GA 464 | Starting with a Process with Andrew Piland

I am going to respect you as a professional and I'm going to respect the fact that you got up at 4 o' clock this morning, got in your truck, came to the job site and you're here to feed your family. I have the utmost respect for that and I also have respect that you've been doing this for a long time.

Today I'm excited to welcome Andrew Pilan to the show. Now, Andrew and I first, I guess crossed paths many, many years ago as he was a young college intern at a company called flowserve and as it turns out, prior to my Gemba Academy career there, I work for Flowserve as a, I'm in their continuous improvement movement out of the sort of the headquarters there in Irving, Texas. And anyhow, I would travel over to the Sulfur Springs plant in Texas here and support that plant from time to time running different Kaizen events and so forth and ends up Andrew was one of these interns running around and supporting us on these events. So we had a lot of fun reminiscing back in our old days over there at Flowserve. So that was a, that was good. But now Andrew actually works more in, in the construction industry and, and he's heavily involved, sort of been practicing Lean as he's, as he's doing his work. And so today on the podcast we kind of talk about how they're using different things like this last planner system, which many, many Lean Construction folks are familiar with, basically sort of kind of like project management for Lean Construction, but with lots of input from the various subcontractors and so forth. And then we had a really interesting conversation on what respect for people means in the construction industry. And yeah, it was, there was some really cool stuff. And it's not all, you know, singing Kumbaya and being, you know, sweet with each other. It's not necessarily all about that. So Andrew does a good job summarizing that. So, yeah, really fun episode. I think you're going to like it. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 464. And also if you just scroll down on the app, you can, you can link up to, to Andrew over on LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff. And also if you keep going and you, and you don't mind leaving us a review, we're really trying to, to build that part of the podcast up this year. So yeah, you just gotta, it's kind of weird if you're on the Apple podcast app, you just gotta keep scrolling and then you'll see the stars. You hit that fifth one to the far right.

That's what. You're not kidding.

You know, if you like us, hit us a five star and then put a little, put a little comment in there. And I, I read them all and I'm actually thinking about if we start getting some more traction on that and maybe I'll read a few of them out loud on the P.O. so anyhow, appreciate it and enough for me. Let's get to the show. Andrew, welcome to the show. How's it going, man?

Hey, thanks, Ron. Good to be here.

All right. Where are you calling in from?

Fort Worth, Texas.

All right. Right down the road and I'm over here in Keller, so. Got a little ice.

Yeah, we're enduring the storm together.

Yeah. Do you have any issues or anything like that?

Had a power outage this morning. Thank goodness we had a backup generator, so.

Oh, man. Do you have the interlock switch on your house and all where you can plug it in and all that?

So, yeah, I installed a breaker switch. It's just a cutover switch, basically. Yeah, it's not an automatic transfer switch, but it works just fine. So a small little Costco tri fuel generator and away we go.

Yeah, yeah, I got the same thing. I, I got the, you know, electrician come out and so I can like plug mine into the side of the house, whatever, you know, a little deal in the breaker box where you gotta flip it down where you can't turn the main breaker back on and all that. But we didn't lose power, you know.

I don'.

Know if it's good to say that. I was wanting to lose power because I wanted to try it, you know, but we didn't. So anyhow, maybe, maybe next time, right, though. I'm sure there'll be a next time. It's always. I don't know what it is about February and ice around here, but it's. It's hitting us.

The good news is that spring starts on Friday, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Well, we had. Was it two. I think it was two years ago. Yeah. Around this time, right. In February with that crazy, the crazy one when it came through, we actually, here in our. Our studio here, our building, we had a pipe burst in the wall and flooded the whole building and oh, my word, it was a mess, man. But we, we made it through, so. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, we always get that February ice or snow.

Yeah.

Then everything turns green.

Yep. Got it. Got it. All right. Well, hey, man, I know you've listened to the show, Andrew we like to get things going with the quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, so my quote, and I, I would hate to misattribute it to the original author, but I, I believe it was from Winston Churchill who said plans are useless but planning is everything.

What do you think that means?

Yeah. So, and I, when I first heard it, I think it ties right back into Mike Tyson's quote. If everyone has a plan until you get hit in the mouth.

Right.

I think it's the same thing. But the, the mental work prior to embarking on any endeavor is absolutely mandatory. Yeah. You don't have to have the perfect plan, but you have to plan. Yeah. And prepare yourself for every contingency.

Right. Right. Awesome. All right, well, hey man, tell us a little bit about yourself, Andrew. Tell us about your background, how you first got into all this continuous improvement stuff and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Ron, my background really, really starts the first time I met you. And that was 10 years ago. No, sorry, 13 years ago in Sulphur Springs, Texas.

Yeah.

At the Flowserve valve manufacturing plant.

Yep.

I was an intern. Manufacturing engineer.

Yep.

Studying manufacturing engineering at Texas A and M, working for a guy named Tony Hooks.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, man. I haven't talked to Tony in a few years now. I, I need to reach out to him, see what kind of trouble he's up to lately.

Yeah, I think he's moved. I don't know where he is now. I think he's moved from Flowserve.

Oh yeah. No, he's gone from Flow Serve.

I know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was a what, 21 year old college student living in this rancher's barn in Cooper, Texas, not too far from Sulphur Springs. Working eight hours a day at Flow Surf, doing what I could to help around the factory or whatever, but I was basically there to be a sponge. I didn't really have a capstone project. They really just wanted me to look, listen and understand as much as I could. So I was grateful for it. Immediately upon completing the internship, I thought, gosh, what a waste of time. I spent all my time just sitting at a desk walking around the factory. I wasn't really sure what I got out of it, but years down the road I constantly look back at that internship and remember the lessons I learned from you, from Tony, and most importantly from the people on the floor doing the work. And then sort of change implementation project we were working on there. And we could get into that a little later. Yeah, but yeah, it's. It was kind of funny how you at the time, you might think you're not learning anything, but then you look back and you have a whole treasure chest of lessons.

Do you remember what. What the. What the event was, what we working on?

I do. It was so it started with a gimbal walk followed by a Kaizen event. And I think the plant manager guy named Drake Clark had a few stations that were bottlenecks for him.

Yeah, I just talked to Drake. It's so funny you say that. I just literally talk. I just talked to Drake like a week ago. He called me out of the blue. He's at, you know, some other place asking me some questions or whatever. But that's hilarious that you mentioned Drake.

It is. And I had a funny connection to Drake as well. Drake's wife was a cheerleading coach at my high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Oh my gosh.

Just wild. But. But anyway, Drake had these. He had bottlenecks in his factory and one of them was a. I think it was a 52 inch plug valve body grinding station.

Okay.

A massive plug valve with a. A grinding head. I think it was immediate. It wasn't the final finish, but it was. They would get these castings, these valve bodies were cast overseas that came back and they go through several finishing processes before they would actually fit the plug in the valve and complete product. But one of the stations was a grinder. And they just had a heck of a time getting the valve body located perfectly so the grinder could do its thing. And you know, really that was kind of the first lesson and opened my eyes into one of the, I guess principles or learnings of lean where you want settings and not adjustments. And the problem there was they had a locator plate to locate the valve body, but it wasn't very precise and it was quite difficult to get the valve body into the grinding machine itself. And so we spent an entire day just racking our brains thinking about how we could do it better. And I forget how we actually improved it with the actual adjustment was. But we went from something like 45 minutes set up time to a few minutes, maybe 10. It was for me, just being a part of that event was at the time, going back to this, I felt like I didn't get anything out of it. But later I didn't realize the impact at the time, you know, it was another Tuesday. We were just having a meeting. But looking back, you know, now that I understand more of the business case of what we did, we saved hundreds of Thousands of dollars.

Yeah.

Just by doing that one event.

Yep. Man, we had a lot of fun in that factory, man, back in the day, boy, we. He. I would. You know, I was with the corporate group in Flowserve at the time, and. But I would. Sulfur Springs was hour and a half away from. Maybe from Irving or whatever it was, you know, and.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I would drive over there, man, we'd run these events and go to the Chili's at night. You know, that was. That was the big thing, right? Go to the Chili's. You know, that was.

The Chili's is huge. And everyone in Sulphur Springs bought it because they served alcohol.

Oh, yeah.

That was a big deal.

Yeah.

Yeah. I had to drive to Cooper to get beer, right? No, sorry. To Commerce.

Yeah.

Yeah, I had to drive a county over to get beer.

Oh, my gosh. Good stuff, man. Well, what are you up to these days then, Andrew?

Yeah. So I left college, went into Marine Corps right after college, became a logistics officer. And actually my contract with the Marine Corps was to be a reservist from day one. So I did a year of training and then went straight into a reserve motor transport company out of Lubbock, Texas, while I was working as a mechanical engineer for Halliburton in Fort Smith, Arkansas. So I spent a few years doing that. Oilfield crashed in 2014, 2015, and I moved into construction. And since then, I've had a bit of a transition into construction. It's certainly not manufacturing and it's certainly not oil field. So it's. And been. Been working through. I started as a. Say, I guess what would I call it? They call it a field engineer. But really the company I worked for, the field engineer was a pipeline to being a superintendent. And if I do equate a construction superintendent to manufacturing, I would say it is very similar to a plant operations manager.

Okay.

Or a shift lead where I own safety quality schedule, in that order. And so I really took a lot of what I'd learned at Halliburton and got into more of the mechanical systems. Other projects I was on, I was building data centers in prior Oklahoma and then later in Fort Worth, Texas. Same client, but a different data center project, but we really focus on the mechanical systems in Oklahoma and did my best to apply some of the lean principles that I learned. But I had really kind of a tough time because construction is. There's a McKinsey study that came out says construction hasn't improved productivity since about 1968. If anything, we're going Backwards. So we have not industrialized near to the scale that manufacturing has.

Okay.

And so when as I moved up in the construction company, I started being involved in more and more planning meetings. And that's when I really, the Marine officer inside me started to come out where we're trained from day one. A very strict, coordinated and regimented planning process in addition to a very distinct and clear communication process. And most of the input we get during the planning cycle should come from those who are going to do the work. So if I'm a convoy commander and I'm about to go run a convoy from A to B, I better be talking to my, my drivers, my platoon sergeant, the, you know, the guys who are there on the front line doing the thing to give me the best input and give me the best information I can have to make the best decision. So construction on the other hand, by and large is a very much command and control, top down. I'm the superintendent on the job, you're the trade contractor. This is your duration. Figure it out. I'll see you in a week. And so what I found when we were building these really complex plans to build these data centers on very compressed timelines was that you had one really smart person in the middle of the room with sort of kind of a one way downhill conversational style and everyone else was expected just to shut up and listen. And that works in certain scenarios where you have a very tight timeline and you don't have time to get input, you just go, go, go, go, go. But it's not sustainable for anywhere past, I would say a month or two. Especially if you're on an 18 month long project. You really need to want get as much input from your trades as you can, which does two things, gives you the best information and builds rapport with your people. So I found that out as I was starting to be the one who was supposed to make these plans. Like moving up at a construction company and just knowing there had to be a better way to do things. And I latched on to this process called Last Planner System. Yeah, I don't know if you heard of it.

Yeah, we've had some, had some lean construction guys on in the past on the podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent. So I said all of that. That was a bit of a. Yeah, no, that's good. To get to where I am now. I last on a lean Planner sasa our we luckily we had a client who is very invested in that with us. They had actually mandated that we use Last Planner System as a part of our production planning, and they even carved out a bit of the budget for us to have a planning facility, which halfway through the project, we hadn't yet built. So I got tapped on the shoulder to go design, build, and run this planning center for excellence on the job site. It's very fortunate to have been able to have that opportunity. You know, again, looking back, I thought, gosh, I've got to leave running work. You know, I'm doing all these important scopes, I'm having so much fun. I'm dealing with cranes and all this, and. But now I've got to go build a facility and do some, you know, kind of academic type planning and process implementation. But yeah, I welcome it.

Yeah, I'm curious, like, just for folks like, I'm not 100 sure myself, and I'm sure people listening aren't either. Talk a little bit about Last Planner. I mean, I mean, is it project management for construction or, you know, is it like Gantt charts and, you know, that sort of thing? Or what? What is it?

Yeah, I would say it's not so much a. An output as it is a means to facilitate inputs. So Last planner is the way I describe it and see it. And, you know, I'm sure the lean community might have their own opinions about it, but my opinion about Last planner is it is a structured means of planning and communication with a focus on pulling the best ideas from the people who are doing the work.

Okay, so. So someone's building a. Well, maybe this is a bad example because it's more residential. I don't know, maybe your stuff is more commercial, but someone's putting a swimming pool in their backyard. Right. And so they say, hey, yeah, you'll have a swimming pool by May. By May. And you know, and it's. And it's November or something. I don't know. Right. And. And so how's Last Planter gonna work there with. With putting a swimming pool in.

Exactly. So instead of me, if I'm the superintendent for that particular project, just building a schedule in Excel, saying, here you go, subs job better figure it out. This is what you have. Yeah, yeah, Away you go. This is all I'm allotting you. Before I do that, we have a very intentional conversation where we think about the job together, where I'll put a milestone or two on the board and say, okay, look, if we're going to build this thing permitting by this day, as a superintendent, I should know all the permits I need, but I need to have that conversation with my trades too. Because they might know, well, hey, actually in this area or in this city, you've got to go talk to this guy. And that takes four weeks. Right. And so we're thinking through the job together. It's basically a structured way to do a thought experiment about the project before we start. And so that's, that's really how I would describe it.

Now, now does assume that you know who all your subs are at the time. Right?

Correct.

Are going to be. And I, I mean, it's been my experience, you know, even when we built a building here, our Gamba Academy building, I mean, that was a painful process. My gosh. And, and you know, it's almost as if. Do you even know who the electrician's going to be next month? You know, I mean, they probably did, but like on the swimming pool example, I had a buddy, had one in. And I can tell you for sure they didn't necessarily know who was going to come do the gunite. Right. Like they had three or four guys and they were going to say who's available? Or something like that. Right.

And yeah, so residential, you can kind of play the shell game a little bit because it's, it's so dependent on weather. It's so much more dependent on just I guess the continuity of projects and how fragmented that industry is.

Right.

Where people are just going to plug holes where they can. No one is actually focused on generating a production system.

Right.

The bigger home builders do maybe like Dr. Horton has their, has a system down where they know for certain kind of house footprint or floor plan. With this many careers, they can build six at a time and sort of.

And they probably have their own subs. Right. Like that, that work for Dr. Horton, I assume. Right.

Or, or yeah, or, or preferred subs, negotiated subs, people they have good relationships with.

Yeah. So, okay, so you get up basically. So it sounds like you're building a project plan with the, with the key folks who are part of the project getting their feedback early and often. And I guess probably as you're going through and you're con, you could continuing to update the model, if you will. Right. So that your INP are accurate as you go. Is that, is that fair?

That's right. Yeah, that's exactly fair. So generally how it works from you build the larger skeleton of the plan first. So just like you build a house, you have to build a foundation. And within last planner, that foundation really is respect for people. That's the first thing you actually have to establish. I know we can get to the tactics of planning and you know, how we build our, our, our phase plans and then we get a weekly workplace and all that. But before we can even walk down that road, you have to establish that respect for peace people.

What's that look like in the construction industry? Respect for your electrician or your, you know what I mean? Or your painters or.

Yeah, different people have different approaches. I, I don't go the touchy feely route of, you know, I want to know your emotions and I want to know your kids names. I honestly, I really don't care. Like let's, let's get this job done. Yeah. But I, I am going to respect you as a professional and I'm going to respect the fact that you got up at 4 o' clock this morning, got in your truck, came to the job site and you're here to feed your family. Yeah, I, I have the utmost respect for that.

Yeah.

And let's, and I, and I also have respect that you've been doing this for a long time and that you've chosen this as your profession. So when you tell me something is going to take five weeks, I'm going to take that at face value and I'm not going to instantly call bs. I might ask you a few questions and I might try to understand and I might, and we might come to where if, you know what, you forgot something and it's three weeks. But if, if we, in the course of that conversation I find out you initially overestimated, it's because you forgot. I'm not going to hold that against you. And I'm not going to say, oh well, that guy doesn't know what he's doing. We're all here, right? We're all human, we're all the man in the arena right now. So that's what that, establishing respect looks like first and foremost.

So how do you handle, you're in the middle of a project and you know, we're supposed to be at this particular milestone and we're not there. And maybe it's, maybe it is due to, you know, effort or, or competence or whatever. I don't know. Like, how do you, what do you do though in that situation?

So I, and so now you're, you're kind of talking about. I'm going to go back to an example. So I practice jiu jitsu and we had a student ask the coach the other day, well what, what do I do if I get to this spot? And his first answer was don't get to that spot. And so I Would say for that, the way you. And the way you head that off, it's where you don't get to that spot is where you look at the project every single day.

Yeah.

And which is a part of Last Planner. There's a very sort of strict process by which you do that.

Got it, Got it. So what other kind of lean concepts have you, aside from Last Planner? What other stuff is in visual management or anything like that? Like, what are you guys doing on the construction site?

Yeah, Visual management is huge. There's a study. Gosh. One of my. It's actually one of my H vac contractors brought to me and talked to me about it and showed me everything. He said most people in construction are either visual or kinesthetic learners. Very few are auditory learners. You have to show someone in construction. That's just how we're wired as an industry. And so I took that information and made a visualization on the wall of the drawings in the project. So if I was running site work at the time on the big data center here, Fort Worth, where I'm. I'm cutting under roads and I've got to close things down and I've got a lot going on at once. I have to make that very visual for my crews. And the way we did that was with a full size set of drawings, which is what, 40 by 48 inches? Laminated.

Okay.

And everyone had their own color of dry erase marker. So we're in that morning huddle. It was part of Last Planner. We're talking about the work for that day and the handoffs and the promises we're making to each other. We're marking out where we're going to be working that day. We're solving conflicts before we get out to the field and say, oh, no. The next step with that is something I'm working on, is to digitize that visualization. So sort of a tableau for construction, if you will, where if you're planning in a digital platform, that plan automatically populates in the form of custom polygons overlaid on a set of drawings so we can all immediately see where we're going to be. As I found with these visualizations, the meeting focused not on the Gantt chart that I created for the plan, but the entire meeting focused on the visualization of what we're doing. And my job at that point was to make sure that the conversation was captured in the digital planning platform.

Now, what about, like, some, you know, basic. And think back about our flowster days. You know, we were going after the seven ways and practicing 5s all over the place and that sort of thing. Some of the blocking and tackling of lean. How's that play in. In what you guys are doing?

Yeah. So looking really looking at eliminating waste really everywhere we can. The one that I'm focused on now is supply chain waste. So there's a project you've probably driven past it. Right by Topgolf in Fort Worth, just west of the Topgolf, there's a multi family residential project going on with CMU elevator shafts.

Okay.

They bought all of their lumber way up front on the job.

Okay.

Because they got a cheaper price point, which I get it. Supply chain. You know, the nature of what we're dealing with right now. Find that all that lumber has been sitting there for four months. An immense amount of waste in. In stored material and material waiting on work. So really looking at how do we tie planning back to supply chain and manage our supply chains more intelligently. That's where a lot of the waste and construction comes from. Because it's a fragmented and converging supply chain where the final product is the building itself. It doesn't go anywhere beyond that.

Right.

And so it's gosh, Dr. Ruben Vrihoe, out of. Gosh. Where is he? Out of Sweden. I wrote a blog post on a paper he wrote where he really does a good job describing construction supply chains and the reason for a lot of the problems we see. And so that's. That's really where my focus has been lately. I even went to grad school for it as a lot of construction. I just finished in December here in tcu.

Nice.

And just focusing on supply chain to better understand it because I think that's where the next breakthrough is in construction.

Right, Right, right. Very cool. Hey, so last question. If someone's listening to this right now, maybe they're in the construction, you know, something semi related to that and may wanting. They're wanting to sort of dip their toe into this whole continuous improvement arena, as you called it earlier. Like what, what advice do you have for them?

Yeah, start with a process. I mean, I work for a software company. I. I'm working for the software company I used as a superintendent. I love software. It's great. Don't start with software. Software will not solve your problems. Only process with foundation of respect for people will solve your problems. So start there. Nice they call me.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, don't automate waste. Right. You know, I mean, that's what happens when we run the software right out of the gate. We're just automating waste. So. Yeah. Wonderful. Hey, if folks want to connect with you, Andrew, maybe some of our old Sulfur Springs friends are wanting to reconnect. You know, Drake is out there wondering where Andrew is. Well, what's the best way to connect?

Yeah, get a hold of me. I'm on LinkedIn. Andrew Pyland. Or reach out to me. Apylandouchplan IO I work for Touch Plan, a last planner digital platform which doubles as an operations management platform. And it saves you a lot of time. Pays for itself in two months.

Nice.

Thanks for the plug, Ron.

Yeah, yeah, that's all good. And. And gemba academy.com. that's kidding. Pyland is P I L A N D, right? Yep.

Yeah.

Andrew Piland. Yeah. And we'll ever just scroll down on your app, whatever you're listening to, and we'll have everything linked up to connect with Andrew. So. Hey, man, I appreciate it. It was fun thinking about those old, old Flowserve days. Maybe we'll have to have a reunion up at the Chili's or something, you.

Know, I think so. I'd be all about it. Awesome.

All right, take care, man. 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 Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also 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.