GA 369 | Developing an Internship Program with Brent Weichers

We would just present them with the problem and what the desired output was and would turn them loose. And that program never failed to amaze us with what they were able to. Able to do and able to present.

Today I'm excited to welcome my friend Brent Weickers back to the show. Now, Brent, if you've listened to the show, has been on a few times, and he's got a really strong, lean and continuous improvement background. Lean and Six Sigma. He. He's worked at Toyota. He worked at different Danaher companies, and then most recently, he worked at a Lighthouse for the Blind there in Seattle, where there we actually featured them in our Gemba Academy Live episode. So this is an organization where the employees are. Almost all. All of the employees are blind in there. They're working in factories, you know, producing parts for the aerospace industry and so forth. Brent has now moved on to a different company where they're making Ventil. But Brent is one of these guys who's just got a depth of knowledge that's just almost unmatched. He's not just a lean guy. He's got Six Sigma. He's got. He's got it all. But what I love about Brent the most is he's such a good guy. And I've known Brent for several years. He's just one of my favorite people. And so today, what we talk about on the show is how Brent has leveraged an intern program at both Lighthouse for the Blind and also now at Ventec. And you might be scratching your head thinking intern. That sounds kind of boring, but it's a really powerful program that's bringing tremendous benefits to. Well, to Lighthouse for the Blind and now at Ventec, but also there's tremendous benefits for the students that are coming in. So Brent walks us through some of the things that these students have done for the organization. And I'm talking these are, like, legit improvements, like significant improvements that these kids are coming in and they're not being paid. You know, they're coming in and just, you know, volunteering. Volunteering their time for the experience. And so really interesting examples of improvements that these folks have made at Lighthouse for the Blind and now Ventec. Brent then talks about how if you are interested in kind of approaching different local universities or colleges or whatever in your area, how to go about it. It's not real complicated, but there's some specific advice that Brent offers. So really good episode, man. Again, Brent's one of these guys that you just want to listen to because he's super smart, but he's Very, very hu and just a great guy. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 369. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 369. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Brent, welcome back to the show. How's it going, my man?

Going very well, thank you.

All right, well, it's good to have you back on. We were going through our little notes before we hit record, and this is the third time that you've been on the show. Now, you were first on back in episode 272. What did we talk about there? The role of lean in empowering people with disabilities. So we were talking all about your former company, Lighthouse for the blind. Good stuff. And then episode 304, the different approaches to training leaders. Yeah, that was a fun one. So welcome back. Thanks for coming back on, man.

Oh, thanks for having me.

Yeah. So you know the drill, Brent. We like to get things started with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yes, I do. It's something I read a while back, and I almost kind of forgot about it, and then I tripped over it again recently, and it just kind of stuck in my head ever since again. But it's from Jack Welch, and it's changed before. You have to. And it just really struck me in a lot of ways about really looking at what you do and how you do things and competition, you know, the competition that's out there. And it just keeps in mind, you know, just to keep in mind that you have to keep up with your customers and. And keep up with markets and everything else, and you don't. Nothing's worse than having to change because you're forced to change.

Yeah.

You know, change, you know, change before you have to.

Wow. That's a pretty big one, too, man, if you think about it. Because it's tough, Right. Because, you know, what if things are going well, you know, and you're doing good and that's always the danger.

Right.

When things are going well, you're making money and, like, why should we change? You know? So maybe it's like, also change could just be keep getting better. Right. Just keep getting better. Yeah.

And I've heard that from mentors before, which they said when everything. You think everything's running perfectly smooth and there's nothing to do with that should be the warning signal.

Yeah. Yeah.

That something needs to change.

I remember this story. I don't remember who told me this a long time ago talking about this engineer, and I don't know if it was at Toyota or some big, awesome lean company, you know, and this engineer was sitting around and they were looking at some dashboards that they had running, and all of a sudden, the production dashboard was flashing, like, green or whatever. It was like, really good. Things are going really well. You know, just nearly flawless performance. And the story goes that this engineer just, like, sprinted down to the line kind of thing. And we're like, why did you sprint down here? Everything's fine. And he said, I wanted to understand why it was going so well, you know? And I was like, man, that's a really interesting way to look at things, because most of the times things are going well, you just kick your. Kick back, put your feet up, relax. Right. Like, nothing to do here. Yeah.

Just savor the moment.

Yeah, yeah. So, no, I love that quote. That's great. So, hey, Brent, in case folks haven't listened to those previous episodes, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your. Your background, how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff, and tell us what you're up to these days.

Absolutely. Well, I've been in the field of continuous improvement for a little over 30 years now. Lean Six Sigma Master Black belt. Most of my background is actually Danaher. I actually started at Toyota very early in my career is where I was trained. I was very, very fortunate to come across companies that all used Shindujitsu consulting. So eventually I ended up with Danaher, and I was literally working with the exact same person as my previous company from Shingajitsu. So my background was all spent in with Danaher, which was Beckman Coulter and Tektronics and Fluke Instruments. And these days I was working. For the last five or six years, I was working for aerospace company Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle that specializes in hiring the blind and the deafblind. And that was an amazing experience. Really loved working there. Yep. And of course, between Covid and the downturn in aviation and aerospace, a tremendous amount of business was lost there. And I ended up over here at Ventec Life Systems, and we're a ventilator manufacturer just north of Seattle. We are the supplier for the Strategic National Stockpile. Wow. The product that we build, the Vocsan, is five separate devices built into one machine that is portable. It's an amazing technology, amazing device. It's helping people to be able to not live in a hospital and not have to stay at home attached to a ventilator, but they can actually get out and Try to live, you know, try to live a life. And it's just really a pleasure to work here. It's a great, great, great company. And it's also extremely nice that it's five miles from home.

Yeah, man, that's great. How big is how many people work there?

I believe we have about 150 here right now. We had quite a few more during the height of production. We actually had a second location in Kokomo, Indiana, and we did a joint partnership with General Motors just to help fill the 30,000 units that was needed in a very short period of time from. For the national stockpile.

Yeah.

And now we're kind of getting back to what our normal production would be. And we're in the process right now of kind of reinventing the business. We're taking the time to completely rearrange the shop floor, do very in depth standard work studies right now and changing the, you know, trying to save on labor and save and introduce flow where it wasn't introduced before.

Yeah.

And so the corporation's given us the time to turn this into basically a showplace of lean. So I'm very, very excited about that and that's what they brought me in for.

Well, you're already famous at Gemba Academy for being featured in our Lighthouse for the Blind Gemba Academy Live. So maybe we need to come back and do one on Ventech.

Oh, that'd be great. You'll find some really interesting stuff going on here.

Yeah, very cool. So, you know, the thing that we're going to really hone in on here today, Brent, is a really interesting topic to me, and it's that I know even at Lighthouse, you guys were really big into interns, bringing in interns from the various schools around that area to help you. And I understand you guys are kind of doing the same thing there at Ventec, is that right?

Yes, that's correct. At last position, we had a couple different universities that we were working with, and some of them have very established intern programs and some are just kind of ad hoc, you know, kind of off the cuff intern programs. And what we were doing at my last place was a combination of interns that worked mechanical engineering issues. We had software students that were helping us with some of our systems, and then we were working with industrial engineers that were learning about Lean and learning about standard work and how to do process mapping, but that was all classroom based. And we had a lot of processes that we wanted to establish documentation on their processes and just didn't have the bandwidth. So we Got together with some of the universities and started asking about, hey, can we develop these programs? And we did over the years.

I, I want to. We were talking about before we started recording, like, you know, what do we want people to take from this episode? And so if people are scratching here, like, why are we talking about interns? But I think that this is a, maybe an untapped opportunity for many companies, no matter the industry, to, you know, almost for a win win for the, for the student, but also for the organization. So kind of with that framework, let's talk a little bit about what you have interns do when they come in and like, and how long are they there for? Do they just come in for a day or a week or a month? Or how does that work?

All depends on the program or the process that we're working on. So it really is a win win for both. The way we started with Seattle University, they have an amazing mechanical engineering program. So the students there would come in, they would start in the fall and they would present their project in the spring. So it was a fairly long process. They weren't necessarily in the building all that. Through that time they were at the university and they were in the facility kind of back and forth. But we would hand the students a fairly significant problem. Something that had a lot of engineering, a machine, some type of device that would assist in the assembly process. And we would never give them our ideas of what we thought it should be or what we thought it could be. We would just present them with the problem and what the desired output was and would turn them loose. And that program never failed to amaze us with what they were able to. Able to do and able to present any guy.

Any examples.

Yeah. So one of the devices that we had, an issue that we had at say at Lighthouse is we had a very messy part. Messy because of the application of a silicone onto a very small valve. And we had, of course, our employees are blind and you're asking somebody to apply a very small amount of food grade silicone inside of a valve and then snap two halves of the valve together. This stuff, it was messy, it was sticky. It was extremely difficult to get off of your clothing or off your hands. It was a very high volume. We asked the kids to invent a device that we could load these parts into. It would apply the very small amount in a very precise location and then press the two apps together. And the machine we had that was attempting to do it ran on dos, which just gives you an idea of how old the Machine was. And the first thing the kids had to do was go to the Internet to find out what DOS was.

Oh, yeah. Just about to say, did they even know what it was?

They didn't even know what they were looking at us and with a big question mark over their head going, what's dos? Oh, boy. Besides making us feel really old. And so the kids, once they realize they figured out, oh, here's the. You know, they came up with a couple different solutions. They ended up building a device for us that ran on Windows 10. When it was all said and done, and the computer was about the size of my thumb and it worked. It just worked amazingly well. And it's still in production today. And that was just a few years ago. But the point was not ever don't pollute their minds with what you think it should be. Or, you know, well, here's. Here's examples of what we were working on is, yeah, don't pollute their minds with any of that. Is just turn them loose on it.

Yeah.

And the program that we're doing right now here at Ventec is with University of Washington Business School, their supply chain management program. And I just happened to know the professor. She was actually coming to some of the trainings that I was doing. And so I met her and we were discussing here at Ventec how we have dozens of processes that we don't have good documentation for as far as process mapping. So I suggested, I said, hey, we can start this intern program. So I contacted the professor, she put a group together, and we had students in here for just two days. And we, we pointed them at a process and they time studied, spaghetti mapped, came up with a process map, made some recommendations on what we could do to make some improvements. And in two short half days, we took a process that was running at about 90 seconds per unit and dropped it down to 70 seconds per unit. Doesn't sound like a lot, 20 seconds per unit, but when you're making thousands.

A day adds up.

That's huge. That is a huge reduction.

Now, did they know how to do process mapping and spaghetti and all that, or did you have to teach them?

Yeah, so they had the very basics down just from classroom study, but for them, the opportunity to do it in real life.

Yeah.

And to actually interview the people in operations and talk to the people doing the work and asking them to temporarily change the flow of what they do just so they could do a time study to see if that would work. And all of that was new. And we did a little white belt Type training beforehand before they came in the building just so they would understand some of the terminology. And I found that it was pretty much old hat for them. They had already been through most of this training. Two of them were already green belts. But it worked out really, really well for us. So we had one group this week, we had a group last week. They came in and looked at different processes that we had going on and all of them did just a fantastic job.

So obviously. So the way we sell anything is we sell benefits. Right. We sell results. So somebody's listening to this and we wanted to get them excited about thinking about approaching a local school in their area. Sell us some more, tell us some more results, some more benefits of having these young folks come in and help.

Yeah. So in those two days that I have, I had a couple interns for two days come in, I probably got a month's worth of process mapping done. Something that would have taken me a month to accomplish. I got done in two days. Wow. You know, with. We did was buy him lunch and gave him some gifts. In the state of Washington, we're not allowed to pay interns. Okay. If you pay, you're an employee.

Got it.

So we kind of stretched the rules a little bit and gave them some nice gifts. And you know, they're going to earn their white belts certification through me when it's all said and done.

Yeah, it's worth something.

A lot.

Yeah.

For them, the value is I get hands on experience that I can, you know, put on my resume. They actually got credit for this. Their professor came in and kind of certified exactly what it was they were doing. So they're getting credit for this. But on our end, the benefit was we've got so much work done, so many things accomplished that we can go and put this, put this to documentation in our system now and standardize so many things that we've been wanting to standardize in a very short period of time.

Wow, that's fantastic. I mean, what incredible experience for these students, you know, I mean, because you're right. I mean, there's one thing about, you know, learning in school and you know, and, you know, I don't know. Process map. You're making a cup of coffee. That's great. And you can sort of learn. But boy, going out into a real facility talking to people who are doing real work, man, and just getting, getting. That's priceless, man.

Oh, and they, and they love, I mean, and working with the students, to me, and I don't see how anyone else would feel Any different is working with the students is a lot of fun. Yeah, I have a great time every. Every time I'm working with them and, you know, kind of keeps you young or. I hope it does.

Yeah.

And. But just to meet all these young. All these young kids, you know, they're in their 20s, but all these young kids and talking to them and getting to know their. Their hopes and their dreams and what their, you know, career aspirations are, you know, it makes you feel a little bit better about the future generation that's coming along as well.

Yeah.

But the benefit for a business and, you know, at the Lighthouse and here at Ventech, the benefit that we got from these very short stints that the kids were in here and helping us with different programs and projects was just a huge benefit. Just a huge benefit. So in the fall, we're going to jump back into Seattle University's program here at Ventec, and we've got a huge. We've had my engineers right now that work here are fighting with each other over what program we're going to throw at those engineers first and get. And get those interns working on some of the many things that we've been wanting to work on here.

So somebody's listening to this and are like, all right, I'm going to give this a try. Like, what do you. What's the best way to go about that? How do you get started with an intern program?

Yeah, well, at Seattle University, when we contacted them, they actually had a person and her sole job was to coordinate things like this. So she was a business liaison. So most universities have a business liaison. And I didn't know what that job actually was until I contacted Seattle U. And found out that that's. That's their job is to get interns or get students intern positions at companies.

Yeah.

So most universities and Washington. University of Washington is the same. They have people in place, and that's their sole job and responsibility is to help you help you develop a program like that.

Yeah, I gotta imagine, like a community colleges and all that probably have very similar programs. I would bet. You know, sometimes they're even more focused in a particular trade or something like that.

Right, exactly. So we had some industrial engineers from University of Washington a couple years ago. They helped with one of the large programs there at Lighthouse, the one that you came and filmed. So part of that was done with University of Washington industrial engineer interns.

Yeah, I want to. Yeah, I think it's is so important to. To try to reach out into our communities more, you know, like Businesses. You know, I'm even thinking here, again, by academy, it's like the work that we do, you know, like, you know, some film students and whatnot, and giving them some real experience and all that. Because. Because it. Because it is. It's helping them, but it's also, you know, it's win, win. Right. It really. It's not a charity. I wouldn't.

Absolutely.

It's not a charity case for the kids. Right. I mean, you're getting something out of it, too.

Oh, absolutely. And it was. It was just, like I said, it's for us. You know, after a couple other people here started getting involved with me a little bit on it, and the students left and they were. They were asking me, it's like, well, when do we get to do that again? You know, they were. They were so excited about, you know, working with the students and relaying, you know, their years of experience. Somebody that was a mechanical engineer for 30 years, you know, was talking to other mechanical engineering students and kind of walking them through. Here's some of the career paths you might consider. Here's some industries that you might consider that you may not have considered before.

Yeah.

So things that are even outside the scope of their internship was, you know, just related, getting, you know, them getting to talk to, you know, people in their field of work that have been there for a long time and just getting some advice.

Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So what's going on with you then? So what? I mean, obviously you got a lot going on there at Ventec, but you working on anything else that's interesting?

Yeah, some. Just kind of an interesting side project that myself and a couple other of us lean heads, as we call ourselves. Just one of the things, you know, we were always talking about lean and how it could, you know, make improvements in your personal life. And Paul Akers, you know, our little buddy Paul?

Oh, yeah.

Up here.

Yeah.

He's just north of me here a little bit. And, you know, he's made some great videos of organizing his garage and his garden equipment and even loved his little video, you know, how he improved his coffee station.

Oh, yeah.

You know, everything's in a certain spot and everything's within reach. And I mean, I'm such a geek. I did exactly the same thing that he did. So I have a little.

You got magnets on the bottom of your salt and pepper?

No, I have. Come on. Twin coffee. I have twin coffee makers. So one's for flavored coffee, one's for unflavored coffee. Yeah, but. And it's next to the refrigerator and everything you need is the mugs. Everything is right there in one spot.

Oh, that's great.

But we were just talking about stuff like that and my soon to be daughter in law owns a business that does 5s and organizing in people's homes. So she's a big organizing nerd like the rest of us Lean folks. But we were all discussing there's other parts of lean besides just 5s and organizing like the 8 wastes and how do those relate to someone's personal life? And we've been bouncing around ideas about the whole Tim woods, you know, the list of wastes and, or the eight ways and you know, why wouldn't those relate to your personal life? So we've been bouncing those, you know, emailing those things and our thoughts back and forth and really attempting to write something up. Maybe not so much as a book, but just to write like say an article on how do the eight ways relate to your personal life.

So Elizabeth, now you got me intrigued. So let's walk. Let's walk. I mean, are you willing to share a little bit on what you're thinking, what you guys are thinking or you're wait till sell the book?

Yeah, absolutely. So I don't, I don't think we'll be, you know, we will be going around yelling at everyone saying no, buy my book instead.

Right, right, right.

The thing that we're, one of the things we were tossing around is like okay, transportation is fairly simple. It's like if you've got a long commute, I mean that's a, that's a way, it's well documented how much time you waste every day, you know, driving back and forth to work. And it's not like you can't do it other than quit your job and find something closer or like, or like me get, you know, leave one company because it closed and go to find one closer to home. I got, yeah, mine was just out of dumb luck. But we started looking at that and saying, well, you know, if you do have a long commute and this is something I did while I worked in Seattle, Lighthouse is I got involved with a shared commute, a share ride. And one or two days a week I was driving, but on the other days I was in the back seat and I had my laptop out and I was getting work done and you know, during that hour long commute. So I was trying to turn that waste time into as much value add time as I could. And just sharing a ride with other people was just kind of made it a little more interesting anyways. And of course you're cutting back on gas and helping the environment and everything in the long run. But that was just one of the things we thought about. It was like, yeah, you can at least recover some of that lost time and try to make it value added time during a long commute. And then we were throwing around ideas of, you know, you know, about how does wait, wait time relate, how does motion, you know, wasted motion. And you know, we thought about that and it was like, well, it's pretty much relates right back to 5s and, you know, just having things organized. I don't have a lot of. I don't have any wasted motion when I'm making my coffee in the morning because I organized my little station and I can do it, literally do it in my sleep. And my truck. I noticed when, oh, I need my hand sanitizer or I want my gum or I want this or that, I was digging around in my console. So now I have a little piece of Kaizen foam cut out and mounted up front. So all of the things I reach for most often when I'm driving are right there. Yeah, I don't have to twig around in my console, you know, those sorts of things.

What about like over processing? That's a. Over processing is a hard one. What about that one?

Yeah, and that was one that we, you know, again, as we were kicking things around and for me it was over processing is that you're overthinking and worrying about, oh, I got this, all these things I got to do. And you know what, and what helped me in that area is like, just make a list, you know, make that traditional to do list. So first thing in the morning when I get to work, I literally have my legal pad next to me and I just make, okay, today, here are my goals for today. These are the things I have to accomplish. And I take the one that's probably the most, either the most difficult or the one I was kind of dreading. And I put that first, get that out of the way, get it done first thing and then the rest of them. It just makes it a lot easier. But it helps me to keep from over processing and overthinking things by just making a list. And I get such. You get such accomplishment from checking it off or scratching it off when you get it done. And it just helps keep me from overthinking things.

What about the other overproduction In a personal life? That could be interesting.

Yeah. And the same thing is that you know, you always want. You know, there's that desire. You want to do more than what's necessary. You know, always worried about that instead of focusing, you know, for me, it was like, I just focus on, you know, family and the things that are important, you know, And I mean, I unfortunately just lost a close friend there at Lighthouse just yesterday, and I. You know, again, all day today, I was just thinking about, you know. Yeah, there's this. Always worried about wanting to do more and do better and have more.

Yeah.

Instead of, like, really focusing on family and the things that are important, because I don't know anybody that. You know, at the end of. At the end of it all, they said, oh, man, I just wish I spent more time at work.

Yeah.

You know. Yeah. I wish I could have got that one more project done. Yeah. Versus, you know, I wish I had had enough time to, you know, gone out, seen my friend one last time, and. Yeah. You know, you know, family time, you know, hanging out with friends and fishing and those things.

Well, you also hear the stories of, you know, everybody's planning for their retirement or planning for the future and. Planning, planning, planning. And. And they didn't ever take any time to sort of enjoy life now. Right. You know, not that. Not. Not that you could go on too far and enjoy it too much, and then, you know, you never could retire, which obviously you got to have that balance. Right. But. But. But, yeah, I love that idea of, you know, really focusing your priorities and. And, yeah. Pick what's important.

It's all just. Always reminds me of that story of the. The golf balls in the jar.

Oh, yeah.

There's always room, you know. There's always room.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, good stuff, man. Well, it's always fun talking. Brent's been too long. We need to do it again. And. And, man, maybe let's talk offline. We'll. We'll figure out a time and come out there and bring our video cameras. Been. Well, we haven't done anything, obviously, over the last year with COVID and everything, but hopefully things maybe settle down a little bit here in the future, and we could come back out and feature you guys. That would be awesome.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That'd be fantastic.

Yeah. Good. Hey, Brent, if folks want to connect with you and you're a great, great person to connect with. I mean, all of our guests are. But Brent, especially because you're doing all you do all you like, workshops, and you're providing all this stuff for free, and you never really ask for anything in return. It's like you're one of the most generous Lean thinkers out there that I know. So if folks do want to connect with you, what's the best way?

Best way they can reach me through my LinkedIn profile. Pretty easy to find on there. And of course, my direct email address is just my last name, first initial, which is what's associated with my LinkedIn profile. So pretty easy to find.

Okay. And so just. Well, so it's Brent. And then we. I C H E R S. Is that right?

Correct.

Okay. And we're going to link. We'll link it in the, in the show notes. So this is episode 369. So go to gembapodcast.com look for episode 369. Also, just a little sneak peek. Something that I don't know how we're going to work it out, but Brent has created the ultimate standard work. What do you call it, man? Spreadsheet, like on steroids or.

It's like automating standard work documentation. So it just has some programming in the background of Excel, but it allows you to build a playground, to move people around and move labor around until you find the right balance and then go implement.

Nice. Yeah. So I don't know, maybe we'll do a. We were talking about doing on anything that we're going to work on a podcast because you got to see it, but maybe we'll do a webinar or something like that to where you can introduce that. But that was pretty, pretty slick, man.

Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun.

Cool. All right, Brent, well, thanks again and keep up the great work and give my best to everybody out there in Seattle.

I will. Thank you, Ron.

All right, take care. 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 a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one 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.