you trust it, it's like, it's magical.
- 1:51:06So, um, trust the , you gotta trust and you gotta work towards the goal.
- 1:51:10So yeah, that's, that's, um, for me, once we started to try those types of things, and then the vanity metrics or the Hollywood metrics idea was like, I've been doing all this measuring stuff wrong.
- 1:51:21Mm-hmm.
- 1:51:22, that was the moment when I stopped or I changed the way I graded PPC and I just And then the reason why the PPC is the reason why, when you had that discussion with Felipe on the collab session with his podcast, that's what drew me into your orbit and put me out here onto the the, the, what do you call it?
- 1:51:41The Omniverse.
- 1:51:42The Omniverse , yes.
- 1:51:44But, um, but that's, that's that's incredibly important because if I didn't read that and I said, I, I need to start challenging some of my scheduling metrics, and we started challenging that kind of stuff and we, we made decisions and these decisions were based upon data instead of assumptions.
- 1:52:02And we were better for it . So I thought it was incredibly important.
- 1:52:06I wanna share that.
- 1:52:06And that's, that's all I got.
- 1:52:08What about you?
- 1:52:09I think the key thing.
- 1:52:11I'm gonna hit it again because I want people to, to, you know, this whole mental wellness and suicide epidemic that we're dealing with in our industry, I think this is a big contributing factor, especially at the GC level.
- 1:52:24And that stress just trickles all the way through to, to the trades that are doing the work.
- 1:52:28Finishing on time and on budget ain't good enough.
- 1:52:32Our people need to be healthy.
- 1:52:34Our people need to be growing.
- 1:52:37Our people need to be experiencing an enhanced quality of life onsite and offsite.
- 1:52:44Um, and so these, these, you ain't, you ain't accomplished nothing.
- 1:52:48And if all you're doing is finishing on time and on schedule and have no idea that your teams are working 80, 90 hours a week Yes.
- 1:52:58You might have some sophisticated budget tracking mechanism, but you know what?
- 1:53:03Budgets aren't hard.
- 1:53:05That's easy.
- 1:53:06You may have some sophisticated planning stuff.
- 1:53:08Guess what?
- 1:53:10The sun tracks time for us.
- 1:53:12You ain't accomplished much.
- 1:53:14The hard stuff.
- 1:53:15Yeah.
- 1:53:15The hard stuff.
- 1:53:16The quality of life stuff.
- 1:53:18The mental wellness of our people stuff.
- 1:53:21All that talent you got on putting together your Power BI dashboards, apply some of that to, to men measuring.
- 1:53:29, the quality of life your people are experiencing.
- 1:53:32Mm-hmm.
- 1:53:32That's it.
- 1:53:33Yeah.
- 1:53:34Awesome.
- 1:53:35Well, thank you.
- 1:53:35.
- 1:53:35Yeah, man.
- 1:53:36. All right.
- 1:53:36I almost end the recording.
- 1:53:38That was, that was the best one.
- 1:53:43Oh my goodness.
- 1:53:44You're either driving down the road or just so enthralled with, uh, with this whole podcast that you went all the way down to the very, very, very, very end of it.
- 1:53:54And we appreciate you and just, we're going to take this as an indication of your dedication so we got a little special request of you, a call to action, because everybody tells us that like, you need to have a call to action.
- 1:54:07So here's the call to action.
- 1:54:10Be kind to yourself, go out there and share a smile with someone