GA 411 | Practicing Lean in High School with David Tuttle

The best part for us is when we get them jobs and they begin a career, we get feedback from the employers immediately. And one of the best ones we hear is when you know your young guy that just came in here, has been here a couple months, is teaching my staff about 5s today.

I'm very honored to welcome David Tuttle to the show. Now David, as you'll hear, runs a very, very unique and awesome high school out in the state of Connecticut. He's going to do a great job of explaining what they're all about. The name of the school is Platte Tech and we actually went and visited their school. I think it's been, we were brainstorming exactly when it was. I think it's 2012 or so where we went and we did a Gemba Academy Live episode. So you can actually go on to our website in our Gemba Academy live area and see the virtual tour of that school. But anyhow, it's been several years since I had connected with David and we were conversing a little bit over LinkedIn in recently and ask him to come back on the show to just sort of catch up. And man, I tell you what, there's a lot of teachers, you know, obviously are doing so much good for our, for our youth but, but David is next level awesome in my opinion. I mean he, he, he, the things that he's teaching these kids, it's, you know, machining and that sort of thing. But he's really pouring into them a love and a passion for lean from the very beginning, from grade, grade nine all the way up. And man, it's just so inspiring. I think you're going to really appreciate this episode. He's a real guy, but he's super, super smart and he's very, very well connected in the state of Connecticut there and really around the country. But in particular in Connecticut where their, their manufacturing expertise is really next level. So we get into that what's going on at Platte Tech. But then we also talk quite a bit about just workforce development and how that's looking in the state of Connecticut and across the country. So really interesting episode. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 411. So we're going to link to everything. Be sure to connect with David on LinkedIn because he, he shares some really inspiring stuff of what they got going on in their school. So anyhow, enough from me. Let's get to the show. David, welcome to the show. How's it going my man?

Good how you been?

Yeah, been good, man, been good. It's good to talk to you. Glad that you. I don't. What. I guess it was LinkedIn that got us talking again here over, over the last few weeks and we were, I think, brainstorming a little bit. So we, we come, we visited you and your, your, your school and your students. I guess we're estimating 2012. I, I could probably get narrowed down, but it's been a, it's been a, it's been a bit, you know, since we, we last chatted. But yeah, man, excited to have you on. So I know you have listened to the show a few times and we do like to get the, the podcast off with a quote. So do you have one?

Yes, one of the. I've listened to a lot of them over the years and I've done a lot of looking into history and stuff, but the one I like the best is whether you believe you can or you believe you can't. You are correct.

Yeah, 100%. 100%.

Definitely been my life.

So, yeah, 100%. All right, well, hey David, tell us a little bit about your background and how you first got involved with the type of work that you're doing and then, and then we'll dive deep into what you guys are up to at Platte Tech there.

So I've been a machine shop instructor for the last 23 years and I've been at Platt Technical High School in Connecticut, which is one of the 17 schools in the Connecticut Technical High School system. It's a very unique technical high school system because we don't answer to the local districts, we answer directly to our state legislature, we work directly for the governor. So we don't, even though we pull from all the towns, like this school pulls from 27 towns and there's 17 schools around the state. So it's a state funded, state run school. So it's very, very unique in the country. And prior to coming here in 1999, I did 17 years at Sikorsky Aircraft and we worked. I was a machinist technician inside the engineering department and it was a wonderful experience. Learned an extraordinary amount of stuff related to aerospace and manufacturing and exotic materials and machining and working with some fantastic engineers. So it was a constant learning experience and I get to share that every day with the students I have, whether they're high school kids or college people. So it's, it's. I've been a very fortunate guy with that.

Yeah. So go a little bit deeper on, on your program there at Platte Tech. And maybe what's, what's, what you guys got going on that's been, that's new. But also just in general, like what do you do and what do you teach and how does lean play a part of it? You know, obviously our audience is really interested in lean.

So we are, we're not your classic machine high school machine shop program, even though we have some of that. We are primarily a CNC high tech environment. We have the students have a little bit of access to manual machines, but primarily over their four years. It's all CNC related, aerospace, medical, manufacturing stuff along that line. But the part I bring into it since I've been here is my background in Lean from working for Sikorsky Aircraft. So I had some personal experiences while I was working there in the 80s and 90s that were eye opening, extraordinary experiences, multiple kaizens that I went through. And to see the transformation of a department and a process was just, it was like you step back and it was just absolutely extraordinary. So when I came here, I brought that in as part of it and I make sure whether I'm teaching the high school kids during the day, like I said, or even I have college programs here at night for CNC Technologies. I embed it into everything I'm doing. And that post you saw on LinkedIn I did with our grade 11 students came back from the holiday break and we broke down every single one of our CNC adapters, broke them down to pieces, cleaned them, tuned them up, freshen up the collets, new collets, put them all back together with all brand new tools. And so that we would start off 2022 with everything clean, ready to roll, and we weren't dealing with any problems. And I did a couple demonstrations to show them that if you have debris or burrs or damage in your cutting tools, I use some indicators to show the kids how poorly your tooling will work if you don't take care of it. And so I brought all that in and it's part of our daily life here, without a doubt.

So I guess you're, you're teaching kids lean. Do they, do they even know they're being taught lean or. You know what I'm saying? Or is it just sort of the way that you guys operate?

Nope. No, it's very specific to it. Just like I teach them how to program a CNC or I teach them how to read a blueprint, Lean is an entire component of the curriculum. It's built right in. Matter of fact, I was the one who wrote it into our state curriculum years ago. And so it's. And that goes back to, she's mid 2000s and when we were updating our curriculum and I suggested that we include it. So I actually wrote a lot of it and it's still in play today. So.

So how do you introduce Lean to say, a young ninth grader?

Where do you start with the 14 year olds? I'll ask him a simple question. I'll say, have any. Have you ever lost something that was important to you and you ended up finding it right inside your own bedroom or you lost it in the house before you left to go to school or something? Simple as that. And they all start laughing because every single one of them is like, yeah, you know, I lost, I was going to a hockey game and I lost one skate. Like, how did you lose one skate? You know, and well, I left one in the car and my mom went to work, you know, and something like that. Yeah. So I use those as their, their personal experiences and bringing it into, into the real world. And I said, so you know, when they're in the shop, I'll say, can you do me a favor and go get this tool for me? And I'll send them to the wrong place. And like I can't find it. And I go, well go look in this cabinet. And they're like, well, I can't find it. They'll come back again. I can't find it. And I go, well go look at the cabinet that says drills and find me a number seven drill. And they open the drawer and there's a, there's a pocket of drills that's labeled number seven. And I said, so that's what it means when things are in its place. That's how you waste no time. And we actually have them 5s or 3 ring notebooks.

Nice.

Once, once every two months. I say, okay, break out your notebooks because we have them. Everything we give them, they keep. And again, it's not just high school students, it's also adults. And I'll tell them, I want you to open up your three ring binders. I'm going to inspect it. If it's not neat, orderly, organized, and you can't find something fast, take it apart. We're going to redo it. You're going to 5s your notebook. So the. I embed it into everything they do from basic stuff like that. I teach them even how to organize files in their flash drive. So build it into folders, teach them how to their own personal tools when they're running a job on a machine. I need, I want to see all their work organized, laid out clean, you know, nothing. Things aren't just piled onto a table and I embedded into them. And the best part for us is when we get them jobs and they begin a career, we get feedback from the employers immediately. And one of the best ones we hear is when you know your young guy that just came in here, has been here a couple months, is teaching my staff about 5s. Yeah. And I go, I hope they don't get mad at him. But I said that's the way they were trained for four years.

That's so, that's so, so inspiring. Now are most of the students going on and getting jobs right after high school there or some of going on to college or how is that, how's that look?

About 20, 25 go on to engineering pathways in colleges. I have maybe one a year that, that hits the military occasionally too. But the rest go right to work. Yeah, without a doubt.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's so much, there's so much opportunity inside the state of Connecticut right now. For every graduate that leaves any one of the technical high schools or the college programs, there's 20 job openings to them.

Wow.

So just we're, we're really struggling with. We have billions of dollars of work in this state and we only have hundreds of people taking on the new jobs. So it's difficult.

Why are there, why are there not, why are there not more platechs around the the country? Or maybe there are that I'm just not aware of. Not necessarily Platte Tech, but schools like yours.

Yeah. Because we still live in a society and I don't care what state you go into that believes that the only pathway to a good career, high paying career is through college.

Yeah.

And it's such an extraordinary lie. It's not funny. And then it's just, you know, not everybody's going to be a lawyer.

Right. Right.

And so we have seen many, many people with master's degrees and bachelor's degrees enter the community colleges to get a certificate in precision manufacturing so that they can actually get a job.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, but that's the reason why. And even parents still believe that. Parents still believe unless you go and get a degree, any degree, that's the only way you're going to be successful. And it's just, it's simply not true.

Yeah. Yeah. Now are. So are there, are you aware of other types of schools similar to yours across the country or are they just very few and far between they are.

But they're, they're more regionalized and like they'll place. I know in Massachusetts there's quite a few really good schools and they're, they're placed in an area, they feed all the surrounding towns, but they're also funded from the surrounding towns. And so it's, it's. But they're just simply not enough of them.

Yeah.

You know, and when you get into the higher, heavier industrial states that are out there, they do have very, very good programs, very good schools, but there's just simply, there's never going to be enough of them, without a doubt. And hey, Connecticut's a very tiny state and we could double the size of the programs we have and we would barely keep up.

Yeah, yeah. So, so how's the, how's the pandemic impacted your program?

It's cost the kids hands on time, you know, on the machines. This year, coming back in September, our commissioner education said no more virtual learning. Everyone's going to school wearing masks, period. But last year we had the students that were in any trade program, not just manufacturing, basically lost almost an entire year of training. We were doing things, you know, virtually online, which just simply was not good. It didn't work well. When a kid's sitting at home in their pajamas, they're not going to really connect well with what a teacher's trying to do. They're more interested in playing video games. And so it just didn't work well. But yeah, this year they're all here this year.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. What about. I'm curious to hear a little bit more about Connecticut and just you've touched on it a little bit, but just the overall health of, of the manufacturing industry there. But then also I'd be curious if you have any insight into the rest of the country on how things are looking from a manufacturing perspective as far as manufacturing goes.

If you can imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger on steroids, that's what Connecticut is. We have our, our technology level of manufacturing. Connecticut is through the roof. We're light years ahead of some states and other countries. We have some of the most advanced manufacturing that goes on here. And everything from jet engines to aircraft to nuclear subs to some of the most advanced medical instruments and technologies being developed are happening in this tiny little state. You think about how many Connecticuts could fit inside Texas, it's pretty extraordinary, but it goes back to the Revolutionary War base that was in the Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, northern New York region going back into the 1700s never left. It expanded across the country for sure, but that industrial base never left. And we build. Like I tell people. He said, the defense industry inside the New England region scares the daylights out of our enemies because of what we can do here. And when you look at some of the most advanced medical devices that are out there now, the things that they implant in our body are being produced within five miles of the school. People that have had horrible spinal injuries from falls and accidents, they put a bunch of these titanium components in your spine and you stand up, walk and go home. And you know, it's, it's. I think it's for everywhere in the country, it's common for someone to get a hip replacement and be walking that day. Um, it's just so. It's so commonplace now. And all of that originated in this region. So. So, yeah, our manufacturing basis is just. Well, one of the issues we're dealing with is the amount of people retiring as surpassing the amount of people being trained coming in. And that's where we're struggling. And even though the salaries for these companies are great, I mean, it's nothing for someone with 5 to 8 years experience in precision machining in Connecticut to be pulling down 75,000 to 80 to 90,000 a year, and they still can't get enough people to go into it even with those salaries. And it's just, it's tough.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a good, it's a good problem to have, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's for sure. That's for sure. What about like workforce development? I mean, in addition to what you guys are doing here at Platte Tech. But like, how is that changing? Or maybe like, like looking back over the last five to 10 years, what, what are you seeing different?

They're pouring money into it. Pouring it in. Every time the contracts come out from the Pentagon for our defense contractors, there's workforce money that comes along with it because they know they have to hire and train and hire and train. And that's just in that world. And the state is funding money, the federal government's funding money. There's no shortage of money out there for workforce training and manufacturing at all. At all. A lot of people say, hey, look, I think I want to be a welder. You can almost guarantee there's a high probability you're going to go for the training and not have to pay. You know, especially if you come from a lower income world where you. It's going to be bettering your ability to make a living. There's money out there just pays for it.

Hey, what advice do you have for other educators out there who might not be in a. Maybe they are in, you know, just a hearing Texas or whatever, and it's a school teacher and they're passionate about lean, or they've. They're familiar with lean, or they want to learn more about lean and start to pass that on to their kids. Like, what advice do you have for them as far as starting to build it into their curriculum?

That. That's a great question. The hard part, you know, for someone like me, I was able to personally experience it, which is why I brought it into everything that we do here. For someone that's never had an opportunity to see it firsthand happen, and even though they've heard about it, read about it, learned about it, and like I said to you earlier, is, you know, I sit in a school with 85 adults, and when I start talking about application of lean into their daily activities, including the classrooms. Sorry about that. That's the bell.

Hey, you're at school.

Well, we have a snow day today, so I'm here by myself, which is always a good thing. Ye. But, you know, trying to get an English teacher to apply lean into a classroom to make their lives better, all they hear is, you're asking me to do something different. They didn't hear when I said to make your life better. And. And that's. That's where it's a struggle now. Somebody wants to do it on their own, and they spent the time to learn about it, and they want to apply it. I can't imagine why anything would stop them from doing it. You know, like I said earlier, whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. For sure. Awesome. Awesome. So I'm curious. I know, and I'm hopeful. It's okay to ask this, like, what's your personal plan here as far as teaching? Do you want to keep going for a while? Or what's your. Your sort of Runway looking like here?

That's something that I'm confronting right now that's really bugging the hell out of me. In a little over two years, I'm eligible to retire, and I have no desire to whatsoever. I enjoy what I do, but it's one of those things where I'm going to have to face it inevitably. I can't ever imagine myself not working. I just can't. Whether I'm working around the house. I mean, I'm not the kind of person to sit On a river with a fishing pole. Yeah, just not me. You know, I'm the kind of person that'll go out and build something in my yard, or I spend a lot of time when I'm off school hours working at companies doing consulting and leans. One of those things I've helped to. I've helped one, two companies actually redesign their entire floor plan and move all their machines around into a more efficient plan. And it's something that I deeply enjoy. I mean, the money's great, but I really just love seeing it. And it goes back to my experiences when I worked at Sikorsky, watching experienced people with strong backgrounds and lean make these extraordinary changes. And I was able to witness it, and I certainly learned a lot from it. And it just made everything better. You get to walk away with a smile on your face saying, well, that's nicer. What's next?

Yeah. What are you most proud of?

The young people that walk out of here and have fantastic careers and they're buying homes at 23 years old. And of course, I've been in it long enough now where they come back with children. It's like, oh, crap. Now I feel old. But I look back at, I was a very fortunate young guy to have a lot of great mentors in my life, beginning with my father, to my shop teacher, to people I worked for. And to be able to do for these young kids what was done for me and keep paying it forward. To me, that's a blessing. It's not a job. And I told someone this story, Actually, I posted on LinkedIn last year. But I went into the local Lowe's, grab some hardware one day. Young guy comes up to me with a baseball hat on and a really thick beard. And he goes, Mr. Tuttle. And he throws his arms around me and he goes, how you been? I had no idea who he was. Okay. And he takes his phone out and starts showing me pictures of his new wife. They just got married, the house they just bought. This is my brand new car. This is my dog. We're planning on having children. And he went into this for five minutes, and I'm still looking at him and not knowing who he was.

Okay?

And it was the beard. The beard set me off. And he looked at me and said, everything you said was right. Everything you said came true. He says. He goes, I got the best of everything, and my parents are proud of me and all this stuff. And then he finally, he goes, do you know who I am? And I said, the beard's killing me. I don't you know, and it was Kid George and, and I mean, it was just. He was so proud of everything that he had done, and it was all off what he learned here. And, you know, I walked away that day and I went to my truck and I said, I got the best job in the world. You know, I mean, that's just, it's just great. And so, yeah, that's. I'll miss that someday. But I have a feeling I'll still be doing something even when, if I walk away from this, which will be probably one of the hardest things I've ever done.

Yeah.

We'll ever do.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, man, you're doing great work, David. I mean, it's so inspiring to just to see your passion and your love for these kids and for this industry and for this country.

Right.

And so thanks for everything that you've done and I know we will continue to do. Yeah, man, it's. It's super inspiring.

Yeah, I appreciate it. It's. Now all my, my effort right now is we're going to be moving into our brand new building in April. $98 million school.

Holy smokes.

And it's right next door. Yeah. And so I've been deep in with the architects and designers of setting up a lean floor plan from day one. And it was, it was a battle because they didn't understand what the hell I was talking about. And I just said, no, you can't put the machines there. No, you can't put that here. And they kept insisting and they're like, this is the way we do it. And I was like, I don't care, but this won't work because one of the first things I'm going to do is unplug everything you plug in and move it. So why don't we just do it right from the beginning? And so it took a lot. It took me five years of being a royal pain in the ass to get people to finally start to listen. And when it opens up in April, we're going to have a one of a kind, state of the art, without a doubt facility that I'm hoping will become a model. And just the layout alone is going to teach lean and concentrating on the waste about motion and all the different things that are going on. I'm going to be limiting the ability of students to wander around the shop because I'm going to provide everything they need right where they are. And so I've laid all that into it and controlling all of our inventory and making. And also making it aesthetically look nice?

Well, yeah. You sent a picture of it, made it sure. It was beautiful from the outside at least. Golly, yeah.

It's 6,500 square foot, brand new shop. And then one of the big changes for us in this industry is the world of metrology has advanced greatly in the days of just sitting around with micrometers and hand tools. Measuring is slowly fading away into scanners and robots and CMM machines and all that. So I force them to open up a 1600 square foot room just for that science so that'll be climate controlled and clean.

How are you staying up to date with all this? I mean, just staying connected with the local industry folks there or.

I have a very strong relationship with all of our employers and every time they advance technology, I'm in their facility seeing what they're doing. And I have a really strong advisory committee with around 35 companies. But here's the ticket that I had figured out a few years ago. I have two different committees. The executive committee are the company presidents and CEOs and, and those influencers that are out there, the people that can control funding and politics and all that stuff. But my technical committee are 20 years of my graduates. They're the ones that come back. And when they come back, I call them up and say, I want to have a meeting. I need you to come back and see me. And they're the ones, you know, I have graduates from one year out to five to 15 years out that are coming back and that are driving our technology changes because they graduated from this program. They have. It's their alma mater. They always come back to visit and they're the ones that are steering the program to the future. I just ask and listen.

Yeah. So cool. So cool. Hey, how can folks connect with you, David? What's the best way you can go?

You can find me on the Plattech website if you want. Just go into Platt Technical High School and it's in Milford, Connecticut. And then there's one section on the website says about and then it'll be staff directory. And my email is David Tuttle. T U T T L E T tech.org I'm on LinkedIn too. I post a lot of stories about what the students are doing on there. You can find me there as well. Yeah, and so yeah, I talk to people all over the country all the time. And you know, the biggest thing is being able to meet people and share ideas. That's what, that's what I want to do. I've learned a lot by just listening to people from other states. Yeah, it's been very enjoyable.

Great. Awesome. All right, well, we'll link to everything in the show notes. This is episode 411 so just go to gemba podcast.com look for 411 and man. Again David, thank you for everything that you've done and and are doing and will continue to do. It's a pleasure knowing you and I want to have you back on down the road and we'll catch back up and see what's new in the life of World of David Tuttle because I'm sure it'll be fun.

Well, if you're ever back in Connecticut, give me a call ahead of time.

100% man, for sure. Thanks again, David. Take care.

Take care.

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