GA 591 | The Power of Slow, Incremental Growth with Brian Schreuder

Since we've started Lean, it's just transformed Chris's life. He's now leading meetings. When he led his first meeting, we had a microphone and a speaker there just so that we could all hear him. Now he speaks very loudly. He's making improvement videos, and Chris is right there at the top each week with submitting the most videos.

Today I am excited to welcome Brian Schrader to the show. Now, Brian works for a company. Well, it's probably the most interesting name that I've ever had here on the podcast, but it's a fat American manufacturing. And so Brian opens up by sort of explaining what this mean, this name means all about and how they came up with it. But really cool company. They're running in the same circles as guys like Paul Akers. And he talks about that and sort of their background and how they got introduced to Lean because in fact, they actually have been on the Lean journey only for about a year now. And so they're just getting started, but really we sort of talk about their journey, like, why did they get started and. And what have they done to kind of get. Get going and really kind of dig into what's gone well, what kind of challenges that they've had and what they're most excited about. And towards the end, we also talk a little bit about the. A trip that they. They made to Ireland and they got to run with some. Some good friends of mine and tour all over Ireland to see Lean and Lean in action, as I would say in Ireland. They got it going on in that country. They're really. They to make things better. So we spent some time talking about that as well. So a really good episode. I think you're going to enjoy it. Show notes can be found over@gemba podcast.com just look for episode five. 91. Again, gemba podcast.com and look for episode 591. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Brian, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going great, Ron. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that.

Yeah, we're calling in from.

I'm calling in from Portage, Michigan, just south of Kalamazoo. Wonderful. Southwest Michigan.

Nice, Nice. Yeah, a long time ago, I worked at a company called Flow Serve and have a facility in Kalamazoo. Yes, been there many times. So.

Okay. Yeah, it's a great, A great city. I've been born and raised here, so.

Okay, so most important question of the day. So I grew up in Ohio, so Wolverine or Spartan, where, you know, before.

Working at jcr, I was in agriculture. I worked for a farm. And so I tend to lean towards Michigan State. I really don't care, but when they play each other, I'll root for Michigan State. Okay, good.

We can, we can continue the Internet.

Yes, yes, exactly.

I got a lot of Wolverine buddies and all that. So they, you know, as an Ohio State guy, it's been a. Been a rough few years. You know, woe is we, we won a national championship, but we still can't beat Michigan, you know.

Right, right, right. Oh, I understand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. All right, well, hey, Brian, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Yes, I've got a quote from Nolan Ryan. Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan. Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt. Only by being open to change will you have a true opportunity to get the most from your talent.

What's that mean to you?

I. I take that as, you know, personal growth means nurturing your gifts and talents that God has given you and learning new skills to use effectively in your current life circumstances. Nice.

Nice. So I, I actually now, I live in Texas now, so big Rangers fan and so, yeah, love Nolan Ryan. So.

Yeah, yeah, I imagine. I kind of assumed that you would like that one. So. Yeah, baseball's a great sport. So that's, that's kind of my sport. I focus more of my attention on. On baseball rather than college sports, but.

Got it, got it. All right, good stuff. All right, well, hey Brian, tell us a little bit about your background and, and tell us how you got involved with all this continuous improvement stuff.

Sure. Yeah. I, for the last five years I've been working for JCR off road. I was hired as an operations supervisor and I primarily focused my attention on our shipping department and our powder coating department. And then in the last few months we've kind of transitioned towards value stream management. And so I am managing our value stream that's focusing on our non welded products. We've got a value stream manager for our welded products, but I'm focusing on that area. Prior to working at jcr, I was working in farming and agriculture. We grew gladiolas. We grew about 300 acres of gladiolas for flower bulb sales. And then we also did some custom packaging. And I was an operations supervisor there as well. Very good. Yeah. And then in 2019, we had a rough year. Was getting harder and harder to be profitable in growing gladiolas and the packaging side of the business was profitable. And so we decided after the 2019 season to get out of the farming side of the business. And that's where I spent most of my, my time and attention. And I really enjoyed that side. I didn't necessarily enjoy the packaging side. I enjoyed it enough, but not enough to stick with it for, you know, another 20, 25 years until I retired. So I started looking for, for new jobs. Just kind of filled out a LinkedIn profile, did some searching there. Also put out some feelers with some connections that I have. And then Covid hit that kind of put a stop to all hiring and all progress really. I was continuing to work Fort Nagels and yeah, then one day my good friend Brian Myers called and said, hey, our business is just booming. We need some help with management. So would you consider stopping by and talking to my general manager Kevin about what we've got in mind? So yeah, I stopped by a couple of days later and the rest is history.

Nice.

And that company is, that company is JCR Off Road. We've got four businesses here. JCR Off Road is the original company and we manufacture and well, we design and manufacture off roading products for Jeeps. And then we started Victory 4x4. JCR has been around for about 22 years. Okay. And then about eight years ago we started Victory 4x4 and that's focusing on off roading products for the Toyotas, Lexus SUVs. And then a couple of years ago we started Squatch Proof on the UTV side. And then recently since we've started implementing lean lean practices, we've been designing and manufacturing our own lean products and we have in mind to sell those products. So that's where Fat American manufacturing comes into play.

So what's the background of the name of this company?

Because that's a bad American. Okay. Brian Myers, our president, was invited by Mazak Corporation to take a trip to Japan. And he was there with, I don't know, maybe 20, 25 others from the U.S. canada I believe. And yeah, every place that they visited there was people greeting them and Japanese. And he and another guy were kind of joking like hey, they're probably just saying oh, fat Americans, Fat Americans, Fat Americans. So that name kind of stuck. We had in mind that we wanted to build our own products, shop benches actually and trying to come up with a name for that. And yeah, the name stuck and went with it. It's unique.

All right, well, good stuff. So let's talk a little bit now about your just really your lean journey there. And maybe let's just begin like why did you start Implementing Lean, sure.

So when, when Brian was in Japan, he was exposed to Lean. He was not aware of what lean was, what he was looking at. He just saw cleanliness, he saw efficiency, all sorts of organization. And he came back and he's like, wow, we could do a lot better. But he kind of assumed it was just kind of a cultural thing. And then a month later, Mazak invited him to go to Europe. He went to Belgium, he went to the Netherlands, Germany, and he saw the same practices going on there. So after he came back, he's like, all right, guys, we can. We can do this. Still wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at. Started doing some more research, and then he stumbled across, across Ryan Tierney's podcast. And then that really kind of opened him up to. To the Lean teaching Lean practices. And then, yeah, he came to our leadership team and said, hey, guys, there's this book Paul Akers wrote. It's called Two Second Lean. I'd like you guys to listen to that or read it. And yeah, from that point on, we just took off.

Nice.

We've been accelerating quite quickly. We've been doing this for about 10 months now.

Nice.

Okay.

10 months. All right, well, let's talk about it just in 10 months. I mean, a lot can happen. So maybe let's start on maybe the cultural people side of things. How has that gone?

Sure, yeah. Once we got through the 2 second lean book, we just said, yeah, this is great. This is a lot of good information. So where do we start? Well, we want to start with everyone. We started with 3s ing, and we started by having morning meetings. And yeah, our leadership team was leading the first, first few meetings for several meetings, really. And we were kind of using that as a teaching tool and kind of going over, you know, what is 3s, what are the 8 wastes? And then different Lean concepts. We would have, you know, word of the day, and we would explain that to our staff. And then we would go from there. And then, yeah, slowly. It's just. It's kind of evolved. We had probably, probably two, maybe three weeks of our leadership staff leading those meetings. And then other people in our staff decided, hey, we'd like to participate in leading the meetings. So now we've got everyone leading a meeting. We've got a list. We just go in alphabetical order. And those morning meetings happen every day. Probably 20 to 30 minutes of meeting.

I'm sure everybody. Everything was perfect right out of the gate. But. But was. Did you face any resistance, you know, with. With team members or Anything. I'm not going to call anybody out and specifically, but just, I mean, change is hard, right? When, when you're doing things new. Like, how did that go in the beginning?

Yeah, it, you know, we had a really good culture here. Everyone's pretty laid back. Everybody gets along really well. A lot of us hang out with each other after work, get together on the weekends from time to time. So we had a really good culture established already. But yeah, there was some that had some resistance or hesitation. We're currently building a new facility and a lot of people were anticipating us, waiting to start this until then when we move into the new facility. But we just said, why wait? Let's get things in practice now so that when we move that transition that much easier.

Yeah.

So, you know, we had some, some that were hesitant, some that were leery. A couple people did, did end up leaving our business, but because of other stuff. Yeah, a lot of it was because of that. Some, some just, I wouldn't say they refused to participate, but they were reluctantly participating.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's so interesting, you know, I mean, change is hard for anybody. But gosh, when you're implementing something like lean, it just, I, I mean, I've drunk the Kool Aid, so it's hard for me to probably even be rational about it. But sure, it's kind of like, won't you want to be better? You know, I just don't understand that mindset when people, I mean, I get resisting, like having lean done to you, you know. But if you're doing lean with people and involving them, which I'm sure you were.

We were.

You know, I just don't get it.

But anyhow, yeah, everyone was involved. 100 of our business has been involved. We've got 40 employees, a little over 40. And yeah, it's all hands on deck. We, we begin our day at 7:30. All of our production staff is in at 7:30 and we spend 30 minutes doing our 3s time. And then at 8:00 clock we've got our morning meeting and then our office staff joins us then for that. And then from 8, say 8:30 till 9, our staff is doing their 3s time. So. Nice. Yeah, it's, it's full involvement and yeah, it's, it's been great.

So as great as it's been, I'm sure there's been a few bumps and maybe a few challenges. Like what was so what, what's that look like?

It's a lot of work. Yeah, it's a lot of work. This the sorting part was kind of the fun part, really. We. We purged a lot that we had in our warehouse and. Well, I think we filled our dumpster probably three times in that first week. Just getting excess inventory. You know, product that's just been sitting on the shelves for months, really. Some. Some of those products were just sitting on the shelves for years.

Yeah.

Collecting dust, defects and so, yeah, that was, that was the fun part, really. Just just trashing things, but then putting things into practice, you know, implementing Kanbans, creating SOPs. We. We've been going full steam ahead. We're using Gamma Docs. Tom Hughes. Oh, yeah, Tom Hughes has created Gamma Docs. And that's. That's fantastic. We've got over 18s, 1800 SOPs, and I think we're approaching 1700 Kanbans, so. But yeah, that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of organization. And, you know, like you said, change is hard and people change at different times. Some people are ready to embrace it right away. Some people, they buy into it, but they're basically mimicking what they've been taught.

Interesting.

And then eventually they kind of. They kind of fizzle out, really. It's almost like they stop. Stop progressing and almost regress a little bit. So, yeah, that's been a challenge is to kind of keep everyone motivated, keep everyone learning, but also being patient with people as they learn. When you can see that the slow incremental growth, then you know you're still being effective.

Yeah. What about you personally? What's been the. Maybe what's been two part, like what's been the hardest part? And then, you know, what's been the best or the most fun or exhilarating, whatever you want to call it.

I enjoy learning. And so it's kind of been exciting for me to start learning how to be more efficient. I would say that's starting with the good things. Um, I. The hard part is, I. I would say is being patient. You know, like, I see a lot of potential and you see resistance.

That's gotta be hard, right? If you're ready to go.

Right, right, Exactly. And we haven't had, you know, like I said, we haven't had extreme resistance. Yeah. You can see people are willing to learn, but they want to learn at their own pace. You know, don't. Don't force this on me. I'll pick up. I'll pick up on this, you know, when I'm ready. So, yeah, that's. I would say that's probably the hardest part is just being patient.

Right.

With people, because I, I like to see the best in people. I know that people truly come to work each day and they want to do their best.

Right.

They want to earn their paycheck and they want to do what it takes to, you know, progress in the company.

Right.

And so you just have to be patient with them. You see, you see different gifts and talents that people have and, and the potential for them to grow. And it's just a matter of being patient for that to evolve.

So what other kind of challenges have you guys had, though, as far as just. I mean, it's a big job, right? Rolling out lean and getting people bought in. Is it the people side of it? Any technical problems, you know, or anything like that?

I wouldn't say that we haven't had too many technical problems. I think it's just time and patience, really.

Yeah.

Probably the biggest struggle that we've, that we've been dealing with and, and, and changing. Changing old habits, I would say would probably be the best is, is establishing new patterns and, and forgetting that past. And this is not the way we're doing it anymore. It's. It's very easy to fall into the, you know, that's the way we've always done it mentality and adapting and growing requires change.

You mentioned Kanban, so talk a little bit about material management. Like, how did you do it before lean and what's it look like now?

Sure, I'll use an example. In our hardware area, we assemble our own bolt packs and hardware kits. We have about 200 different bins of different hardware. And every Monday we would go through and we would just kind of take an inventory, just. But it was more of like a visual glance or what are we getting low on? And you know, we would just basically place our order based on what we saw visually. So we created a tubing system. And so we've always got material on hand. And when that first bin is empty, we. We pull the Kanban card from the second bin and put that empty bin behind, pull that first bin forward, and then we know what we need to order for that week, and we have that hardware come in before that first bin empties out. And in most cases, you know, we can get that material in within a matter of days. And so, yeah, that, that Kanban system has been beautiful.

So unless you're superhuman. Maybe you are, maybe you're superhuman. But typically, it's been my experience, personally speaking back in my old manufacturing, like rolling out that kind of stuff for the first time, we may get some things Wrong. And we would run out of parts because we didn't have things sized properly and whatnot. Has that happened? And if so like what did you do?

It has happened. There's times where the Kanban car does not get pulled. Just yesterday we make, we manufacture roof racks. So one of, it's one of our products. And we've got some, some edge trim that goes on the fairings, front and rear fairings. And that Kanban car did not get pulled. And so yesterday I ran up, actually it was Wednesday. I ran up two days ago. So I ran up to Grand Rapids and I picked it up from our supplier because we needed it. It was holding up some orders. Customers were waiting for their orders. And so hey, let's, let's not make them wait any longer. I can't wait for tomorrow when that product's going to get delivered. I'm going to go get it now. So yeah, the town car needs to get turned in. You know, we have to adjust our quantities. Our, you know, we've got different seasons where we are busier. We have more orders coming in typically in the springtime can be a busier season. And then also during Black Friday season.

Yeah.

So we've got ups and downs and so we've got to really monitor our, our inventory levels at that time so that Kanban quantity might change based on the demand of the season.

Yeah, yeah. You might even consider like, you know, the so called buffer stock and safety stock where you have just a little bit of cushion, you know.

Exactly.

Especially on anything that's got, you know, you might not be able to run up the street to get.

Right, right, exactly. Yeah. And, and if you switch suppliers then you've got to kind of have a feel for the expected lean time of those, those parts coming from those suppliers as well. Right, right.

So I don't want you to disclose any financial figures or anything like that. But have you. Sometimes when you first implement lean and just getting your inventory sort of worked out, it can make a pretty significant impact on your financial system. Like have you seen any. Again, I'm not asking you to say, oh yeah, we're making tons of money now.

No, no, no, not a problem at all. We, we did experience that. You know, we, we go full steam ahead here. It's. I guess maybe that's a typical American mentality. Right. Yeah. You want the result now?

Yeah.

And so we, we did a deep dive. We were creating SOPs for our production and each of our welders were, you know, creating steps for these sops for the parts that we weld and it was slowing down production. It was hurting production. And so, yeah, we did have a couple of months there where that number went into the red and it went a little bit further than we expected. You know, we want our guys to start building these sops and making work easier for the next person with. With having that sop. However, yeah, it had. Had a negative effect.

If you had to do it over again, would you do any of that differently or would you just say, not, man, just go for it and take the, Take the red while you. While you get it and then we'll.

I think, yeah, we would. We would throttle back a little bit. Not maybe not push so much.

Yeah, that.

That's the hard part about lean. You know, it's about creating a pull culture and you can't help but naturally want to push it a little. So.

Yeah, you were pushing a little, right?

We were pushing a little bit too hard. So, yeah. Yeah, I think it. It requires a little bit of push to get things to make progress. Yeah. And maybe push isn't the right word. Maybe. Maybe goals. Goals to set for everyone to. To achieve. Maybe that might be a better way of explaining it.

Yeah.

However. Yeah, I think if we hadn't quite pushed as much.

Yeah. Well, you're still new to the journey too, you know, five years, and then you'll look back on that first year or two and, and you'll have a good, good chuckle, you know, and you'll be proud. But yeah, yeah, where you. Where you're going to be in five years, you know, you. So long as you keep at it, you know, you won't even recognize your facility.

Right, exactly. Yeah.

Good stuff. Good. I'm wondering, like, is there sort of like a favorite aspect of all this lean stuff that. For you personally.

Yeah, I think that, you know, the. For my own personal growth. Yes, absolutely. That challenge of learning, more that excitement for learning. I. Yeah, I didn't have that excitement as a student years, years ago. Yeah. I had certain interests that I was. I was very excited about, but, you know, not every subject I was. But this. This has been a really good challenge for me. When I think about our culture here at work, I can see that it's transformed the lives of. Of several guys that we work with. And I can think of Chris. Chris works in. In our machining department. He's a material handler. And Chris was that guy that was super shy, super reliable. He's here every day, typically the first one, and super shy, super quiet, not very outgoing at all. There was a few guys that were close to him that would do things with him to, you know, have fun with him after work, kind of loosen him up a little bit. But since we've started lean, it's just transformed Chris's life. He's. He's now leading meetings. When he left his. Led his first meeting, we had a microphone and a speaker there just so that we could all hear him. Now, you know, he speaks very loudly. He's making improvement videos. We, We. We challenge everyone to make an improvement video and, you know, take before and after pictures about improvements that you made, and Chris is right there at the top each week.

How does that make you feel?

Oh, that's, you know, that's so rewarding. Yeah, I'm. I'm not one of the younger guys at work anymore, so it's. It's fun to see these guys grow. Yeah. And, you know, we've got a lot of good, good people that are examples here to learn from. And, you know, when you see guys like Chris or even Joe. Joe. Joe was a guy that. He's one of our engineers, and he came into work each day, he did his job, but I'm not sure that he loved his job. He was at a point where he was just kind of. I wouldn't say flatlining, but just didn't seem to progress as much as going through the motions. Yeah, just kind of going through the motions. Yeah.

Yeah.

And now Joe is just. Just taken off. He's monitoring our production now he's monitoring our flow. So between departments, and he's looking for the bottleneck each day and moving people around in the building to help improve that flow.

Yeah.

Very good.

Very good. So I understand you recently took a trip across the pond and spent a little time in Ireland. So what was that all about?

Yeah, so Brian and I. Brian Myers and I ended up going. The first week of June, first full week of June, we went to Ireland. Tom Hughes had visited us in December, and he invited us to come to Ireland. So, yeah, now that guy is a little.

Nah, I love Tom.

Tom's a great guy. And by the way, Tom did. Tom and I were messaging each other. Yeah. Earlier in the week, and he said, be sure. Be sure to tell Ron I say hi.

Yeah, he's a great guy. Great guy.

So always smiling. He is. He is. So, yeah, Brian and I went out there and we spent a week with Tom, and we just traveled all over Ireland. I think we. We put 12 or 1300 miles on that rental car, and we went all over the island. And Tom has all the connections. And we visited seven. Seven different businesses that are just doing lean, exceptionally well in Ireland. And, you know, their goal in Ireland is to. To be the next Japan. And I think they're well on their way there, so that was a great trip.

Did you go kiss the Barney Stone?

We did not.

Come on, man.

We did. I know. I. I considered it.

I've done it. My wife and I were there.

We did it.

Like, you gotta, like, literally get on your back and hang upside down and, like, hope you don't fall and die.

I've seen pictures. I was doing research. Brian didn't have a lot of time to prepare any, you know, any activities. Yeah. Ahead of time. So he said, hey, if you want to. If you want to do some planning on things to see and do while we're there, go for it. And that was one that is kind of gross.

That or some guy, like, spraying a little Windex or something and wiping off with the kissing part. I'm like, dude, that's so nasty. So I don't know how hard I kissed it, but I got down to it.

Yeah, yeah, Good stuff. We did. We did a lot of. A lot of sightseeing in between, but, yeah, it was a very, very good American.

Beautiful.

My gosh. Yeah, it really was gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah, gorgeous. Yeah, we. We did a lot with Tom there. There's so many good people in. In Ireland that are doing lean exceptionally well, and so we were able to connect with them. They were very willing to show what they're doing. That's. That's the great thing about the lean community is. Yeah. That everyone's willing to share and. And open to ideas, too. They said, you know, please follow us through our morning meeting or follow us through this tour of our business and tell us what you think.

Yeah.

What can we improve on? Right, so there's that continuous growth mindset, the continuous improvement mindset. And so, yeah, it's been great to. To experience that.

Yeah. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, Brian, hey, man, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming onto the show. Maybe to wrap things up. Do you have any sort of, like, final words of wisdom or anything you want to leave. Leave the audience with?

Sure, sure. Focus on your people and you're going to improve your culture. The tools are great and they're necessary, but your people need to see and understand the value of continuous improvement before you're going to get the most out of those tools. So just really invest that time in your people. And while it's totally worth it.

And if folks want to connect with you personally, what's the best way?

I recently started using LinkedIn again so I'd say that's the best way.

Okay and we'll have it all linked up here in the show notes. Everybody go connect with Brian over there. So awesome. All right, well hey appreciate you coming on.

Thank you Ron. I really appreciate it. This has been great.

All right, take care.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you 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 Gemba Academy.

Com.