GA 503 | Balancing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation with Brent Weichers

And just knowing it's like I'm, you know, I could possibly be. They're considering me for a manager one day and if I work at it, I can get there. And versus, I have no idea what they want with me or what they plan for me.

Today I'm excited to welcome Brent Weickers back to the show. Now, Brent and I were able to connect in person a few weeks ago in Cleveland, Ohio at the A AME Conference. And so we just had a little mobile recording kit with me. Greg had all, had me all set up and Brent and I found a quiet couch kind of during some downtime there at the conference. And we chatted for a few minutes and it was a really fun conversation. We talk a little bit about. Brent was obviously attending some of the sessions there. He actually delivered some as well. And he was particularly interested in and talk a little bit about some of the rewards and recognition topics that were being discussed there at the show. And, and I kind of got into motivation and how we, how we can motivate people and, and then the conversation sort of, it was a little all over the place, but it was just super fun. And we talked a little bit about Brent's background. So as you'll hear, he's. He's had some incredible trainers over the years and some really strong, strong mentors. Some of the best lean thinking people really in the world. And so we, we explore that and, and yeah, just hear from, from Brent's past. So it's a great episode. I think you're going to like it. Brent's a fantastic guy and I always enjoy talking to him. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 503. Again, gembapodcast.com look for Episode 503. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Brent, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Thank you very much. Here we are at the AME Conference.

Yeah. In Cleveland, Ohio. You know, I mean, I gotta be honest, when I first heard like, Cleveland. What Cleveland really? You know, but it's been really good.

It's been a fantastic conference. I thought the same thing. It's like Cleveland, you know, San Diego's nicest time of year, right?

Yeah, seriously. But no, but it's been really good. I mean, I don't know numbers wise if it's the biggest one that they've had, but man, I feel like the. We're really lucky, you know, I know you know where our booth is, but golly, you come down this escalator thing, and we are right there. Gambling Academy is. So it's been. We've just had such great conversations with people and a lot of existing customers is, you know, I guess we're lucky in that sense. But, yeah, it's been. The energy's really good, you know.

Yeah, the energy here has been fantastic. I've running into people that I've seen two, three conferences ago, you know, that were in one of my segments and ran into people that I knew just from. Never from a conference, but. But just from business in general. And I've run into folks here, so it's been really, really good. Good.

All right, well, let's follow our process. What do you got for your quote?

One of my favorite quotes, and I had to look it up to make sure I was gonna say it right, is the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. And I always. That one was kind of sticking with me. I only read it like a month ago, and it just kind of hit me. It's like finding your purpose in life. And sometimes you don't do that until way, way later in life or you realize what you're doing is the purpose.

Yeah.

And it just takes you. Sometimes it takes you a while to figure that out.

Yeah.

And, you know, I mean, I, like. Like I announced in my speaking engagement this morning is. Is like, how'd you get into Lean? And I said, I'm going to do it by accident. I literally raised my hand to volunteer to do something. And the next thing I knew, I was being trained by Shingajitsu in the Toyota. Way decent trainers, you know, they were. Okay.

Not quite. Get the academy.

Yeah. Second rate.

Yeah.

But that's. But that's how it started. And then years and years, I just thought, well, I'll get into this, I'll do it, kind of see where it takes me. And then it took me like 10 years later, somebody asked me, have you ever thought about doing something else? Yeah, it's like, no, I really hadn't.

Yeah.

You know, I went to school for computer science. Never did that a day in my life.

Yeah.

You know, because I stumbled into this.

What was the. What was the thing you volunteer? I mean, just like, well, the job.

At the time and the company that I was working for, I was going to school or just graduated and I got moved into the. What they call the engineering group, which was basically running the computers for the bill of materials and now would be the IT department. But they Brought me into that with my degree and. Right. That was right when we were purchased by Viking Electrolux. Okay. And they came in, introduced themselves and said, this is how we run our business. Is this Toyota way of doing business. Who'd be interested in learning more about it? And I thought I was just gonna sit in on a class to learn what this thing was that they described. And I raised my little hand and they said, okay, get. Pack a bag. Here's a plane ticket.

Was it like a week course?

Six months.

Six months.

I was in Japan for six months. No Gosh. And then I came back and I.

Weren'T married or anything.

Oh, not at the time.

Okay.

But I came back, worked with Shingajitsu consultants for about 16, 17 years, continuing, you know, between them. And then eventually Danaher. Yeah, I had the exact same master that I worked with, the Shingo master from that company to my next company, which is Takahashi San.

Okay.

And he's retired years ago. And then he passed about a year. About a year or so ago. And. But I. I think I left one company, went to the next Danaher company. And I was at a site in Seattle and there he was and he looked at me and he's like, I thought you and, you know, like left the company. And I said, I did. Now I'm with this one. So like a bad penny. I came back. Oh, wow. So I worked with them for so many years and learning from him and learning from the others. And so I just from that point I just thought, now this is, you know, been super happy doing this for a living.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Wow.

So what was your. I know you gave a workshop this morning. What was it about?

My presentation this morning was presenting Excel or presenting data to a non technical audience. So it's easy to throw Excel up on the wall and say, hey, middle managers, vice presidents, here's bar graph showing all this data. And they can read it and understand it. And yeah, yeah. Mine was more about what do you do on the shop floor? We're putting all these metrics on the shop floor to get people engaged. And they look at a run chart or a CPK and they have no idea what they're looking. We're not communicating to them. So all of my presentation today was how to present that data in a more fun.

Give me an example. Let's say we have some sort of process capability type story that we want to tell an operator.

So we had a CPK that instead what it would do is when it hit a certain condition, it throw a banner up on top of it and say, this process is no longer capable. So instead of them having to read the CPK and understand one point something or other, it just blared up like a headline said, process no longer capable. And the minute it did that, it automatically sent an email to the process engineer. Okay. So as an operator, I don't have to interpret the cpk. I can just see that, hey, the title right there tells me it's capable or it's not. Or we're showing like, the number of units that came in that day versus the number that went out that day in our service groups. And they were doing it on a run chart and the lines were intersecting. And when you looked at it, it was like it made. I couldn't tell from day to day what we do well, winning or losing, you couldn't tell. So I designed one that was a teeter totter. So, you know, there's a kid on each end, and one day the kid's in the air, one day the other kids in the air because more units came in than went out. So it was just a teeter totter every day.

An Excel, you made teeter totter. And the heck do you need an Excel?

And it's just a trick of graphics and things like a speedometer is a pie chart. You're just seeing the top half. Huh. So Excel doesn't. They don't do real well at letting you play with graphics in Excel, but you can trick it and you can do some fun things. So I've got dozens of speedometers and gauges and dials that go from a smiley face to a sad face depending on where the dial land. So it's easy to say. It didn't even have a. An amount. It just said good day, bad day.

Yeah.

And you know, smiley face, frowny face.

Yeah.

You know, just think, just simple as that.

Okay.

But I had dozens of those that I showed up on the wall.

Very cool.

Even a drum machine that works in Excel, if you want to lay down.

Some, you do like a webinar or something. And you can do this on a webinar or something.

Oh, yeah. And I've done this. I actually presented some of that before for the other guys, I should say the isssp. Okay. That group and I do a lot of, like two, three times a year I do engagements with those guys. But I did present that years ago.

Now you gotta do it for the Gemba.

Yeah. And then at the end of it, I threw a link up to a cloud drive so they could Download them all and play with them.

All right, well, I'm hooking you in now. You're committed to going to podcast back out now. All right, very good. So I know you've also been attending some workshops and what have you been, what have you been hearing and learning?

Yeah. What I found interesting this year is, and it may be just because the ones I saw, the ones I looked at and said, oh, I want to go to that one. But a good chunk of them this year of all about engagement is getting employees. How do you recognize and how do you reward and, you know, what people want to see from their, you know, you know, from their managers and from their company. As far as recognition, it's not always, you know, just, oh, pay more, pay more. And so that, and that's what we've been working on so hard with ICU Medical in this last year, is instilling that what we call the blue pillar is what we're calling it out of the three pillars of how we're running our companies. The blue pillar is the people pillar. So it's how do you reward, recognize, train, develop? And it's all of those systems that we're trying to install the companies, for the most part, the red pillar is the do it right, the first time pillar, as we call it. And that's the problem solving. And are you doing standard work and getting all those mechanisms in place? And that's what we've really focused, every company's focused on for years. And then the gold pillar is the strategic side. What are you doing to look at new technologies and, you know, reaching out with having your engineers focus on three years from now instead of three weeks from now. So. And most of our companies do great at that. But the blue pillar, the people side, is what I'm seeing. Most of the discussions going on around here. Even the big main rooms are filled with people talking, you know, listening.

So what are some of the ideas or suggestions or experiences?

Was just the, you know, surveying your audience or surveying your folks. What do they consider recognition? You know, and it's easy to say, well, we're going to train you in this, or, you know, we're going to train you so you can run another machine. And it's like, well, are you training me to be a leader? You know, nobody was. No one's doing that, but we're, we're doing that. And that was. The discussions I'm hearing here is if somebody says, I'm interested in being a manager one day, well, let's start training. You will they be a manager. Maybe not. But the fact that you're developing that mindset of, you know, I got to make improvements and I got to show initiative, and that helps bring. And just knowing it's like I'm, you know, I could possibly be. They're considering me for a manager one day, and if I work at it, I can get there. And versus I have no idea what they want with me or what they plan for me.

Yeah, yeah. The whole idea of just motivation in general, if you go back to, like, Dan Pink's work and that book drive, you know, what motivates people, you know, he really stressed the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic being the carrot, dangle the carrot. You know, hey, make this many widgets every hour, and you're gonna get a bonus or something like that. Right. Whereas intrinsic motivation, mastery, autonomy, purpose. Right. Like you could argue maybe someone at a higher level of the company. Intrinsic motivation is ultimately where you aim for. But a lot of research shows that extrinsic motivation is very successful, maybe at a shop floor level or something like that. What is your thoughts on the difference between balancing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?

Yeah, and I think a lot of it, what we're finding with talking to our people on the shop floor or what's worked in the past is they do want to see, hey, am I getting a fair pay? You know, is somebody actually looking around out there just so I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm getting a fair wage? And I said, and we have to do that nowadays just to even get people to come in the door yet alone, keep them. Is people need to see that. It's like, okay, yeah, that's a. You know, that seems like a fair wage for the job. But the. But the motivation part of it is so much of it we've gotten from communication from people that just said, hey, one year, three year, five years, it'd be nice to get a little something, a little recognition. Not a coffee mug with a company name on it, but something that's meaningful to me. And we found software out there, and I think. And one of the vendors is here that actually where you go in and set up a work profile like Facebook. My likes, the things that I. My hobbies, my anniversaries, and those sorts of things. And it actually comes up for the HR manager to say, hey, Susan's work anniversary is coming up, and she's a crafter by hobby, so I'm gonna get her a gift card for Hobby lobby, you know, for her for her anniversary. So it's very personal. So it kind of turns a big company into a little mom and pop, that's interesting, you know, kind of thing.

You know, I'm wondering if you can even take it another level because last night at dinner, me and my colleagues, Jennifer and Britt and Diane, we were just talking. I don't know how we got onto the topic of the love languages. Right. You ever heard of this?

Oh, yes.

You know, so some people's like, my love language is words of affirmation. So tell me I do a good job, you know.

Oh, stop.

But I love it. Right. My wife is acts of service, so she didn't care about words of affirmation. But you empty that dishwasher. Oh, yeah, now you're talking her love language. And then like my daughter Erin, 15 year old daughter, she's. Hers is gifts. So, you know, buy her a Starbucks and bring it to her. Oh, man, she's through the roof. Right. But you could tell her how great she is all day. She didn't care. Right. So I'm wondering if part of it, what we should be doing as employers is there is a version of that book for the workplace. They don't call it Love Languages, but I can't remember the name of it. I'll put the link in the show notes. But it's. We're gonna actually do a book club on it in January.

Oh, interesting.

Essentially the love languages for work. But they don't call it love Languages. They call it some other politically correct word or whatever. But. But it's the same idea, right? Trying to understand what sort of drives people. Because I'm wondering if you understood that. And it's like, I don't want any gift because that's not my love language. But I want you to maybe recognize me in front of the whole company, you know, on my 10th anniversary and make a little something. Something that's very personal.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and we're doing that with like in most of our sites, even the daily management. Every day it's, you know, hey, this person did a great job. You know, so and so did this yesterday. I want to recognize them. So we're making that part of the manager's standard work every day.

Right.

They're saying something and it's like, and if nobody did anything, don't.

Right, right.

Don't make it up. Yeah, but anytime something was a little above and beyond, you know, recognize the person, but recognize them in front of the group.

Yeah.

And there's a few folks that just.

Said, you know, well, see, that's not their leg one.

Yeah.

So that's the, that's the trap there. If you try to do it for.

Everybody, it might backfire and somebody will say, you know, that's not for me, thanks. Thanks very much. And then you just kind of learn from that. Yeah, but like you said, I was always told it was like, there's two of the greatest fears in life are death and speaking in public.

Yeah.

And people said they'd rather be in the coffin than the one given the eulogy. And not me. I'll talk in front of a group all day long and not be in the box. But for some people, just even amongst their friends to point them out and say, hey, Bob, did a great job yesterday. Everybody say thanks, you know, and that's just paralyzing to some people. Yeah.

I've even heard like, you know, internationally different, you know, different cultures, part of.

The world and stuff like that.

I mean, some cultures do not want to be publicly recognized like that.

Our Latin sites love it. Yeah. They're such people.

Yeah.

People, people, people. Anyways, such positive energy. Exactly. They just, they just eat it up. And they were doing it anyways. We came along and said, well, how do you run your daily meetings? And it's like, oh, we high five each other based on, you know, somebody did a great job. And it's like, oh, I said, we need to learn from you guys then we don't need to be coming in and telling you how to do it. And our Italy site was the same way. Everybody, you know, was going over and I saw people going over and high fiving each other. And I was like, what was that for? And he goes. And the manager said, oh, I don't know. And he goes, let's go ask. And they said, oh, he did a great job yesterday helping me out. I wanted to say thanks. And it's like, oh, okay. So they were over there, you know, high fiving themselves right out there on the floor. Yeah. You know, and it's like sometimes you might see that in a U.S. site, but, but you'll, you'd never see a manager doing that.

Right.

U.S. site. Right. You know, they might pull them aside separately and say, hey, nice job on that, Ron.

Right.

But not in front of people. Yeah, but we're seeing that more and more, you know, in the daily management or, you know, how do you want to be recognized and learning what your, you know, what your work love language is?

Yeah.

And is it gift card? Is It a day off.

Right.

You know, our people in Britain have said, I don't want any of that stuff. Just give me a day off or give me cash. I said, that motivates me.

Yeah.

If you said, hey, for a reward, I'm giving you an extra vacation day.

Yeah.

And they'll that just.

They were doing that more time with their family and.

Exactly, exactly. But if I said, hey, you're gonna get this really expensive. Yeah. Coffee mug.

Right.

And they're.

Yeah. You know, I don't even drink coffee.

Yeah. I'll put pencils in it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I. I want to just. While I got you cornered here sitting, just so everybody listen, we're sitting on these couches here in the middle of the AME floor, people walking by. So if I think we're crazy.

I'm.

Wondering, think back to those early days with your trainers. Like, what are some stories that you remember?

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Like, what are some stories that you remember?

Oh, yeah, you know, there was some interesting.

Do you ever get scolded?

Oh, yeah. Takahashi was interesting because no matter what we presented, you know, we'd go and do our 3. The 3P exercise. We'd put something together with duct tape and cardboard and say, okay, here's what we're thinking. You know, this. And we'd show it. And he. First thing out of his mouth was always too big. He says. He'd say, well, you know, how big is the sharpener for your pencil? And we're like, well, it's that little tiny box, you know, that you hold in your hand with the blade in it. And he goes, the device should only be as big as the work that's needed to be done. So he would always say, too big, too big. And, you know, throw it back at us. Or he'd say, are you doing it once, one at a time? Where we're like, well, no, this can do like three at a time. And he'd push it back at us, you know, but some of the observations with him. We were in Danbury, Connecticut. Craftsman tools. And we watched, watched a young man stamping the Made in the USA on the wrenches. And the machine would get out of sync. The mate in the USA would travel and he'd stop the machine, go to the tool crib, come back from the tool crib with a wrench, adjust the machine, return the wrench to the tool crib, come back, turn the machine back on. And Takahashi looked at me and he goes, he goes, how much waste is in that process? And I said, well, the walking and you know, do you want me to measure the steps and all that? And he goes, no. He goes, go ask the operator what he would do if it was up to him. So I did, I asked the young, just an 18 year old kid and he said I would use the wrench that's on the conveyor belt to adjust the machine. So the wrench he was stamping on the conveyor belt was the wrench he needed to adjust the machine.

Oh my word.

And that just, that just blew me away. And it was like, well, yeah, we shouldn't be using eventually customer's wrench to adjust the machine. But it was like, why don't they just give you a. We make the wrenches. Why don't we just give it to you? Yeah. And so we, there was a Sears across the street. So I went over and I bought a wrench with my own money and gave it to the kid. Wow. And he had to hide it because it was not the process. Oh boy. You know, but it saved 15 minutes every time he had to adjust the machine. Yeah. Or then after that would be okay. Find out why the machine's going out of adjustment so often. But, but that was what I thought was so interesting is he didn't jump in and say, let me show you or go do this. He would say, where's the waste in that process? And why aren't you talking. Go talk to the operator and ask them their opinion. Don't just fix it and go. He goes, obviously we'd look at it and say, yeah, just go get him a wrench and hand it to him. Ask him what he would do. And you know, so here's this young kid that already knew. He goes, oh yeah, I thought of that.

Yeah.

He goes, but they won't give me one.

Wow.

You know, so it was really interesting because those sorts of things when you go to. And at the time Danaher was, they were doing Lean since 85, when it was still very secretive at Toyota. And they were doing all of, all of these great things. But there were still little pockets, I would like little pockets of craziness going on, resistance, you know. But it was just really interesting to have those guys. And that was what they were so good at, is to say to look at something and then look at you, and it's like, okay, he sees something. Now he's expecting me to see what he's saying, but he's not going to tell me what it is.

What was he like when you went to dinner and just relaxed?

It had to be beef. Okay, prime rib, preferably. And they would eat prime rib until his eyes rolled to the back of his head and then golf. On the weekends, he was big into, you know, on weekends, he'd be.

What was your conversations like? Were they about work, lean or just lean?

It was mostly. I mean, once we. If you're at work, it's work. Yeah. And then when we were, like, at dinner or whatever, he would, they would. All, all of them were this way. But they'd always talk about, you know, hey, we're away from work now. It's family, and we apologize that we're taking you away. You know, you'd probably rather be home with your family now having dinner, but you're with us, so we appreciate it. You know, you're putting a great effort in. And then they want to know about, you know, your family and, you know, or your, you know, how are your kids doing in school? So it was, you know, over the years, you got to know these people, you know, pretty intimately, got to know about their family and their history and all of that. But then when it was like, work, once we were in the plant, it was.

So he clearly spoke English then?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

He'd tell you we'd have an interpreter, but he would never tell.

Did you ever cross paths with John Miller as an interpreter back then? Because he, my business partner, John, you know, he learned about lean by. What was it? Mr. Well, what's that guy's name? The, the original, original guy. Oh, his name's escaping me. I'll regret now, he might have. But he didn't speak the guys that John worked with because John speaks, you know, he's raised in Japan, so he speaks Japanese fluently. His, his. The folks that he worked with spoke very little, if any English. So that's what he did. He translated.

Most of them spoke English well enough to get by. But when we came first come into a facility, he would not speak a word of English. He didn't want you knowing that he could understand what you were saying.

Okay.

And he learned a lot and did it on purpose. He learned a lot.

Okay.

You know, people would sit there and go, he thinks we're good. You know, we're gonna double the capacity of this machine. It's impossible. And, you know, they'd be rattling that off and.

Yeah.

You know, and then he looked at the interpreter and nod his head and it was like. Then I realized very early on, it was like he understood every word that was said. Yeah. And I was like, I'm not gonna say anything. Yeah. But that's what he would do. Then people started figuring it out.

Did he have any, like, Taiichi Ono stories or anything like that?

He did have some really interesting, like when he. His stories of when like he first started and.

Yeah.

The people he worked with. But he said so much of it. He goes, there was no, you know, like Shingo masters and that. And he goes, he goes, we just learned it from being in the factory and having demands put on them to say, you know, we need to double this or we need to perfect this. No more errors. And just figuring it out and building systems around that and giving it a name and documenting it as best they could. And I've got in my files, I actually have some, some of the drawings and etchings from Mr. Takahashi of how to lay out this assembly line at Toyota, you know, back in the 80s. So I've got that.

Yeah.

And it was one that he looked at. I got to redo this and nothing's done on computer. It's all on paper. And I've got some of those drawings. I saved them over all these years.

So now, now you've come full circle and you're the one training people. You're the one coaching people. Like, what are you, what do you. Are you similar in your approach, you think, or different?

Kind of the same thing is like, I first go to a site and we'll just kind of watch and observe. And I've got their green belts or black belts around me or their managers around me and their proud to show me the process that they're doing. And I'll see things that are just really obvious to like, you and me. We would see something and go, it's like, oh, there's a big pile of whip material stacked up between two people. That's not right. And you know, but I would just ask, I go, what's going on there? Oh, that's documented, wip. That's how much we allow to be there. And then we start asking, why? Why? And then eventually they start answering the Questions themselves and realizing, oh, yeah, I guess. I guess that shouldn't be that way. Yeah. But that's. So I'm. I find myself doing just like you sometimes you say something and realize that was your mother's voice that came out of your mouth. I do the same thing and realize it's like, oh, that was the same thing. Make it smaller, you know, make it smaller. It's the same thing he said to me all the time. And it's like, oh, just, you know, Takahashi just came out of my mouth.

Now, what would happen, Mr. Takahashi, if you finally made it smaller and it was good?

Yeah, no, he would just, like, like.

Okay, so that's curious, though, because, like, you never get that dopamine then.

Right.

Like, you never get that well done, you know?

And when it's all said and done and it's working, then he would come by and give you the head nod, which is like, that's as good as it got.

Right.

But once you understood what that head nod meant. Yeah. It was like, okay, that was power, you know, that's something. Yeah.

Because of the words of affirmation. People like me, like, I want to hear eventually. Yeah, good job. Thank you.

Or he'd go to the. Like, he went to the president of Fluke and said this and this and this. These things are going to, you know, really take your. That area to the next level.

Yeah.

And, you know, we were washing circuit boards, like, 200 at a time. We could not run the machine unless we had 200 circuit boards. So they were making more circuit boards than they needed just so they could run the wash. And then we went out and bought a commercial dishwasher from a restaurant, cut two holes in it so the warranty was void the minute we brought it in the building and ran deionized water through it. And we could run circuit boards through a conveyor belt one at a time and wash them one piece flow and. Yeah. You know, but then he kept saying, too big. Too big. And we were like, well, we're not. We can't find a dishwasher this, you know, the size of a handheld device. So. But at least it ran the deionized water, you know, and recirculated it. So it never. Would. Never wasted it. Yeah. And it did it one piece at a time, Put a motion sensor so it only ran when the a device was in it. And, you know, anyway, eventually got the head nod. Yeah. But the fact that he's constantly. Was pushing.

Yeah.

You know, it's too big. It's, you know, it's not fast enough. It's too costly and, you know, cost never letting us think, you know, oh, we got it, we got it. But he always pushed.

Yeah.

And we had, at times we would look at it and go, okay, maybe. Oh, maybe we can do this. And we'd come up with something that was right sized.

Yeah.

But that was always his biggest thing, was it needed to be right size.

Yeah. I remember going to Japan one time with one of those Japan tours, you know, and, and we went into NGK Spark plugs and boy, they like made almost everything in that factory, if I remember right. Was like they made it right. And just, just the incredible flow, like a million spark plugs a day or something like that. Crazy, you know, mind boggling numbers and just. But the same thing. Everything was just, just so.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, I'm seeing some of our sites, you know, some of the automation I've seen in our sites, making like hypodermic needles and molding the plastic and inserting the needle and cutting and shaping it the right way. And there's a million a day coming out of a facility and not keeping up, you know, and I imagine it's like somebody's getting poked a million a day, you know, with a needle just from our needles. Right. You know, yet alone on all the other ones made around the world.

Yeah.

And but to see, to talk about numbers of, like, what would we do today? 1.1 million. And our goal was 1.2. And this is why we. And that's the. But looking at numbers like that.

Yeah.

And the people and machines and everything involved. And, you know, and I'm looking at a machine the size of a phone booth. It's producing, you know, a hand, you know, a handful of needles every tenth of a second. And, you know, it's. It's amazing. Just comparing that to 20 years ago. Right. There would have been somebody with a pair of pliers shoving the needle into the plastic and.

Yeah.

You know, with a little dab of glue and handing it over to somebody.

Right.

And now we're. We're seeing the type of automation that we're seeing. And then here in the ame, I'm watching a robot.

Yeah, the dog.

The two dog robots walking around. And the bigger one was carrying a cup of coffee to somebody.

Yeah.

And the little dog walked up to somebody and got up on its hind legs and waved. Yeah.

Well, I asked, I went down there today and I was like, so what do you do with these things? Like in a Factory. And he showed me a video of this one. The big one went up to a. There was some big electrical cabinet that they needed to do some sort of X rays on every so often. And people would typically do it, but you got to go and there's tons of these doors. Got to open the door, you got to scan this thing and then close the door. And it's just mind numbing.

Oh yeah. Doing like a thermal scan.

Yeah, thermal scan. So they train this, train this thing. It opens it, turns the handle, it backs up, opens the door, does the scan, closes the door, moves on to the next one, you know, so yeah.

It'S fascinating what some of them are doing.

Well then I was having like warfare and all that kind of stuff. I mean it's all.

But the robots are using at Amazon to move. I mean they bring the inventory to you, not you going to the inventory to pick it. And then one of our sites in Seattle, a company I worked for, we did that very thing where the people in one department had to fill an order which was foam. The foam you put in a box to protect your device. So they would punch that out, put it on a stack, take about 10 minutes to run it over to shipping, come back, do the next part of the order, which took 10 minutes. And then it took them 10 minutes to run it over to shipping. And we finally just said, let's just get a robot that follows the tape on the floor.

Yeah.

So we got that and it just ran, just shuttled back and forth. And all of a sudden we saw their productivity triple.

Yeah.

And you know, for the couple grand it cost to get that, that little robot. Right. And it would stop. It knew enough to. Somebody walked in front of it, it stopped and you know, did all those sorts of things. Right. But you know, they fought it. They fought it, they fought it.

Yeah.

The company said, well, we'll loan it to you for a little bit, try it out. And as soon as we tried it out, they, they bought that thing. Yeah, they bought that thing so fast.

Right.

And you know, and then, and then just from there it was just, people just need to accept.

Well, and I think it's also, it's just like AI, you know, it's all, I'm going to take my job. Well, it might change your job, but you can elevate your job now and you can do things, you know, that it can't do. Like, like communicate with people and you know, exactly. Interact with others.

That was a conversation I had with like with my father in law. He was Saying, oh, this technology's taking jobs away. And I told him, I said, there's not enough people to do the jobs that we have now. You know, people are having less kids.

Right.

All the time. There's not as many out there to do this work. And a lot of those jobs just shift. Yeah. So the person that used to put the needle in the little piece of plastic with the glue is now running the machine that makes 1 million of them a day.

Yeah.

It would take 20 people to do that many or more. Right now the machine's doing it, but it takes engineers and mechanics to keep the machine a lot, maintain these machines. So oftentimes those jobs are changing, but they're changing to higher paying jobs. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Awesome. Well, hey, Brent, what's the plan for 2024? You got any exciting ideas?

We're gonna, we're doing a lot of these asset. Those assessments that we're doing operational excellence assessments at our sites. So we're measuring all of our sites by a Shingo model. How are you doing on the people and the right first time and the gold, you know, strategic pillars and we've already done our sites were coming around to their first annual review. So we've done our Salt Lake City site a year ago and now we're coming around to where it's going to be their annual checkup, basically kind of refresh their score, help them develop their strategic planned for 24. And then our distribution centers said, what about us? You know, we, we have things we need to work on too. So now we got the distribution centers we're going to start focusing on. And the first one in January is going to be in your neck of the woods. Down. Down by Dallas.

Yeah.

And then we got LA and somewhere in Mississippi, middle of Mississippi, somewhere.

That's a diverse group of places.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And there was one in Mississippi in Olive Branch, Mississippi. It's right on the border, Tennessee. Okay. So I'd fly into Nashville, drive five miles and I was in Mississippi and there was one there that we have and I loved going there just because there was a soul food place.

Oh, nice.

That was fantastic. But that's gonna be a focus this coming year. And then training, now that we've done this loop of assessments and giving them tasks to say, hey, you need to start doing better at problem solving and all this. And they said, well, I don't have any people trained to do that. So now we're got this cycle of training going and we've got people signing up for Greenbelt, which we're pointing in your direction because we can't. I can't travel back and forth to a site for two greenbelts, but we're doing the massive trainings of white belt and problem solving, and then Kaizen leader. We're developing people to be not only green belts, but also be a Kaizen leader, which is how to present, how to run a Kaizen event, and.

Yeah.

And that. So we're already doing those in Mexico.

Okay.

Dozens of folks. Because our sites in Mexico have. One of our sites is 3,000 employees. Wow. So we need a good handful of Kaizen leaders to help run the 10 or 12 Kaizen events they have going on at any one time. So that'll be our 24.

Okay.

Focus is just going to be a lot of training and working with our distribution centers and recognizing people and learning to recognize people better.

Yeah. Kaizen it.

And we have. Some of our sites have been. We're doing and are doing a fantastic job. Yeah, they're doing a really good job. But they didn't. Doc. They're not documenting it. And it's only because of certain person and human resources. It's. It's important to them.

Yeah.

They've been driving it.

Yeah. You know, we get a little horizontal sharing going on here. Right.

And that's what happened is with these assessments we're doing. We have champions for the blue pillar, and I put them together every quarter, and it's like, what are you doing? How are you improving? Sharing with each other? So I. It's like I start the call, and then I just shut up.

Yeah.

And let them share introductions. Make the introductions, and then three months later, it's the red pillar.

Yeah.

And all these process engineers are like, oh, we're doing this. Or we got this automation thing, and they're sharing all that information. So once that got rolling, it's like. Yeah, I just kind of. Like I said, I just control the call when it starts and stops, and that's it.

Good, good, good.

Awesome.

All right, well, hey, if folks want to connect with you, Brent, what's the best way?

LinkedIn's always a great way. I get tons of people connecting with me after every one of these podcasts. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Brent Weicker. So W E I C H E R S and just scroll down on your app, people. You know the drill. And we'll have it all linked up there. Hey, man, it's always great. I can't wait for you to come to Dallas. You better call me.

Oh, absolutely. Something Absolutely.

Bring your wife, too, man.

Yeah, she wants to come along.

Good, good, good. Yeah, that'd be great.

Great.

All right. Well, thanks again, Brent. Take care.

You got it. Thanks.

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