GA 323 | Pivoting From Furniture to Personal Protective Equipment with Jeff Kaas

Day after tomorrow in my world used to mean two to three years. And it literally became day after tomorrow in this scenario. So, you know, today is Monday, literally. We knew that Tuesday things were not going to work and we didn't know what was going to happen Wednesday.

Today, I'm excited to welcome my friend Jeff Koss back to the show. Now, regular listeners of the show have heard of Jeff before. Jeff is the president and CEO and owner of Cost Taylor. They're a company based in the state of Washington and they make furniture for airlines and furniture for stores like Nordstrom and other places like that. And so really, really prolific, lean thinking organization. One of the best, I believe, lean thinking companies in the world. And Jeff's been on back in episode 211 and then he was also in 268. And so we'll link to those in the show notes where Jeff kind of talks a little more about the Cost Taylor journey and something called Truthbit Pull, which is actually really cool, really interesting approach to one piece flow. So we're gonna link to those ones. But today the episode is a little bit different than definitely anything Jeff and I have ever talked about. You see, since this whole COVID 19 thing hit the world, Jeff and his team have pivoted for making furniture and things for large aerospace companies there in the Seattle area. And other companies like Nordstrom, they've pivoted to making ppe. So whether that's masks for the healthcare workers or the face shields, they basically converted their factory from furniture to ppe. And so that's what we really spent most of the time talking about, talking about how they did it, why they did it. And then Jeff really opens up. And one thing I so appreciate about Jeff is he's just very transparent. He's very vulnerable. He's never afraid or ashamed to admit when things haven't gone well. And so he talks about, you know, where they. Where they didn't do things right as they were, as they were in the heat of this crisis. And then what they learned from that and then how they came out of it. And so a really, really powerful episode. It's a little bit longer than normal. Please listen to the whole thing. Listen in chunks if you need to. But Jeff's one of those special Lean thinkers out there that I think everyone is better for knowing. Now, we're going to link to several things that Jeff and I are talking to about in the podcast. And those are going to be, let's see, this is episode 323. So just go to gembapodcast.com and look for episode 323. And then also Jeff's website is cost tailored. It's K a a s tailored.com and then also his. They do. They do tours and at the very end of the podcast, we talk about these boot camps and these tours and these waste tours that Jeff and his team put on and, and information for that can be found over at Truthbit Pull. So truth T R u T H bit V I t truthbit pull p u l l.com and really interesting story behind that. So go check everything out and be sure to connect with Jeff on LinkedIn as well. So again, genbellpodcast.com, look for episode 323. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Jeff, welcome back to the show. How are you, my friend?

Doing very well, thanks.

Yeah, well, I've been following you. I've been lurking in the shadows of Kostaylor.

You know that's a little creepy.

Yeah, I do. But we were talking before I hit record. I didn't want to bug you over the last month or so. So we're recording this for context. We probably. This won't get released here probably for another several weeks, but this is May 4th when Jeff and I were recording this. So obviously we're, you know, still in the heat of the battle here with COVID 19 and whatnot. So, Jeff, before we jump into, I got a million questions for you, but tell us a little bit about just first of all, your cost, Taylor, your core business before the PPE stuff and all that. So just tell us a little bit about that for folks who don't know.

Yeah, for sure. So thanks for asking. And so our living in the past 35 to 40 years has been making either airplane parts or making furniture for stores like Nordstrom for people to sit on and try and choose. And then we also make retail direct to consumer really nice designer furniture called Design on Stock. So if you look at our manufacturing products, that's what we did. And on top of that, because we copy the Toyota productions, we doing consulting, which is all part of what we've been doing, and that all just got flipped on its head a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, so you guys are in for contacts in the Seattle area, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So it's been interesting following this, this, this virus and really, gosh, Washington was like one of the first spots where it seemed to. To really wake us up.

Yeah. So for sure, being in Seattle allowed us to have to deal with this sooner than, I think, other places in the country. And I really consider it to be a blessing. You know, it was really people in our church that had to deal with it first. And so we had friends and family and people dealing with it before it was really even newsworthy. So at a personal level that, I mean, really brought it home. And I think being in one of the areas of the country where it's happening first is we just immediately move to protect the team, change, the social distancing, all that kind of stuff in the factory. So just in the moment that we've been in every four hours, the world is changing. So we got accustomed to that pace of change maybe a week before the rest of the world. And that really allowed us to grieve what was and then accept what is and then move to what can be, I think, quicker than we could have been if we were late to the game.

Right. So the thing that I've been. I've always been proud to know you, Jeff and Kost Taylor, we've known each other a long time and. And that's true. And seen, you know, seen all the great work that you guys do just for the lean movement in general. But then, you know, I think in crisis leadership, really, leaders really separate themselves from other leaders in times of crisis. And I've been just blown away by what you and your team at Costeller have done as it relates to ppe, and I wanted to just talk a little bit about that, talk about, you know, why you did it. Let's just start there. We'll get into what and how and all the lean, geeky stuff.

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really want to say that the why is I love the healthcare people in my community and I'm just trying to serve them well. And that is true. I really do. And we serve globally, I think, the healthcare systems. But the truth is I'm a business person and we had people and obligations and we were looking for some way to keep people employed. And I would just say it was divine appointment that was given to me where there's a need and we had an aptitude and a desire. And so the why was really for sure trying to take care of my team, trying to think about the survival of our company and the opportunity to take care of people that we deeply care about was just too many things were lined up for us to think of not doing it. So the why is really just truly the love your neighbor thing is a real thing. You know, I'M a Christian. We've talked about that before. And I think all that means is, to me is I'm a dumb sheep and he's a shepherd. So when he says love the neighbor, I just think when people become neighbors very quickly, that means you have to do something. But the reality is, at the end of the day, I've received more blessings than any. Anything we provided to the world. It's not really leadership when I'm following. Right. So I'm just following Jesus. It looks like leadership, but frankly, it's a lot like being a dumb sheep. Yeah, I wish I could make it sound cooler than that, but I don't think it is.

Yep. Yeah. You know, so, you know, obviously, I'm. The fear of this virus is real. Right. I mean, there's a lot of people who, you know, especially if I don't want to get into politics or anything like that, but, you know, there's a lot of folks who are, you know, rightfully so if they're. If they're. If they're older or they have, you know, underlying health conditions or whatnot. I mean, they got to be really be careful. But. But you guys are going out, you're into your factories in the middle of this. Like, how did you. How did you and your team overcome the fear of, you know, the very real chance that, you know, that something bad could happen here? Yeah, maybe it was faith. Maybe it was combination of just courage or. Or what? What was it?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I believe that the scientific world has a lot to offer. So having faith that we're gonna not get sick would not be where I'd land my car. So it was a series of doing all the things that we heard that people were doing, social distancing long before we heard people doing it. We were asking questions. We were taking temperatures. We were actually supervising handwashing on the way in the door. One of our habits, which we might have discussed on the podcast before, is team training. So we started doing team training on how to wash your hands. I'll be darned if we didn't know how to wash our hands before we got the team training. So. So we really just took all of the precautions. And of course, we pray a lot. I mean, that's part of the deal. But I don't think it's courage. It was just we. We do a little bit of math when we live. So what I mean by that is, statistically, I think the world will know that there's a little bit of overreaction And a lot of what we're going to find in the future was that the data said this was a super, super hyper deadly thing and it is for certain populations. But I'm not really that comfortable with mortgaging a two year old's future to save even my own life. I'm 52, 53 years old and I'm not comfortable with the trade that society is making. And so I hope as more data becomes available that we start thinking about the consequences for the younger generation. So I don't think it took courage. We took a lot of countermeasures. We're all wearing masks all day. We don't like that at all. Even though we make them. And we're really, you know, trying to do the steps. But we also are realistic and we know that one of us will get it. It's not, not something if it's just a when.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's talk a little bit then. Just about the. So you guys have launched a new website. Yeah, koss health.com. so it's k a a s health.com and personal protective equipment. I got it up here on my phone right now. Just like nice looking website. Whoever ended up.

My daughter. My daughter did that.

Yeah, yeah. Very mobile, responsive. See, like that's why you got the younger generation doing this, right?

Not us knuckleheads. So funny. Oh, you're going to give me lots of brownie points today.

Yeah, yeah. So talk about, I mean, let's talk about the product. What did you start with? What was the first thing that you guys started with?

Yeah, so we were really connected in with. So Providence Health Systems, they're big in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas I think, and Alaska when they went out and kind of got this started with what they called the 100 million mass challenge. And just basically I think to make it clear that the frontline workers were absolutely working without the protection they need or were very nearly gonna run out. So I thought they did a crazy good job of bringing light to a subject that needed attention. And so when we met them, it was a text message. And then the next day, full on production. Basically the first thing they needed was the surgical type masks that go over. Actually their docs and nurses on the front lines are putting these over the N95 masks. So it's a typical blue mask that you might see if you ever go to visit somebody in surgery or whatever. We started with that. And face shields, which are either. That's a plastic shield that you put in front with the whole intent of protecting the workers N95 masks and prolonging the safe use of those.

Yeah, so I'm looking on here right now. So you guys have community disposable face masks, face shields, medical and government disposable face mask, and then a reusable cloth face cover.

Yep, exactly. Yeah. So what we're seeing is organizations like ours where you're back in your workplace. A lot of businesses are contacting us, wanting to protect their teams. And so having a reusable face covering that's not a medical type gives you two benefits. One, it mistake proofs. So those who understand what poka yoke is, it's hard to get your finger in your mouth or your nose if you've got a face cover on. So one good thing about wearing that is that it prevents you from infecting yourself a little bit. It also prevents a little bit. There's some data that says it's somewhere between 40 and 50% of the stuff coming out of your mouth. So it protects people around you a little bit. So we have schools, businesses who want that. We've also had quite a few salons that are trying to open up. And so it's a combination of that face covering, which is just a cloth, a cotton covering, and a face shield so that people can get back to, you know, cutting hair and doing some of those things in life that we all forgot to appreciate appropriately before.

Okay, so let's talk now about. Let's get a little geeky on the. On the lean side. We have a lot of lean, lean practitioners listening to this right now. How, how. How did you know Having this mindset of a. As lean thinkers and knowing about waste and different things like that, like how did that help you and serve you as you and your team quickly ramped up production with these products that you had never made before? I imagine you had never made these before.

Yeah, I mean, so I'll give you a couple ideas or things that really helped us and some things that we just failed so miserably on. And ultimately that helped us too. So I was reading this morning. Or trials are really considered a blessing or should be considered counted as joy because they produce this steadfastness that we might want to have as a leader. And so one thing that really helped is our policies and our org structure and the facility and having visual management. And this all allowed us to move our factory not just overnight, but several times throughout the day as we learned to slow down our regular production while we ramped up this new production. So the massive Gift of understanding. The seven wastes meant that we had no walls in our building, that everything was basically on wheels or skates, that we had surge capacity in all of our machining centers because we believe that machines serve people, not the other way around. So at a policy or at a leadership or at even communication level, some of these things that would normally not be considered to be lean. But if you look at the seven wastes and you look at how much of that is really present in the information factory of a business, not just the physical part. So the factory is able to turn on a dime because of some of those things. So I would say that's the big win. Another big win is the division of labor that we have. So as president, I live in the day after tomorrow. My job is to kind of figure out what's happening in the future. The conductor of our orchestra, the general manager, his job is really living the tomorrow. Like, what are the plans for tomorrow? Are things in place? And then the rest of my team, they live in the today. And today always wins. The factory has a drumbeat and it just a heartbeat, actually. And it always has to be served. So the blessing that that meant is that while the crisis was happening, I didn't have any today responsibilities, nor did I have any tomorrow responsibilities. I had day after tomorrow, which meant I was already thinking about the financial situation. I was already thinking about the reality of our customers maybe not making it. And I was also looking for products that we could make. So that structure allowed us to very quickly go from we're doing something, and day after tomorrow in my world used to mean two to three years. And it literally became day after tomorrow in this scenario. So today is Monday, literally. We knew that Tuesday things were not going to work, and we didn't know what was going to happen Wednesday. So my. My. My schedule became very collapsed. But from so having clear roles and allowing each of us to run in our lane so we can sprint together, I'd say those are real strong tools that we'll never go back on. Like, they're. There's the reason I'm sane right now. Like today I have nothing on my calendar again. And so that all the craziness started on March 18, and it's May 4, and you and I, you're the only thing on my calendar. I've been looking forward to talking to you all day. And I'm back to living in the day after tomorrow. So things that didn't work, you would not believe. Our team went right back to batch production. And what I mean, by batch push, it wasn't like hundreds of things, it was dozens of things. But if you were to stand in my world, you'd be like, what the heck happened? You guys say you believe in truth, bit and pull, one piece, flow. What's going on? I see batch and push everywhere. So it was shocking to me to see just how fast our teams, our leadership in panic mode. And I mean, we're all in fight or flight. We reverted to those old bad habits.

Why do you think that is? Why is that so natural and so easy for. I mean, you're. You're arguably one of the best lean thinking companies in this entire world, and you just said that when it got down to it, brass tacks, you guys fell back into batch. I'm not trying to criticize, but why do you think that is?

It's a great question. So I've been thinking about this and somebody else asked me this, and I believe there's something. It's either our human nature or something or upbringing that makes this a thing. I just. I have not figured that out. And I think this is a. Maybe a good podcast topic for your future is to figure out why is it that we kind of go back to the batch. I can relate it to snow skiing. I was a ski instructor for many years, and when you're on a very steep mountain, the tendency of a skier is to lean back or turn towards the top of the mountain, which is guarantee either gonna tear your ACL or make you crash. And what is actually needed is the opposite. You need to face the bottom of a hill and you need to fall forward. You need to actually bring your weight forward. So there's something that I can only. That's the one other thing in life where I can say I actually know how to ski. I'm decent at it. And when I get on something that scares the you know what out of me, I find myself leaning back and looking uphill, which is great way for a guy to get hurt or in some of the places I ski, die. So I don't know the why of it, but I just know that the teams went into fight or flight. I got a call from my wife who doesn't normally work here. She was in one of the lines and she doesn't swear all that often, but it might have been a swear word come out of her mouth saying, what's with the batch work? And I'm like, wow, Stacy, I didn't know you knew that word. And she's all, they're not using the Beer cups, like, what's going on here? This is not what you believe. It's crazy what's going on. So I walked over because I was still living in my day after tomorrow, and I freaked out. I just absolutely flipped a lid. And those who've worked with me, they know that I'm kind of a mean guy on occasion, but it's usually spread out over a couple years or two or four when I flip my lid. And I flipped my lid three or four times in a couple weeks. So when I saw that, I initially started with trying to coach nicely. Hey, you know, we believe in one piece flow. You know, I'll do some reminders, whatever. I thought that was enough. And two weeks later, it still hadn't been fixed. And I had to apologize for a lot of things I said that day. But I did the math and I said, we're actually throwing away at least $30,000 a week, which isn't so important to me. Look at the pain that the team is going through. They're in toil. This is the opposite we believe. I feel like a hypocrite. And from that day forward, we started getting things back to what we believe, but we immediately jumped to fetch. So the good thing is we had the beliefs. And I could actually say to them, hey, we believe in one piece flow. And then I got to argue with them, my leadership team, for a couple weeks about why it would be really stupid to keep doing batch work. But until I actually started to lead properly, nothing happened. So we're kind of like people who think they know but don't.

Yeah.

And I know that your lean practitioners know people like that.

So, like, I'm just trying to visualize it. I don't know how many steps there are to making a. A face mask. Let's say there's five steps. Were you just seeing that? Step one, they were just building, doing a bunch of process one and just stacking up the work in process and then moving up to step two.

Exactly that. And if you think of what is standard work, the best definition I've seen is that you have the content, you know the sequence, you know the timing, and you know the outcome. My team didn't know the timing, so they didn't know how long it should take. So in one step, and yes, it was exactly that step one, they had a bunch of people doing step one over in a corner, and there was piles of shit everywhere. Excuse me. Stuff everywhere. Sorry. And. And they didn't know how long it should take. So just standing in the line for five minutes. I'm like, okay, this one woman is slaving away, slaving away. And, and she's taking about 22 seconds. And you have this other woman who is just so gracefully producing it in six seconds. And I'm like, look at that. That woman is slaving. Her body has got to be aching. Oh, my gosh. And she's taking four times as long. So until I actually went back to my general manager and some of the other leaders said, this is a moral problem, not a business problem, you're causing, we are causing the team to struggle unnecessarily because of the, the foundation of, of the Toyota production system. One of them is going to be standard work, and we're not giving them, we're not giving them a standard work. Now when you make high mix, low volume work like we do, this is a new learning for us. We've never made, we never made high, high volume, low mix.

Yep.

Ever.

Yep.

So I've. This is crazy. We've been in business 40 years. I've made more Blue Mask as a company than any other product in our entire history in a month and a half. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So, yeah, I don't know if this is useful at all.

No, no, it is. I mean, I think, I think it's. I think it comes back down to, you know, when you, you know, when you pivot and you're trying to do something brand new under crisis. This is just, I don't know, I keep, I keep coming back to like, as, as business owners and leaders, like, what can you do to prepare your companies for, you know, potential crisis? And then, okay, the crisis is here now. What? You know, we had Sam McPherson on, he's a former Green Beret, and he was talking about these red teams and blue teams and special forces and how they would war game against one another. You know, like hypothetically war game against each other, trying to make each, trying to make each other better. So when you are in the firefight, so to speak, you know, you've practiced a little bit, I'd be curious, like, what do you guys think, aside from the batch and different things like that, what have you learned as a company? And if you could have done this over again, if you could go back and reverse now back to March 18, knowing what you know now, what would you do different, if anything?

Yeah. Such a great question. So what we didn't have in place was a healthy respect for standard work. So I would just say that is the core. If you had to boil all the things down to what really failed and where I failed as a leader is the understanding of the power and the gift that having good, high quality standard work is. And I can make excuses till I'm 70 years old as to why it wasn't in place, but they'd be just that. So if we had good standard work and we're following it with discipline, and I don't just mean just the person cutting and sewing, but the leader standard work of what does it mean to be an area leader, a team leader? What does it mean to be a manager? What does it mean to be. So what I think going forward, we have been quite good. When we get to do something more than once, we start to feel the pain and we're like, okay, our Kaizen system is quite good at saying, hey, let's not do that again. So we as a leadership team haven't had to set up lines very often. So this is a little bit new for us. The system kind of runs on its own where this was totally new work, so we didn't have any practice at all about, hey, let's set up a line. So what we for sure do is I think you got to witness our pipe simulations and some of the other tools. So a huge learn for us is, oh, part of the simulation games, war games, if you will, will be. We're going to make a bunch more simulations based on all the things we just learned so that the, the, the guests who come tour with us and train with us will have the benefit of this. And most, by most, I think, if I'm being honest, this will be judged as a very successful time in our company. We served our community, we learned a lot. We waste a lot of money, but we figure that out not in six years, but in maybe two weeks. Right? So. But it'll be judged as a good thing. But what I'm going to remember from it is going to be never again we will have standard work. It's unkind. It's immoral to not provide clear guidelines. And then we will use this as, I think, a very useful tool for our guests. Because now I'm even, you know, so we always say, hey, boy, if it's batch push and you go to flow, you'll get a 30% improvement. Like, literally when our team was going and they thought they were okay, yeah, we're doing a little batch push, but it's not that bad. I'm like, for sure you're wasting 30%. Like, no, not possible. They're like, yes, it's not only possible, it's 100% true. I guarantee it. And I already was pretty confident in that. But I was like, I was still thinking, gee, they're pretty good at batch, so maybe I'm wrong. And it wasn't wrong. It was for sure 30%. It was about 35% after they had got it figured out. So I guess what I do differently is really for sure. I say the next thing is in a crisis. We were all in fight or flight. So I did things to cause more stress to the team that were necessary. And my own anxiety, my own feeling of failure got transferred over in unloving ways to my team. And so I have. I don't say regret that. I just. I'll say I could have done a lot better. And I kind of. Let's see. I always accept this is where I'm at for this moment. I feel like this is where God wanted me. So if he wants me somewhere else, he'll make that clear. I. So I don't necessarily think it was bad that I lost my. Because I should have lost it. I should have lost it. We were doing something immoral as a company with my name on it. That's not okay.

Yeah. You know, I was having a conversation the other day with a colleague and we were talking about coaching people, you know, and he was like, you know, I know we're never supposed to, you know, solve the problem for him, but, man, what happens when you're in that situation and it's kind of a critical moment and they're just not getting it right? They have no clue. Like, isn't the responsibility of the coach to kind of give them a little bit of the answer? And I think it's a tricky question, but when in your situation where I think it was appropriate. I know maybe you question the way your approach or whatever, but at the end of the day, you're right. You do have an obligation to. To speak up when the folks are clearly blind. They can't see. You know, you have to be. You have to show them, give them eyes. Right.

If they can't see for sure. And I definitely did. So I definitely jumped in. Meaning, hey, there's two products that are being made, both of them batch bush and production manager said, hey, well, why don't you just go fix that line? I said, okay, I'll go work on that line. So I jumped into today and with help. And that's one thing I'm good at, is I'm not very good at doing anything except for asking for Help, So got a lot of help. And we had that turned around in a couple days. And I definitely jumped into today, but I stayed in it today for about two weeks and then reminded everybody, hey, my job is in the day after tomorrow. So I'm going to leave behind some projects for tomorrow, leader standard work, some definitions to follow, some training, some simulations. So I'm going to migrate in the day after tomorrow. And now we're back to normal operations. I'm not involved with anything in the today now, but I did, and this is. I think I could have coached, I could have questioned, I could have asked, I could have told. They didn't have a role model, and I had not provided that yet. And in spite of taking everybody to Japan and tours and training and all the things we've done, they could not see to the other side of where they're at. And ultimately I decided, and I think it was the right thing to do is I will provide a role model and then I'll expect that you follow the role model. Now, the next time I flip my lid is now that I've given the role modeling and I'm leaving behind some documentation on it is if it isn't followed, then they'll be held to pay. Yeah, right. So there's a part of this which is I think. And of course I want to coach and ask the questions and get there, but yeah, yeah, definitely chose to jump in, and that's not something I've done in years.

So three of the products look very similar. You know, the masks, you know, look perhaps just different material.

I don't know, maybe exactly that.

But that face shield is quite unique. So talk about that. Are you. What are you doing from a fabrication perspective? Are you like, literally from pellets of plastic to.

No, no, no. So we buy the sheet goods, and that's the supply chain. Part of this has been probably the craziest part. So as soon as we jumped into production, the materials changed, basically because the big guys were buying it up. So there's actually three components on that shield. It's the plastic that you see through the foam that's on your head to keep it kind of off your nose, and then the elastic strap. So I know of at least five different pieces of foam and at least six different types of the shield, and I think probably eight to ten different elastics. And every time something changed, it was basically driven by the supply chain. So it's super simple assembly, but we're doing the cutting and the assembling, packaging and shipping on that we're not doing it from the pellet size. And then on the other products we buy the fabric or we buy the raw material and we're just cutting and sewing.

Which is your wheelhouse, right?

Exactly that. Yeah. Well, it's right in your wheelhouse except if you have a wood shop or you have other departments that normally support that, then you have departments that have nothing to do. So the factory has been. Yeah, it's been an interesting place to. We've got people who used to make furniture frames doing some cut and sew, which has been super fun. And then the other part of this is we weren't able to satisfy all the demand that was forecast. So we went out and hired our customers. So we hired Nordstrom, the tailors at the stores to sew for us. We hired a competitor or two, hired other factories to sew. So our supply chain folks have been learning a ton. All good stuff for our future.

So what's the percentage? I mean, you know, don't answer if you don't want to, but of work in your factory. 8 now is PPE versus your core business.

Yeah. So when the airplane people shut down, it was 100% for a couple, maybe three weeks. There was nothing else happening. And that meant all design, all engineering, all of our machine people, every one of us 100% doing PPE for about three weeks. Our big airplane maker nearby is just now starting to turn our lines back on. So we're phasing back in some of the production for aircraft furniture. I think the lines were down for two or three weeks and today I noticed that they were, they were making a little bit of furniture. They took the time. The wood shop guys are pretty smart. They took the time to replace the entire floor in the wood shop and they've been. Yeah, they've wanted to do something super cool in there for a lot of.

That's awesome.

A lot of years. So they, they're like downtime. Okay, we have something we're going to do and. Yeah. So. Yeah. But right now it's probably. I'd say it's 80. Yeah. About 80% is, is, is related to PPE and the other 20% is current customers turning demand back on. To survive, we're gonna have to, we really have to succeed at opening new markets. Otherwise we're, we're. We won't be around for a long time at the current rate of burn.

Meaning furniture wise at all.

Yeah, just all things. Yeah. I mean if you. It doesn't take a genius to look out and say hey, there probably are too many airplanes in the world right now. So whatever, whatever the airplane makers are currently think they're selling, it's probably going to be less than that for next two to three years. Yeah. And Nordstrom won't be opening stores, so they won't be adding any furniture that we normally make. I doubt they're going to have the money to remodel. Maybe some people will buy our beautiful designer furniture for their homes since we're spending so much time in it. So the demand part of our business is. Yeah, I won't say it's close to zero, but it's maybe 40% of what was normal best guess right now. So we hope that people will reward us with letting us make some PPE for them and we're gonna try to find some other business lines to keep people busy. I don't mind breaking even for half a decade. That'd be fine. But losing our shorts for, for any period of time is not an option for us.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, gosh, Jeff, it's been fun chatting and I really do, like I mentioned, appreciate you guys and want to honor you guys for what you've done and thank you and you know, if there's anything obviously Gamba Academy can do to support you guys, you know, we'll buy some furniture.

No, you know, here's the deal. What you have to offer and what you guys are all about. These are time tested tools and thinking that the more organizations actually apply this thinking, the better and faster the jobs will be back. And the organizations that were struggling to hire people before, this is actually a really great time to be in touch with you guys to make those improvements. A lot of the processes that we're witnessing with the bigger companies are not appropriate for the world that we have today and certainly not the world that we have in our future. And so what you guys have to offer and your clients, the people who listen to you, these lean practitioners, sometimes will be the first to be cut of an organization. And that would be a super dumb move for business leaders because you need different thinking in order to operate in this new environment. And it's the best opportunity we've ever had, ever, in my entire career to apply principles. So I guess my encouragement would be if you find any business leaders who are like, hey, I'm not sure if I can afford my lean teams, have them give me a call. I want to really encourage those of you out there who are business leaders, this is the time to make the investments in your processes to, to follow Principles. Principles are the best way to reduce risk. And so anyway. Yeah, and so if we can be a blessing to you guys, let us know as well.

Yeah. So when do you, do you have any hopes of. I assume your, your, your, your boot camps and whatnot have been paused temporarily. Tours and whatnot.

Yeah. Yeah, we did our first tour today, so our friends, yeah, so our friends from Nordstrom were in and we're tentatively talking about opening up just some free tours for a while.

Talk about that just in case folks aren't familiar with what you guys are doing there with those.

For sure. Yeah. So we offer Waste Tours. We named them Waste Tours because we knew we could say we're good at waste, not so good at lean. So they're four hour tours and, and we go through the basics of what is Kaizen, what does it mean to operate this way and think this way? And so we did those for free for about 10 years and about two years ago we started charging for those and that allowed us to offer full day tours and three day boot camps. And so at least until organizations and budgets are available, we don't want to stop the practice of serving other people. And so the idea is really maybe opening up a couple tours a month to people who have toured us previously. It's important to not withhold the learning that we've experienced from the wider community and those who've toured us before. Our building is shockingly different right now. And so there's some rich learning, I think, available to our guests. So. Yeah, so our hope is to start tours up in a few weeks here in the state of Washington. And it looks like that can happen in the month of June and resume free operations for a period of time until we see that there's some demand out there. And we don't, we don't want to be the servant or that we don't want to be the training companies, training company for those large organizations that can't afford it. But we do think there'll be some unemployment for a while and we want to continue to help our community exercise their muscles when they are not employed. So. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, for sure. So should folks still go to truthbitpull.com for information on that?

Yep. Or go to our Cost Taylor website. I think there's information on tours and if you're interested or hit me up on LinkedIn or. Yeah, I'm probably the only Jeff Cost in the country, so I'm easy to find.

One and only.

Yeah. So sorry that I entered your, your guys's living room. So please accept my apology on that. But yeah, so they find us one way or another. Let us if there's interest, you know, we really. Yeah, we want to be helpful to people. So.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, so show notes. We'll link to everything for. For that Jeff is talking about. This is so people just go to gemba podcast.com this is episode 323. And we'll link to Jeff's LinkedIn and Kostaylor and Truthbit Pull. And if you don't know what Truthbit Pull is, we're gonna link to I don't know what the number is. Jeff's been on the podcast several other times and we've got podcasts dedicated to just that topic.

Perfect.

So we'll link to that. That'll be a little teaser. So everyone, if you haven't listened to that, you need to go and hear the full story there, so. Well, Jeff, thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate, appreciate you carving some time out.

It's a blessing, total blessing, you know that.

Yeah. Well, listen, keep up the good work, stay safe, and this actually, this episode will go out, I think, right in the first part of June for several weeks.

Oh, perfect. Oh, wow.

It might be when they're hearing this, you know, hopefully the world's a much better place and they're ready to roll in and visit with you guys.

That'd be awesome. That'd be really cool. Yeah, really cool.

Awesome. All right, my friend, keep up the good work.

Yeah, same there. Okay, thank you.

All right, bye.

Bye.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 lean and 6 Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.