GA 609 | Leveraging Overall Equipment Effectiveness with Caleb Wilczynski

We see this number on a board, maybe it's on time delivery, maybe it's scrap, you know, could be any kind of number. And they say this number bad, but then there's no follow up as to why is this happening, why is this bad? What is doing this.

Today I am excited to welcome Caleb Wilczynski to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Caleb recently got certified as a master black belt through Gemba Academy's certification program. So he was working with John Knotts over on our certification team and he did a great job getting through his. Yeah, getting through his MBB program. So it's not a one thing about Gamba Academy. We're not like, we're not like a get rich quick sort of certification program. So you got to work for it. And he did a great job working through all the requirements and the project work and that sort of thing. So we spent some time talking a little bit about that journey and how that went for him. And then we sort of dig into really the work that he does at his company and, you know, some of the challenges that he's faced and as he's pretty vulnerable and he's pretty open to some of the things that that's, that's going on that, that aren't easy. And he's hitting some resistance and talking about sort of how he works through those roadblocks. And I feel like it could resonate with a lot of people out there because there's many people out there in the world who are struggling to make continuous improvement work. And luckily Caleb is making a lot of headway at his company and they're starting to see. So it's pretty exciting. So, yeah, really fun conversation. He's got a lot of energy. He is a sort of. Now he's a design engineer, but he's got sort of like a process engineer background. And so we spent some time also talking about, you know, that design, engineering world. And we got all geeky about the mad V& design for Six Sigma and some different things towards the end. And it was a lot of fun getting into all that. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 609 again. Gembapodcast.com look for episode 609. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show.

Kayla, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It is excellent. It is excellent. Ron, how you doing today?

I'm. I am well, thank you. I am well. We, we were, you know, we, we Have a certain day that we always release these podcasts and all that, but it's. It's a Friday when we're actually recording it for everybody. But. So, yeah. Almost ready for the weekend, right?

Yeah. Can't. Can't have a bad day on a Friday. Hard.

Exactly. Yeah. Except for everybody's listening to us on, like, a Wednesday. Like. Yeah, well, just. Problem is it's not Friday yet, so. Yeah. Where are you calling in from, Caleb?

So I'm calling in from the big old city of Springfield, Missouri.

Okay. All right. All right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's actually a small city, so some people might know that name, some might not. It's actually quite small.

Okay. How small? How many people?

Oh, you know, I wish I knew the number. But I will say this. You would not expect to have companies that serve international markets here. But we have them. But you would not expect it with.

So here's how you can tell how big a place is. How many McDonald's do you have?

Oh, well, it's. It's the Midwest, so we have too many.

Okay. Okay. And you don't have any. Do you have Chick Fil A?

We got Chick Fil A. We got the Whataburger. No. In and out, though. We don't have any of the West Coast.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay. Well, sometimes Chickfila didn't go all the way, know. So. You never. So.

Oh, yeah, you guys are in Texas.

Yeah, we're in.

Yeah. Everything's bigger, right?

I suppose. Right. Some people would say egos as well, but, you know, I don't know. I'm from Ohio originally. I've been in Texas a long time, but I'm still a Midwestern boy by heart as well, so. All right. Well, Caleb, you know how we like to begin all of our episodes with a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, well, one that really sticks out to me is whenever mistakes occur, two thirds to three fourths of the responsibility rests with the management. And that's by Karu Ishikawa.

What's that mean to you?

Well, what I've seen in some businesses and industries is whenever a mistake occurs, sometimes depending on the management, the first instinct is to blame the operator. You know, not. Not a lot of asking why or how.

But let's, you know, try and blame someone. When in reality, I find that a lot of the issues occur when there has not been proper training, maybe not proper work instructions available to the operators. And I think that's where it actually really comes from when there is a mistake occurring on the assembly line.

I would say for the massive majority.

For sure, for sure. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Caleb. Tell us about your background and maybe how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, I would love to. So I graduated college from the Missouri University of Science and technology in 2017. And at the time of graduation, I had already achieved my green belt through Iise and had done a co op for eight months doing basically kanban for upwards of 100 assembly lines. Oh, wow. During that time. And so by the time I graduated, I headed out west and joined with a, a company out there and I for the first time experienced a company that said they wanted to improve but that never implemented any of the suggestions.

So that was, that was kind of the start to my real world continuous improvement journey. And then several years ago I came back here to Missouri and found the company I'm currently at. And there they love continuous improvement. They are very encouraging of it. They like the suggestions, they try to implement them as much as possible as long as the budget can handle it. And I mean, they've been very supportive in me continuing to grow towards master black belt, which I gotta say, been loving the programs with Gemba Academy. And just today, just a few hours ago, I did receive my master black.

Did you really? Oh, I did. Congratulations.

Thank you.

That's a huge achievement. Because it's not easy. It's not get rich quick around here. There's some places where no, it is not at night Kim Academy.

So, yeah, you know, and I don't, I don't want to take up too much of our time telling you how great it is, but I do love your guys's program in that you have restrictions. It requires a certain amount of time in the continuous improvement field to actually go towards that master black belt.

Yeah.

And it takes real world projects and you know, that is, that is something that you guys offer, I feel like at a, at a wonderful price point compared to, you know, ASQ is, is also great. But you guys have pretty much the same requirements to get to that level of black belt and master black belt. So your guys's program can't say it enough. Great program.

Congratulations, man. Well done. That's a, that's a huge career accomplishment, man. So here's a, here's a challenge though. Don't stop. I mean, it's not even about more certifications or anything, but just don't ever stop learning and growing and, you know, because entropy will set in. Right.

Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. You know, and that's. That's something too. You know, you get a lot of engineers. A lot of engineers can do the math, they can do the studying. But what I really loved about what you guys have done with yours is, like, what we're doing right here today, talking about the knowledge we have learned, talking about the knowledge we have gained, trying to share that with other people. And I think that is something that maybe a lot of engineers aren't the most comfortable with. Striking up a conversation and going on at length. So this. Fantastic. Glad to be able to do this with you today.

Well done. Awesome. All right, well, so let's jump in. I'm wondering, maybe just talk about where you're currently at in. I don't know, let's open up with, like, what are some of the continuous improvement activities or projects or things that you guys got going on?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I will say, when I first started at this company several years ago, I was the new guy on the manufacturing engineering division. And I think some people may understand this. When you're the new guy, you get handed the worst stuff. Everyone else kind of gets first pick once in a while. So when I first stepped in to this company, there was a group of machines that everybody hated to work on. Everybody breaking down constantly, putting out bad parts, taking a whole bunch of engineering man hours and tooling to get things back up and running, happening all the time. So that. That, for me, was my first step at this company, to show them how beneficial continuous improvement could be even on a small scale, such as these machines. We got people working on bigger projects all the. All the time. But these machines had been forgotten about for quite a while. And when I came in, the first thing I did was say, okay, we know these machines are bad. Let's start recording this. Let's figure out how many hours, how many dollars in tooling are we spending over here in this little corner with just six machines?

And in the end, what ended up happening was we finally had some data gathered, months of data. Showed it to my boss. He said, oh, I like where this is going. Got the other engineers involved. They started recording data on these machines. Finally, we had months worth of data we looked at, and we said, wow, every year in manpower and tooling, we're putting in over $100,000 to keep these machines running.

And, you know, I think one of the great things that Lean Six Sigma kind of teaches us, maybe people don't use it enough, is, you know, if you're having a problem, it doesn't have to just be your problem. Talk to your material suppliers, talk to your machine suppliers, go outside the company and say, you know, we're having these problems. We'd like to improve. Can you, can you offer any assistance? And so when we saw those numbers, we did exactly that. We went to the people who make the parts that go into this machine for assembly. They looked over every single bit of them. And they're steel workers, so they really knew the metals that we were dealing with when it came to this machine. And they came up with a design so good for us that now these machines hardly break down. And while the cost of manpower has been put towards something else, we were seeing a savings of over 40 to $50,000 a year.

Wow.

From fixing these machines. So that was one of the journeys and just one of the many projects we have going on at our facility.

And that, you know, again, that was the start of my stuff there. And more recently, I actually moved into a design engineering role. Not on the work floor as much anymore, but got pulled into a bigger project at the beginning of this year. Our on time delivery was not doing great in one of our departments, you.

Know, having delivery customer or like an internal on time delivery, like.

You know, I guess you could call it both. We look at it from the customer.

Right, okay.

But we were able to pinpoint that it was stemming from this one area of our facility.

Customer was being impacted.

Oh, definitely. Okay. Definitely impacted. And you know, I don't want to give too many. Too many numbers, but at our worst, we had around $800,000 in lates going out, which is a big number to me. I don't know about you, but to me that's. Yeah, that's a pretty big number. Way bigger than my paycheck.

Right, Right.

Yeah. So with that, several of us got pulled into that and, you know, this, this kind of leads into some stuff maybe we can continue to talk about after this question. But we see this number on a board. Maybe it's on time delivery, maybe it's scrap. You know, could be any kind of number. There's, you know, a lot of companies have a Gemba meeting every morning, a Gemba walk. And they point to these numbers and they say, this number bad. But then there's no follow up as to why is this happening? Why is this? Why is this bad? What is doing this?

And so that became our project is whenever we would ask the five whys around this bad number, nobody knew the answer. And we had to find the data. We had to find a better way to interpret and understand what was going on on our assembly floor. And in the end.

It'S taken a long time to convince them. But coming up in 2026, overall equipment effectiveness.

During our project, we proved that out that this was a number that actually told us what was going on with our machines, with our capacity and improving, that people really listened to us. And now it's on the docket for 2026. Not only are we rolling it out in our Springfield plant, but internationally we have facilities in France and Singapore. And this has been on everybody's mind.

So I'm curious, are you using, like, you don't need to name names or anything, but like, like software to help you do it? Like I, I, one of my past lives, I remember the operators were able to like we would call it, tag their downtime. They had like a little monitor by all their machines. And so anytime the machine wasn't running, they would tag. Why? Oh, I'm doing a changeover or there's a broken part or whatever it was. And then in the end, the software would sort of calculate the OEE for you, whether it was, you know, availability, performance, quality, all the, all the things were being basically accounted for. Is that how you're going to do it? But I've also seen it where we've got a piece of paper and we're writing things down, you know, old school.

So people, I mean, people got to remember the power that a piece of paper and a pencil can have. Doesn't take fancy software to do a lot of these things. Right. That's a, that's a very powerful tool. Well, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be real with you, Ron. And I'm, I'm embarrassed about this. And I shocked my CEO with this.

We've never tracked downtime on these machines.

And you know, I, I think that is a manufacturing standard at this point. We're in 2025.

And my, our CEO thought it was a standard as well. And so that was a big thing for us is.

We did, we gave them to start improve this project. I, myself and one other engineer, we went out there every day with a piece of paper and recorded what was going on on those machines. And in the end.

Some people were a little fearful that a piece of paper was going to take too much time away from their operators doing the work. And we provided another solution. We created basically a Google form that they could easily say, what machine, how long was it down, when did it go back up, all the details, QR code, right on the machine, you know, they could use their phone and you know, if I, if I get the budget, I will gladly supply them with a tablet or some other digital device. But it doesn't take thousands of dollars.

Yeah.

You know, to, to start making things happen.

So talk a little bit about that change management journey because it sounds like there was a lot of change management that needed to happen. A lot of resistance and from, and you know, a lot of times giving people, you know, the benefit of the doubt. We like, oh, they're just being resistant but there's a reason, you know, they're feeling pressure of some sort or they're just not educated on what it is that we're trying to do and how it'll help them in the end. But like how did you navigate that, that change management process?

It was, I'll be honest Ron, it was very difficult.

You know, you have, you have department heads who think, oh let's just, let's just throw more people at it, let's hire more people. This is all around on time delivery. So they're saying, well we need more people, we have more people, we can go to this capacity and we can continue to push stuff through. No data to back that. We then have. On the other hand, we have some upper level management saying, oh, let's just throw money at new machines. You know, there is a little bit more data on that one. You know, we do have some new machines that really, really rock compared to our 50 year old machines. But also too, there is no data as to why the older machines aren't performing as they used to. And you're right, talking to people and helping teach them how we could better find out what is going on is so important to, I think what we do as people trying to continuously improve a business.

You know, I got to say too, yeah, we had a lot of resistance on this. It took months to track down this data and put things in place to gather it and you know, you know, maybe, maybe it gets looked over a little bit. But respect within the workforce, respect within the office, being cordial with people, that can get you a good rapport going with somebody. And in this case we thankfully had several higher up people going to bat for us saying no, we've been fighting for this data. We've been trying to figure out what's going on. This project must continue through completion.

So I'd say all of those things when it comes to change management are important. You know, I hate to say it but if you're not liked, it's going to make Things really difficult for you when trying to present something, even if it is something that would make someone's life so much better or make their job so much easier. You know, if, if people already have this idea of who you are in their head, oh, they're just, they're the person trying to automate everything and fire everybody.

That's, that's a bad feeling when people feel that way about someone trying to improve things. And I, you know, I, I think, I think in the more recent years, I think people on Lean Six Sigma have come to understand that, that they, they can't approach it that way.

I, I think that's a more common thing these days. I read, I read old texts by people who worked at Toyota in the very beginning and everything else. And you know, I gotta say, there is a lot in some of their writings that say, oh, it's not really improving the business unless you are getting rid of people.

In some of those older texts, again, these are old stuff from the beginning of Toyota and in Japan, where some of this all started. And I think that concept has hopefully faded a little bit more. I think the importance of people is a little more modern compared to some of those older texts.

Yeah. So it sounds like even though you're so obviously a design engineer, but it sounds like you're out at the Gemba quite a bit and still practicing your Lena Six Sigma. Are there other ways that you're using your new skills in your work?

Yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah. I don't think I could ever leave the assembly, leave the Gemba. I don't, I don't. You know, I, I've been doing this for long enough now. That's probably where I feel the most comfortable. Okay.

Definitely, definitely. And as part of design, I'm still very much responsible for the, the, the end product that goes out to the customer. So now instead of just looking at it from the assembly line portion, from the production portion, I'm looking at it all the way from design through production. Because in the end, now I am the one who signs off. These look good and quality is up to our standards and they can go to a customer. So that is where I'm at now. And it is a little bit of a change up. Going from.

Rules all over the place. That is probably one of the best things out there. And more recently, I've been studying more. The DMAD V. Yeah, the. Yes, you already know what I'm talking about.

Yep. Yeah, no, that's right up your alley and on the design side. Yeah. So, like, you can get into like Monte Carlo simulation and all this kind of stuff. Have you played with any of that?

I haven't had a chance. You know, in truth, I'm still only, still only eight months fresh into the design engineering position. But you know, looking through, through, through DMAD V and the processes in design for Six Sigma, I mean I'm, there's, there's a lot of similarity from the dmaic.

Oh yeah, totally, totally. Yeah. I mean like one of the, it's been a while since I've, I've dabbled in that framework, but I used to do a lot of it back in my sort of my corporate days when I was back in industry. And the coolest thing about design for Six Sigma is you can create what they call a transfer function. So you basically make a. Yeah, you know, Y equals F of X. Right. Like we, we know that from dmaic, right? Y is a function of X. Well, you can actually determine what is the, the equation for the process or the thing that you're working on. And you know, and it's, you know, there could be quite a bit to it. Right. But once you have this, what they call that, the transfer function, you can plug that into software and then you can basically run a million parts by clicking a button and then it'll basically predict through this so called Monte Carlo simulation, like what, you know, how many, what your parts per million will be and how many defects you'll have and so forth. And I mean it's all software driven, so it's still take it for the grain of salt because if your transfer function is not good, then the result's not going to be good. Right?

That's a good one. Yes.

But it's a very powerful framework. And especially in the design side, when you're looking at, hey, should we make the part dimension this big or this big? You know, design engineers will be able to use things like design for Six Sigma and, and, and these transfer functions to sort of predict, well, if we go there, we're going to have this many defects and if we go with this, we're going to have this many defects. And so you sort of trade off and it might be okay. It's like, yeah, but to do that it's going to be a million bucks and we'll deal with the $50,000 of defects instead of spending a million bucks. Right. You know, so it's, it's a fascinating world, right, to really get in and, and you're sh. Of your, of your business, you know, on that, on that Design for Six Sigma side. So it's, it's a really exciting place to be and, and to, to practice all this continuous improvement because you're at the tip of the spear, as they say.

Yes, yes, I would agree, I would agree. And you know, this is, this, I'm glad you're bringing this stuff up because this is something that I need to delve more into and bring to our design department. Yeah, that.

Man, that's, I mean, that's cool. That's cool, Ron. So I, I, I gotta, I gotta figure that out.

I gotta make sure that we're implementing this and we'll figure it out together. I'll show you, I'll help you. But, but anyhow, no, that's, that's awesome stuff. So what are, I don't know. What's kind of your next step for, for you, Caleb? I mean, got to smash your black belt now. So, and we talked about keep learning, but do you have any ideas of what you want to do to sort of keep the, keep the, you know, the, what they call this, the saw sharp or whatever you want?

Yes, definitely, definitely, definitely do. So as I was saying earlier in our discussion, you know, some of one of the coolest things that you guys have done is push me out of my comfort zone to start sharing my knowledge more and more. And that is a big one for me. I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, so it's never ready to share with the world, but you guys have kind of forced me out of that. And that's something I very much appreciate. And that's kind of the next goal is to start sharing this knowledge not only with my co workers and people I see on a daily basis in the manufacturing facility, but even online, getting out there and talking with more people. Your, your co worker there, John Knotts, he is constantly interacting with people out there and, and it's great. You know, I get those notifications and I go, oh, I wonder what John's checking out today. And you know, most of the time I learn something new and fascinating through, through him. And so maybe I could do something like that for other people as well. That, that would be the, that would be the big one. The other one being is again, you know, we talked about it a little bit earlier as well. Your guys's program, I think, sets people up to keep going, to keep growing. I, I think there's a little bit of a. What would be the word?

I don't know the word, but I can tell you it seems like a lot of people in the Six Sigma world, the lean Six Sigma world, love to collect certifications.

And with your guys's being as rigid and powerful as it is with the projects and the learning and everything else involved.

I personally would like to try for some international certifications. I would like to take this show on the road. Ron.

Nice. I love it. I love it. Well, you should, man. Yeah. Keep learning, keep growing.

And yeah, as you sort of alluded to, don't let perfection get in the way of progress.

Super important. Experiment your way forward. Right. That's what I always try to practice myself is just like when you hit that threshold of knowledge, we don't know what to do. Run an experiment, you know, make a prediction, run an experiment. Scientific thinking. Right. And that's what we're trying to do as, as. As Lean and Six Sigma practitioners. So if you do that, really, you can't. You can't lose. So.

No. And, you know, even with continuous improvement, I think. I think that is something we. We have to do on a regular basis is, you know, you can. You can build up a plan and continue to keep building it, aiming for that perfection. You know, you want this machine or this process to be absolutely perfect, but those little increments, those little improvements build up, you know, just. You just got to start sometimes.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's always. That's a great question. What's the most important s in start, you know, definitely.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. You know, yeah, of course, mistakes. Mistakes happen, but that's. I mean, that's our job, is we catch mistakes and we continue to learn.

Yeah.

All day.

Shout out to my buddy, Mark Graben. He's got a little podcast he does, and it's a short little one he does. It's called My Favorite Mistake, and I love it. It is such a beautiful framework, you know, to talk about your mistakes and. And which one was your favorite and what you learned from it. So. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, you gotta learn from them.

Yeah.

And there's no greater teacher than out there on the job, in the gemba.

Out in the wild.

You'll learn. You'll learn quick.

Oh, yeah. Good stuff. Hey, Caleb, if people wanted to connect with you, what's the. What's the best way? LinkedIn, something like that.

You know, LinkedIn's the best one. Eventually we'll probably be sharing on Instagram, but if people want to check me out on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I plan on putting more out there. That is Caleb C A L E B. And we already talked about it earlier. My last name Is Willzinski. W, I, L, C Z Y, N S K I I'd be happy to connect with everyone all over the world. Yeah, you know, that's, that's my, I mean that's my end goal is again to get out there internationally and pursue continuous improvement. I want to know how they do it in China, I want to know how they do it in the Netherlands. You know, I visited Japan once and man, talk about efficiency. They really got things down. Those trains arrive on time every minute.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, so. So I want to hear from people around the world as well. I want to know their experience.

Yes, right.

What is, what does continuous improvement look like in your country? Country.

Love it. Good stuff. All right, man. Well, hey, again, congratulations on your MBB and appreciate your, your time today and yeah, have a great one.

Hey, you as well. Have a great weekend, Ron. And well hope your listeners have a great day as well. Whatever day.

Great. Wednesday.

Yeah, exactly.

Or Thursday. I should know what day these come out. Wednesday or Thursday?

Thursday.

I want to do that.

All right, this has been wonderful, Ron, and I'll continue to keep up with you guys as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for having me.

Take care.

You too, Ron.

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