AMA: Machine health savings and career tips

Ed Ballina:
Hello, Manufacturing Meet Up buddies. I am Ed Ballina.

Alvaro Cuba:
Hey guys, Alvaro Cuba here, how are you?

Ed Ballina:
So another opportunity to ask us questions and we’ve got two we’re going to tackle today. But just trying to get back onto the business here from a week of vacation in Maine. I’ve got a nice suntan and as soon as I came in, I was deluged by a fire hose worth of things I had to do. So that’s what I’m coming back to. Alvaro, how about you?

Alvaro Cuba:
Well, yeah, full of things after my vacation and great travel in Europe as always, food, nature, people, great experiences with people. So it worth it, but now back to work. So let’s go with it. Okay.

Ed Ballina:
Welcome to the manufacturing media podcast where we kick back on our downtime, get real on what’s happening on the shop floor and exchange ideas and topics with our manufacturing buddies.

Alvaro Cuba:
So guys, as Ed mentioned, we’ll do the ask me anything and we have a couple of questions that came from you. The first one is, where should you look for savings when you implement machine health? Ed, you wanna give us your take?

Ed Ballina:
Yeah, so there’s a lot of obvious sources of savings, right? If your equipment is running and is not breaking down as frequently, you’re going to see savings in repair, maintenance, parts and labor, uptime, et cetera. But sometimes manufacturing folks will focus on their own P &L. And to be honest, the pure manufacturing impact of machine health is kind of the tip of the iceberg, right?

Those are the ones we can see. What’s below the surface is even bigger with things like total supply chain costs, right? And the ability to lower inventories, a safer environment, et cetera. So Alvaro, a couple thoughts on that, because we get this question a lot, frankly.

Alvaro Cuba:
Yes, the first is just reflecting in machine health. So that’s a big jump. When you go into machine health and we were discussing in the previous episode, in episode nine, we were talking about what it means to move the line from 10 minutes up time to four hours without stopping. That’s big.

So the impact that you get from that is really significant. We had the obvious ones, the downtimes, the energy, the labor, but then capital. It’s a big one. When you have that kind of uptime, you can delay two, three years, a new line or a new implementation, your spare parts.

You can plan, you can do just in time with your spare parts. That’s another big thing. Morale in the people, all the people side, that they feel in control, that they have better information, quicker to make decisions, is safer, is more fun. You put some technology into that. All that means more productivity.

Ed Ballina:
Capital, the firm is huge, right?

Alvaro Cuba:
Yeah. And one more, when you start doing that and you can react, you can run more products in the week, you improve your service levels, that goes straight into the top line, the net revenue. So then you start hitting cost, cash and service at the same…

Ed Ballina:
Yeah, and when you can deliver better customer service to, let’s say, Publix, the next time you go to them to try and sell them on a feature ad or more shelf space, if you can go in there with the strength of, and I improved your out -of -stock performance, reduced it by 15%, 30%, they’re willing to listen to you. Here’s another one that sometimes people don’t quite make the connection is we are all responsible for our behavior as good corporate citizens. Okay, when you have machine health, you don’t have unintended product spills. You don’t have unintended gas emissions that puts you in the public’s eye with a very, very negative twist. that’s another opportunity that it’s kind of hard to quantify folks, but you know, just cause a massive, you know, chemical spill somewhere and see what happens to the value of your stock.

And not only that, it’s not the right thing to do. We’re supposed to be good corporate citizens, right? So machine health generally leads to good corporate citizens.

Alvaro Cuba:
Yeah. And going back to your question, the savings, starting the obvious. So we gave you in this answer, the big picture and all the areas you can go, but starting the obvious, start with the dumb time and the waste. And then once you get that, then jump into energy, labor, then you can go into the cash opportunities then into service opportunities. once you check the first, go to the second, and there is plenty of opportunities out there as you go in this.

Ed Ballina:
How about workman’s comp, right? You were talking about safety. You’ve seen the huge impacts of how much money that can throw to the bottom line, and it’s the right thing to do,

Alvaro Cuba:
Good. So let’s jump into the second question. This is a very interesting question. I finished my training and I’m heading to a new job in the plant floor. So what I learned in my trade school will help me and successful and to grow my career.

Ed Ballina:
There’s a lot to unpack in a short period of time. Listen, when you come out of school, you have some basic technical knowledge and capability. Well, I think one of the best things that I ever learned in school, I have a degree in chemical engineering. I have done 90 % of my career doing mechanical work. Go figure. I got the wrong degree. No, not really, because they taught me how to break. If I learned nothing else out of engineering school was they taught me how to take big problems and you know take bites out of it. It’s the whole elephant right. I can’t eat the elephant all at once folks but if I take you little bites at a time eventually I’ll be able to do all of that and your technical training should prepare you for that. But Alvaro you and I both know there’s a lot more to it than that right. Just being a smart, capable, technical person is not all of it.

Alvaro Cuba:
Yeah, this is a good base. I recall going to my very first job and being so frustrated because everyone knew more than what I did. It was about steam and tubes and traps and all that. I knew nothing and everyone knew everything. I went back to the dean of the university to complain. Hey, I have been all these years here and you have taught me anything. I don’t know this. And his reflection was if we had to teach you everything that happens out there, lifetime is not enough. What we taught you was to think, troubleshooting. To reflect, to analyze. With all those tools, you will be able to figure out whatever is out there. So the base is about that. It’s about to help us thinking, to help us solving problems, to help us doing all that. Once you got go with that, just pay attention, be curious, be open, listen to your buddies, have a mentor, have someone that can give you some ideas, rotate as many positions as you can so you can learn to that. And you will use that base and build it through more learning, but curiosity and openness would be my go-to after you get the base.

Ed Ballina:
Yep, that intellectual curiosity is priceless. And you’d be surprised, what are some of the things that you learn in school that you get to apply later, but at first you may be like, hmm. So as an engineer, took courses in marketing and also took a course in labor economics. It was really interesting. I had an amazing, amazing professor, had been undersecretary of labor for one of the administrations. And at first I was like, this is really cool. When I get out into the workforce and I had to start dealing with labor unions, that learning came in so, so handy because I understood a little bit about their history and their struggle, right? So that was awesome. Alvaro, you brought up a point that I really want to emphasize, and that’s this whole concept of doing “work with”. So many of our jobs have actually gone in and worked with operators on their rotating shift for six to eight weeks. Wow, what a learning.

Because how can you coach people if you don’t understand what their life is like? And people respect that. So work with is very, very important.

Alvaro Cuba:
Yeah. And so what you learned is the base and is so important, but as I said, it’s not enough. Then it comes your attitude, curious, open. It comes the practical training and these rotations with a mentor, no, and putting the continuous improvement every day. I want to learn something.

I want to do something a little bit new and there you go. You will be successful. Go for it. We wait for you in the plant

Ed Ballina:
Or maybe in the meeting establishments outside of your shift, will we share some beverages? Could be Starbucks, it could be Joe’s Buck on the corner. So, hey team, thank you for tuning in today. Always lots of fun. Please keep those questions coming. We enjoy interacting with you and thanks for tuning in today.

This is our Ask Me Anything episode. We’re only as good as the questions that we went, so we get it. So we want to get more questions from you. Email us at mmu@augury.com or find us on The Endpoint, its a free online community for manufacturing pros like us. We’ll throw those addresses in the show notes for you. So Alvaro, bring us home.

Alvaro Cuba:
Yes, like us if you are listening or seeing us in YouTube and give us a review in iTunes and please share this with your other manufacturing buddies and come to the bar and we’ll have fun together. Take care, bye.

Ed Ballina:
Bye