GA 482 | The True Value of OpEx Assessments with Brent Weichers

When they ask, okay, well, how am I supposed to save $2 million this year? And it's like, well, you know, look over here and say, how well are you training and developing your people? You know, how are you doing on process flow and innovation? And those are the systems that you need to have in place in order to get to where you need to be.

Today, I'm excited to welcome my good friend Brent Weickers back to the show. Now, Brent is a fantastic lean thinker. He's one of my favorite folks in our community. He's so, so smart, super humble, and just a great, great guy. And today we talk about OPEX assessments. Now, before you're like, oh, that doesn't sound very interesting, it really is. Brent and his team at his company, and he tells you all about the company beginning they've really worked this out to where it's super value added. It's not like the old school, you know, come in and hide the people you don't want the auditor to talk to and all that. You know, we all probably seen that this is, this is real, it's genuine. They're genuinely trying to go in and help and make, make the organization better. So really, really good stuff. So I think you're going to find value no matter what sort of job you do or what sort of industry you're in, because we're all trying to, if you're listening to this, you're involved in trying to make things better. And that's what this, this OPEX assessment is all about. Okay, show notes are going to be over@gemba podcast.com just look for episode four. And also go to gemba events.com and check out some of the live instructor training that we've got coming on. We've got lots of good stuff. Some stuff. It's actually in person here in our Keller, Texas facility. So you can see where we're doing this podcast and also we're going to be doing some stuff just virtually like over zoom and that sort of thing. So Gemba Events.com okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Brent, how's it going, my man?

Going very well.

Yeah. Well, it's good to talk to you again. So where are you camping out these time these days?

I currently in. Based out of Phoenix or just north of Phoenix, Arizona. Kind of up in the hills.

A little bit, a little bit different than, than your old stomping grounds, Washington and all that, right?

Absolutely. In Seattle, we did not have air conditioning. We didn't need it.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, all right.

And here we do. Okay.

Yeah, for sure. But it's a dry heat, right?

It's a dry heat.

Yeah.

Your mail catches on bringing it back to the house.

Yeah, yeah. So I always tell people, so is your oven. Stick your head in there when it's 350 and see how that feels, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff, Good stuff.

All right.

Well, hey, man, you've been on before Brent. You know the drill. We like to get things going right away with it with a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, it was funny is just recently some of my counterparts and I were talking about, you know, old ways don't open new doors and you know, all these little catchphrases and things that people were using in their trainings. And then I stumbled across crossed one that was intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. And it just really rung with me. I really liked it. And then I had to look up to see whose quote it was and it turns out it was Stephen Hawking's.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so I just thought that was fascinating. Is intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. And it really comes down to, you know, how did humans develop to the point where we're at. Yes. Because you know, the ones that were had the ability to adapt to change, survive.

Yeah. Adapt or perish, as they say.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

And it's the same in business.

Well, yeah, and it's a world of everybody freaking out with chat, GBT and all the rest of it. You know, it's just. Yeah, it's the new tractor of the farming world.

Right, exactly.

So good stuff, man. All right, well, hey Brent, in case folks didn't catch any of the past episodes that you've been on, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and what you're up to these days.

Oh, sure. My background is I'm Toyota based. So I started out, boy, when did I start out? In the mid-80s and the company I was working for got purchased and they were a lean company which in back in the 80s was fairly rare. And so we ended up being Shingo, you know, Shigajitsu Toyota based training. For almost 20 years I worked with Shingajitsu's consultants improving the different businesses. And so I've been through aerospace, automotive, medical device, you know, a lot of different manufacturers. I spent a good portion of my time working in there in Seattle area working with the, the blind and the deaf blind as you know. And you came out and paid us a visit and. And these days I'm Almost two years now. I've been working for ICU Medical, which is a medical device company. We like to say anything that pokes you or stabs you, we make it okay. You know, in a good way, right? In a good way. Yeah. And a lot of us based manuf in some Mexico and Costa Rica based manufacturing and just been a fantastic company to work for. So I've been having a great time with my team.

Great, great. All right, well, so the topic today Brent, that we're going to explore is this whole idea of, of OPEX assessments. So first of all, just right out of the gate, like what is that? What's an OPEX assessment?

Well, it was funny just the other day I was listening to your episode 472 with Bonnie Davis.

Oh yeah.

And she was talking about the, which was a really good episode. I really enjoyed listening.

Bonnie's fam is fantastic.

Yeah. And you know, listening about you know, the two pillars and it's always people and tools kind of based and all the companies I've been through, even Toyota was always talking about, you know, operational excellence and we do all these things, you know, about people and about systems but nobody ever really measures and drives improvement for, for those areas. They say they do it. We might have a couple posters that say, you know, people are number one. But we don't actually put systems in place that measure how we're doing or how we're advancing in those areas. So, so the system that we've been working on is three, three pillar based. The number one is people, number two is improvement, you know, systems. And the third is our consistency of purpose which is strategic planning, you know, how are we doing in those areas? And the assessments that we're developing or have developed and we've been doing at our sites is a score based system. And we go and we do these assessments and give the sites kind of a base score to say well here's, here's how you're doing on your people improving systems. Here's how you're doing on your, what we call. Right first time. Here's, here's your process flow and, and your poke oaks. You know, all of those, all those lean tools that we know improve the business and then we look, we start looking at the business more as far as how are they doing on, on their consistency of purpose which is their ocean planning and strategic planning and how are they tying an individual to the strategic plan. So even the person down there on working a machine every day knows that my, my development for the company is tied to these big strategic plans. I know my place in the business. And like I said, a lot of companies talk about it and say they're doing these things and they are, most of them are doing those things, but they're not doing it in a systematic, measured way that they can say, well out of 1 to 10, we're at a 3.5 right now and here's the areas that we're weak in and we're working on those areas.

So how are, so is it like assessments that people surveys are filling out? Are you interviewing people?

Observing? Yeah, this is an actual opex. Professionals come to the site and we do a three day assessment and we're gimba on the floor looking. We're kind of, we're kind of playing that like they say in Iowa, show me. You know, we go out and say, okay, we're looking. This is what we're looking for. We're looking for how do you reward people? You know this, it's extremely important that people get recognized for what they do. So show us your recognition systems.

Not necessarily financial, but just like you bring people up in the morning meeting and thank them in front of everybody.

Exactly. From, from that to, hey, somebody did. Somebody recommended an idea and it saved a half a million dollars a year. What did you do? And, and sometimes they, you know, we found people sit around the room and stare at each other and they go, I think we gave them a coffee cup with a company name on it. And, and it's like, well, but is there a system in place? You know, no, it was only done because somebody brought it up. There needs to be a system in place that actually went out and talked to people and said, well, what do you consider recognition? What would you like to see? And in most of our sites it came down to just like you mentioned in a morning meeting, somebody said, hey, Bob brought up an idea, it was a fantastic idea and we're implementing it. Or if it wasn't a great idea, we did sit him down and say, hey, thanks for your input. We looked into it. Let's understand, you know, what it was or why we're not implementing that idea, but please keep doing it.

So let's say you go into a site, Brent, that's got, I don't know, 300 people, just randomly picking that number that work in that facility. How many of those 300 people are you going to interact with?

Usually at least a couple dozen. Because we're, during a three day assessment, we do it like an hour to 90 minutes of gimba in the Morning. So we're looking specifically for what we call the blue pillar or the people pillar. And we go and look for evidence of, you know, how are they recognizing people, how are they training people, how are they communicating? Is it through, you know, screens out in the hallways that tell people how we're performing? Is it through the morning meetings? Combination of. But we actually go out and sit in on morning huddles and, and talk to people and say, you know, it's like, do you know what's going on in the business? How is that communicated to you? You know, we found sites were using WhatsApp to send chat notices out to their cell phones to let them know what's going on and different things like that.

What do you think about that? Is that good? Is that bad?

It turned out they really liked it. A lot of the employees really thought it was. It was interesting to. They get a little, like a little daily update on their phone that says, hey, don't forget, you know, Monday is a holiday and. Or Friday is the blood drive day out in the parking lot. And, you know, so people were getting. Instead of having to go to a bulletin board somewhere or a screen somewhere, they just, you know, like, we all do. We just stare at our phones. Yeah. And.

Yeah, but that way when you're. You're surfing Twitter. No, no, I'm on WhatsApp.

Yeah, I'm on WhatsApp. I swear, I'm not swiping right. Or anything.

Right, right, right.

You know. Yeah, but it, but it was because they talked to the employees and said, what is the best way for us to get information to you? And somebody said, well, why don't you send it to our phones? We all have a phone. And. And that's what they started doing. Wow. You know, but it's like, don't come. Don't sit down in a room and try to figure out, you know, what do we think? Oh, let's put a TV screen up or let's put a big bulletin board up somewhere in the hallway. Yeah, it's like actually talk to the employees and track how well it's. It's going to, you know, put us. Put a system in place.

Okay, so what about, like, that improvement was one of the other pillars. Right.

So.

So is that where you're, like, looking at, like, like, how are you making. How are you problem solving or that sort of thing? Or what's that one look like?

Yeah, so the. So that particular pillar has, you know, what we call the red pillar, continuous improvement pillar, as things like. Right. First Time, innovation, process flow, and then are we doing or making data driven decisions? So when we're out looking at, say right first time we're out there looking for, are there use of statistical tools, are they doing root cause problem solving? Do operators have the authority to shut a line off? So when we go out and say, well, hey, show us root cause problem solving or show us that you're, you're actually, you know, using it, and they'll get, they'll get like a one score for, you know, we saw a little bit being used here and there. We saw, you know, people are being trained in the DMAIC process and there's some tools being used. And then all the way up to, you know, every, everywhere we looked we saw PDCA being used in statistical tools, you know, in morning meetings, you know, so it goes from a 1 to a 10 score. But to get those scores are also broken down by duration. So if we say yes, they're using statistical tools in that area, you know, great. How long have they been doing it? We ask frequency, how often do you use them? And then the scope or the reach, is it everywhere or is it just that one specific machine that you're using it on? And then we look at intensity and, and say, well, you know, we look at, is there a lot of engagement with the people on the floor or was it just an engineer somewhere? So in order to get that higher score, there also has to be a length of time and the frequency and the scope has to be there.

I can imagine, Brent, when if you walked into a location that maybe wasn't going to be scoring very high in some of these areas, there could be some trepidation, some resistance, some negativity. Have you ever, I mean, I'm obviously asking you to. Oh yeah, this one location, you know, but. Oh yeah, but like, how do you work through that? Maybe even the general manager, the plant manager is like, oh my gosh, this is going to be bad. You know, like, how do you work through that?

Yeah. And all of our sites that we've done so far, it, it was, you know, a lot of, you know, oh, well, you know, we, we just, you know, we don't have the time or the, or the people to, to get all these things in place. And we let them all know, it's like, hey, this is new. You've never been measured on this before. You're all doing these things. You've just, we've just never came and specifically asked to see evidence of these things. So he said, we don't Expect anybody, you know, to score above A one and, and a lot of our sites scored much higher. But we let them know. It's like, hey, our expectation is to be one. Just beginning. I said that. So don't, you know, all we're looking for is out of all of the things we're looking at, we're going to look at the three areas that had the lowest score and you're going to put those in your strategic plan for the year to work on those things. And then next year we'll come around and do the assessment again. It'll be an annual thing and we come around and do the annual assessment and you know, we see areas improved that you may not even have been focused on because each one of them has a champion.

How do you like the one thing that sort of drives me nuts about assessments and, you know, audits and I mean, I just remember back in the day and former, former life before Gimba Academy, you know, we would have the ISO folks coming through or whatever it might be, or Malcolm Baldrige or whatever it was, and it was kind of like, hey, I mean, this is TR story. I never, I'll never forget. It's like been indelibly burned in my brain. He said, hey, Johnny, tomorrow at 3 o', clock, why don't you be on break? And Cindy, yeah, three o', clock, you need to be at your desk and when the nice person comes through asking questions, you're going to be the one answering. And I was just like, what the heck is this? You know, so it was just, yeah, so totally just gaming to try to get through the audit and get your two or three minor findings and have a nice dinner the night before with the auditor and, you know, like, how do you make it real and not false?

Yeah. And it's because we, we ask for evidence. There, there has to be all of the, this assessment is about systems, is getting systems in place and not just, oh, we, this is how we do it. And then what we found in a lot of areas is, well, we used to be really good at the recognition. We had a really good recognition system. And I said, what do you mean you had. Well, when Susan left the company, she was the one running that. When she left, it just kind of fell by the wayside and well, then you didn't have a system in place. So when we're doing these assessments and everybody's all nervous about it, you know, we, we just told them this is new. We're, we're assessing you on something that, you know, you Never. You didn't know what was coming. So, you know, the expectation is a one and if you get above a one, it's, you know, it's an attaboy. And it turned out most of our sites were pretty close in, in score with each other. You know, it was, it was pretty impressive. We had one site that was crazy high, but it's because they'd been doing this for a long time. Just internally.

Yeah.

And we decided, you know, and it's, and it's based on the Shingo model. And, and we, and that site just won a silver A Shingle award. And so we, we thought, hey, this is best practice, we need to share it. So we spent a lot of time and a lot of expense and, and our entire team had to meet in Costa Rica and at the site there and, and put this together. Put this assessment together.

Yeah. It's interesting. You mentioned the various awards and I, I heard a statistic and I think it was from one of the companies actually that awarded these awards that there was this really awful statistic. And I might have it wrong, I probably shouldn't even say it, but there was a decent percentage of companies that after they won an award that a year or two later they really tanked. I don't know if they were just trying to win an award and it was just an extrinsic motivator and it.

Was, yeah, you know, like, and, and that's exactly what, what happens with a lot of, and I've seen that with companies that, you know, in my former couple companies was, oh, ice, like you mentioned, ISO is coming. You know, we're going through an ISO audit. We need, we need to get to that next level of 9,002. And, and we, you know, and we do all of these things and we, we pass. And then it's like, ah, you know.

Yeah, put the banner up, tell the customers and move on.

Exactly. And then move on. And then it's like, oh, you know, and it's because we were doing all this, you know, superhuman effort to get there instead of putting systems in place.

So as it relates to what you guys are doing with these OPEX assessments, then, you know, what, what's the ultimate result that you're looking for after the assessment? Maybe another way of asking, like, what problem are you trying to solve? Like, don't annoy me coming in and tell me how bad I am, Brent, you know, like, what are you doing for me? How are you adding value?

Yeah. And all of it comes down to, you know, the companies all have their strategic plan which is, you know, make, make more, you know, save money, improve quality, all of these, you know, all of these metrics and all of these things. And, and as we're showing people, everything in the assessment is going to help them get there when they ask, okay, well, how am I supposed to save $2 million this year? And it's like, well, you know, look over here and say, hey, are you. How well are you training and developing your people? You know, how are you doing on process flow and innovation? And those are the systems that you need to have in place in order to get to where you need to be. And so when they, they start looking at, you know, hey, I've got all these improvements and things I need to do on my strategic plan this year, they can go back to the assessment and say, oh, yeah, you know, I scored fairly low on developing my people. So. And, and a lot of our sites did because we didn't have a good training system as far as OPEX goes. So now we've developed a training library and a training schedule and we've got, you know, ways to develop people to say, hey, this new engineer that came on board, he's going to go through white belt, he's going to go through green belt, he's going to go through problem solving, a training that we call Kaizen leader. Somebody that can actually lead a Kaizen event and do problem solving with a group and, you know, teaching, facilitating skills and those sorts of things. So all of that type of training is stuff that we're, we're developing and using. And, and of course, some of our sites are leaning on Gimba Academy for videos and training and, you know, like our Costa Rica site.

Ah, gotta send you my check. The check. Now, Brent.

Which was funny. They. Before I was working for the company.

Okay.

We're using Gimba Academy. I appreciate it. You know, and some of the folks that heard, heard the podcast that you have done in the past, so that was, that was really neat.

Yeah, yeah. What about a cadence? Like, how frequently are you doing these?

These are annual. Okay. So we're already coming up on a few of our sites, are going to be coming up on their, their second audit, you know, their first annual revisit.

So that seems slow to me. Why, why you gotta wait a year.

For some of this stuff? Takes that long, okay. To get in place. So like I said, we go and we do this audit, they end up with a score of like, one of the sites, say, was a 3.5 out of 10. And there's a summary page that says, you know, it's a spider chart. It says, hey, here's these. You know, you were really low in, in training and development and you took a hit on process flow and maybe in data driven decisions you had some low scores. So those are the three things that you're going to focus on. And we actually do quarterly reviews with the sites just to say, you know, hey, we're going to do a quarterly review on the blue pillar. So it's mostly a lot of folks from HR and those sorts of things because we're talking about recognition, communication, training.

So those things you could change faster, I would think.

And those are fairly, fairly quick. You can say, hey, we're, you know, we're developing a better recognition system. There's, there's some great software out there. Yeah.

Or experimenting to see what works, right? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we're experimenting with some software that allows employees to create a profile that says, hey, here's my likes and my, you know, things, my hobbies and things. So when it's time to say, hey, we need to send Susie a little thank you for a great job that she did, and the system looks at her hobbies and likes and things and says, hey, send her a gift certificate for this hobby shop so she can go get supplies to do her hobby. Yeah, very versus. So here's another coffee mug with a company right loco on it, you know, and you know I like a good coffee mug. Yeah.

And I mentioned coffee cups a couple times, man.

I. And I've got a cupboard. My wife and I have a cupboard full of them from our travels and in different companies and, and actually my company gives out those really expensive. What's the really expensive stainless steel yeti things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have the fake yetis. That's what I have in my house.

Yeah, yeah. Our company, our company there in Austin I was just at, gave me one of those giant like half gallon yeti.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My girls use those.

I love that thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I know you guys have created this assessment, you know, for your own use is this like, so if people are listening, are like, I want to get my hands on something like that. Like, what do they do? Like, I mean.

Yeah. And actually what we, we did was, you know, we kind of modeled this after Shingo.

Okay.

You know, these are some of the things that Shingo looked at. But we got together as an OPEX group and just said, well, what do we consider important? You know, you know, so number one was people you know, safety, health and environmental. You know, we looked at and said, yeah, of course, you know, safety, because it also costs a lot of money when somebody gets hurt. Yeah. But we looked at, you know, health and environmental is how clean is our. Is the air in the facility? Do we actually measure, you know, the particulates to make sure we're providing clean air? Is the lighting adjusted correctly? You know, people just throw up fluorescent lights and just go, yeah, we're good. And as I've learned, you know, work. Working with the blind or folks that are partially blind, the frequency of light is extremely important.

Yeah.

You know, so it's like, are we measuring that and, you know, those sorts of things. So we, you know, we just started developing everything that we thought was important.

Yeah. Oh, that's so cool, man. I'm so excited to. I mean, I. I know you'll be on again down the road, but, man, it might be kind of cool for us to set a thing on our calendars right now. This guy should go out and just set up a. A podcast right now for, you know, next year around this time, and let's circle back and just kind of touch bait. We don't have to wait for that long. We can talk about something else in between then, but. But for sure, I'd be curious to hear a year later, you know, what. What is this thing looking like now? What have you learned? You know, that sort of thing.

And. And we've already learned on. In some things that we thought, you know, it's like, oh, we gotta have that in there. That's so important to evaluate that and make sure that the. The companies are striving to improve in that area. And then we sit down with the. The site during the assessment, and they go, we have absolutely no control over that. That's a corporate thing. So we. Oh, okay. And so we were already rolling out with the vert, what we call 2.0.

Okay.

You know, where we, you know, took those things out, or we changed it to, you know, we said, hey, are you doing certified supplier partnerships? How are you certifying suppliers? And they say, well, that's corporate. We don't have any control over that. And we thought, okay, well, let's change it to say, how well are you working with corporate supply chain? You know, are you just, you know, or how are you. Well, are you supplying them with information? Is it monthly? Is it quarterly? You know, what. How are you grading your suppliers and giving that information to corporate? And, you know, so some of the things we had to change or or eliminate completely. Yeah, you know, things like it. You know, we thought, oh, it's super important to really be focused on it and what's the latest and greatest developments? You know, like you were just mentioning the chat, you know, in AI, you know, what are we using for things like that, especially in inspection? You know, AI is being used extensively now for quality inspection on cameras. And, and we have a lot of people just inspecting at our sites that we can be using cameras to be much more accurate. Yeah. And so we're, we're driving in those areas, you know, trying to drive technology where it makes sense.

So I mean, what about like the front office type thing? Are you going in and talking to the accountant on, hey, how do you close your books and how long does it take you?

A great question. We just had that conversation a couple weeks ago and said, okay, we're, this is for, you know, our manufacturing facilities, which there's. How Many? We got 10, 11 of them around the world. And this is Europe and Mexico, Costa Rica. You know, we're hitting all of our sites with the same assessment, but it excludes the back office and supply chain. So we've developed one for supply chain. So there's, there's a version we've developed. It's going to specifically look at supply chain in our distribution centers. So I'll be down, I'll be down in your neighborhood. I think our, our biggest distribution center is really close there to killer. So will be down there doing an assessment holler.

I mean, we'll go out for, go out for a beer.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think. Is it just outside of Tyler? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think just outside of Tyler. Okay. And so we'll be doing an assessment down at that large distribution center and you know, looking specifically at, you know, the metrics and things that are important to distribution and supply chain. So, you know, the people side of it, the blue pillar is exactly the same. Yeah. Nothing changes. What we call the yellow pillar, which is the strategic end, you know, what are your long term strategic plans and how are you relating that down to. The communication pillar is all the same. But the red pillar, which is the process flow and you know those sorts of things. Well, there's not necessarily tack time and cycle time.

Right.

When you're picking orders, but there are specific metrics in supply chain, you know.

If you're winning or losing.

Right, exactly. So we're, we're asking those questions. Yeah. For that. And then we're also developing for what we call the back office, you know, hr, accounting, you know what, what kind of metrics do you have in place to do a month end close and. Yeah. You know, when you're paying the bills, how long does it take to do those processes? Very good. You know, variants on things and.

Yeah.

You know, so that's awesome. That's the next step.

Wow, that's exciting, man. Great job so far. It sounds, sounds really cool and inspiring really, because again, sometimes you hear the assessment, you're like, oh, but you're really going at it with the right spirit, with the right intention and, you know, and follow up and looking for evidence and making it real. And I think that's super, super value added when you approach it that way.

In all of the sites that we've done this assessment with so far, there's been six, we've got number seven coming up here shortly. And all of the sites, you know, of course, on the first hour or so were, you know, kind of nail biting and like, you know, here they are. And all of the sites know us. It's not like we're strangers when we walk in the door, but they're, you know, a little trepidation as we walk in the door. And very quickly they realized it's, oh, we're, we're just there to kind of get the, get a pulse of what they're, what they're doing. It's not so much a, it's not an audit, it's. It's more about them teaching us, you know, what they consider important and, and let's get some, you know, some measurement systems in place. And it ended up, you know, when they, when at the end of the day when they said, okay, how did we do? And it's like all of the sites were within tenths of a point of each other.

Wow.

Which was, which was really interesting. Cool. They were all very, very close.

Yeah, that's great.

But now we're able to say, well, we have a site in Austin that has an incredible recognition system. They were, that was their highest score. So they're going to be coaching the other sites on the recognition pillar.

Nice, nice.

Or somebody else had some really good things they were doing with process flow. They're going to be coaching the rest of the teams on that. Yeah. So that was the biggest thing to come out of all of this was we found best practice and connected the championship so they can start communicating.

Good stuff. All right, if folks want to, to connect with you, what's the best way? LinkedIn.

Yeah, LinkedIn's a great way to reach out. I'm all over. All over LinkedIn. And so that's, that's a great way to hit me up. And of course, we're going to be at AME coming up this fall. Yep, yep, yep.

We'll see you there for sure. We've, in the past we've done like a little podcast booth. I don't think we're going to do that again, but I'm probably going to be recording podcasts there, so we'll just kind of go off in the corner somewhere and chat. So. Sure, let's plan on it, ma'.

Am.

I'm sure we can talk about something.

Absolutely, yeah. I'm going to be presenting there at AME Live this year, which is great.

Very cool.

And we're going to be presenting how to present Excel and data for non technical audiences.

Oh, that's so good. In fact, we're redoing all of our Six Sigma material and you know, in the past we've used minitab, Sigma, Excel, and I think we'll still have some of that in there, but we're actually using. The guys want to just really kind of just use that. What is it? That stat package or whatever. It comes just native Excel and, and just start using that for some of the, some of the more, you know, T tests or whatever it might be.

So. Yeah, because we, we have a lot of our sites where we're, you know, run charts and paretos on big screens as they walk by to see how they're performing every day. And we noticed people looking over their shoulder and I was like, well, how did you guys do yesterday? And they go, they go with somewhere up on the screen, I don't know. And you know, and it's just this boring run chart that they, you know, that the line slightly changes a squiggle every once in a while. And you know, and it's same thing. It's like, okay, I'm communicating. And it's like, well, but are you communicating in the way that your audience wants to be communicated to? Yeah. So we change the graphics or we change the Excel sheet to be, you know, like race cars, you know, or, or fish in an aquarium. So the higher that particular fish went, that, that's shows that, hey, that we, we. The Service Department got 30 units out that day. It was a record day. Well, that particular fish was up on top, you know, on top of the aquarium. Not upside down, but.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, but to use. And we use teeter totters with data, you know, the, the bigger number makes the teeter totter, tip the other way and, you know, but just try to use fun, interesting graphics instead of, you know, these boring run, you know, run charts and CPKs and stuff. That's all fine for us data nerds, but. Yeah, you know, but in general, if I'm working out there in manufacturing and I look up at a screen, I'm not going to sit there and stare at a run chart for five minutes to try to figure out where I'm at.

Right.

I want a quick glance. You know, we got the TV generation, you know, looking at data. They want to see fun, interesting graphics. So.

Yep, good stuff, man. All right, well, hey, thank you. Thanks, man, for coming on. It's always fun. Brent and I appreciate you and. Yeah. All right, well, I'm sure we'll catch up down the road, but in the meantime, keep up the great work.

Will do. Thank you very much.

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