Driving Success with ELDOR Automotive Powertrain

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for our customer interview webinar. Today we are welcoming Jacob King, the organization and Development supervisor at Eldor Automotive Powertrain. He will be sharing his insights into achieving operational excellence. Interviewing Jacob will be Ted Jackson, one of clearpoint Strategy's two founders. The audience will be muted for the duration of this webinar, but we encourage you to submit any questions into the Q and A tab. Go ahead and take it away, Ted.

Thanks, Jenna, and thanks Jacob. Thanks for joining us. Please tell us a little bit more about Eldor and about your role there.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. So Eldor is a global automotive parts manufacturer. We have plants that are located in Brazil, Turkey, Italy, China, and currently in Belvo, USA as well. And one of the things we do is we manufacture ignition. Absurd amount of time for us to actually create what we need to see, which we would then review, you know, within 30 minutes to an hour on a weekly basis. So coming into Eldor, I had previously worked for Korean Clinic that actually also used clearpoint itself, and that is kind of what introduced me to the software. And it was what kind of led into the arrangement that we have now to begin using clearpoint.

And was it an easy internal sale? Was there resistance? How did you push to clean up the Excel and PowerPoint mess?

So Eldor itself is a pretty budget oriented around a lot of their processes that they do, especially being in the automotive world. So with the automotive industry, you could lose a million dollars a day of downtime. And with that, you know, every dollar that is spent is something that has to go to effect and, you know, possibly save $2 somewhere else. So looking into Clearpoint, one of the things that we conducted was a time study. And for that I went around and talked to each department and interviewed every individual that had some type of hand in the bucket, that were manipulating the KPIs in some sort and collected the time that they spent on a weekly or monthly basis to see how it was affecting each department with all the individuals within it, combined everything and then understood that, you know, once our workflow is going to affect the day to day results. So one of the things that is also concluded in OSD is reporting for KPIs. And we use KPIs for a multitude of different areas in the organization such as hr. We have some in ehs, which is our environment, Health and Safety, the Plastics Department, assembly and Quality.

Okay, excellent. And how were you doing reporting before clearpoint and what made you all decide to upgrade?

So previously we were actually using PowerPoint and Excel, and you could almost say a multitude of other different software programs to just kind of collect the data that we had and throw it all together. It was almost a mosh posh of just numbers and images coming in. And we were using that to try to display in a visually appealing method. But a lot of the times it was kind of, like I mentioned, thrown together, and it took an absurd amount of time for us to actually create what we needed to see, which we would then review, you know, within 30 minutes to an hour on a weekly basis. So coming into Eldor, I had previously worked for Korean Clinic that actually also used clearpoint itself. And that is kind of what introduced me to the software. And it was what kind of led into the arrangement that we have now to begin using clearpoint.

And was it an easy internal sale? Was there resistance? How did you, how did you push to, to clean up the Excel and PowerPoint mess?

So Eldor itself is a pretty budget oriented around a lot of their processes that they do, especially being in the automotive world. So with the automotive industry, you could lose a million dollars a day of downtime. And with that, you know, every dollar that is spent is something that has to go to effect and, you know, possibly save $2 somewhere else. So looking into Clearpoint, one of the things that we conducted was a time study. And for that I went around and talked to each department and interviewed every individual that had some type of hand in the bucket that were manipulating the KPIs in some sort and collected the time that they spent on a weekly or monthly basis to see how it was affecting each department with all the individuals within it, combined everything, and then understood that, you know, once you added every department together, we were spending probably $120,000 a year in just labor time. And once we concluded that that was the amount that we had total, just the time spent, aside from actually having the reports themselves, we then monitored what it would be for to use clearpoint. And we came up with the conclusion that we were going to be saving over 80% of that time, which came to around, you could say, 15, $20,000 at that point at a yearly rate. And one of the things, you know, we're saving 80% of the cost from that, but while you're saving $100,000 here, that $100,000 can then get it to somewhere else in the pot. So as I mentioned, with downtime, that $100,000 can be something that is implemented into another spot on the line that could then save us that reduction in Time. So if we had, let's say an event that came up that we seen it was going to cost $15,000 or you would have to put that machine down for and allotted amount of time. We could then allocate that $15,000 from the pot that we have now saved and then reduce the downtime that we had again which, you know, depending on the effect, the downtime would have can be an exponential factor. So aside from the actual $100,000 that was saved, you're then looking at a number that can't be stated.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It sounds like there's a, a multiplier effect.

Right? Is absolutely.

As you reinvest that money, that savings and you know you can stop the plant from going down for a couple of days. You've saved a couple of million dollars.

Oh absolutely. I mean the, the 80% reduction alone, you know, is a, is a seller selling point at itself. But for the actual future issues that could arise from it.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. So tell me a little bit about how like you mentioned a little bit you had kind of clearpoint running in different departments. Like is it, is it everywhere? Like how do you have clearpoint organized?

So for the main portion of clearpoint that we have, all of our reporting is on the individual departments. We do start with the plan scorecard which is what we consider the parent. The plant then is fed by 2, 3 children scorecard which are the culture, which is mainly concluded of the HR department. We have the plant, I mean the assembly department and plastics department which we within Eldorad split. So within plastics and assembly you have quality finance, production efficiency itself which is again plastics and assembly at that point logistics. In our EHS department.

That's great. It sounds like, I mean in our, in a lot of the for profit organizations we work with, you see, you know, the line units running and then support services. That sounds pretty similar. But one of the things you had also mentioned early on is that you report weekly. Is that weekly in assembly and plastics or weekly kind of everywhere. How do you, how do you do this weekly reporting?

So it is cumbersome as you mentioned, because within Automotive there are countless data sets that we're pulling, but we do report most of everything on a weekly basis. And that is in a nutshell where you. We're just reporting assembly and plastics on a weekly basis. Which those are the ones that are consistent mostly of all the departments that were mentioned earlier. And for those, you know, we do have some that also have monthly Reporting. So finance, for example, we have on a monthly basis, which is falls under the plan scorecard. The culture is reported on a monthly basis as well. But we also have some of those specific KPIs that are pulled out on a weekly basis. So we have you could say labor time or overtime rate from HR for the assembly department and plastics department.

Gotcha. So it sounds weekly, sounds like an operations scorecard. How do you like, is it called a strategy system or an operation system? How do you talk about it internally at Eldor?

So we do use it as operational and strategy since it is, you know, we're looking at data by the hour. And while we're doing that, you know, that's while we see all the KPIs and how they're being shown at the moment, whether they're within tolerance, within target or out of tolerance, that then leads to a more strategy objective. So if we see that a KPI is, let's say within tolerance or out of tolerance, then that's going to lead to us becoming to start to analyze that KPI and give recommended path forwards to how we can actually reduce or raise the number depending on the KPI.

Gotcha. And in, in a weekly world, you know, we think about our current clients saying, okay, if we have monthly or quarterly reporting, we take two weeks to do a reporting workflow and then a week to review the data and then have a meeting. The meeting might be two or three weeks later. How do your meetings work? Like, how do you tell me about how the cadence works? Getting data. If you do write up any kind of analysis when, like how does it happen over the course of the week?

Absolutely. So since it is on a weekly basis, our weeks run Monday to Friday, but we do our reporting on Wednesday and Thursday. We have our plastics department reporting on Wednesday and our assembly department reporting on Thursday. But considering that we need the previous week's data, we have to be done completely set Friday and then we don't begin start. We don't begin our reporting until Monday morning of the following week, which is the week that we report on the previous week. But in some cases we do have some specific users that have to wait for other individuals to input their data prior to actually finishing their KPI. And aside from that, you know, well, to that point it could take them up till Tuesday or even the day of reporting for it to be concluded and actually generating a report. But we do have specific cases, such as our quality department to where we are using certain pieces of machinery such as, or software that we use Smart Factory, which pulls a lot of our machine data for us and generates a Excel file. Now, while that does collect all of our machine pieces that are seen quality defects, we do have actual operators to go through and detect visual errors themselves. So even though we do have a lot of that reporting, let's say the end of day, by Friday, we still have to give the operators time themselves to actually then once they collect the data from the machines, to then add their visual data into the numbers themselves.

So you end up. That's what I was going to say is it sounded like you were about to say it's automated all of the data coming out of Smart Factory. But then kind of, I heard you say there are manual adjustments made by people that are working on the line either, you know, adjusting the numbers, is it up or down? Like how does that, how do you, how do you make sure someone makes a real adjustment and not just an adjustment to, to make their, their numbers look better?

So yeah, a lot of the machines are automated. Further reporting, which does make it nice. But again, to that extent there are also going to be adjustments that are made on the machine side and the user side. So we normally have multiple sets of operators that go through the visual data that is collected and then we have certain supervisors that go through and also review the data prior to it being entered. So a lot with that is once we do have visual scrap, let's say they take the visual scrap and they set it aside because that actually has to be separated according to what type of scrap is and they are then counted in the mets kind of also another way that we go about adjusting our strategy towards the line or for scrap rate. But with that we can also have certain supplier quality defects which would then go into an adjustment on the actual data itself. But for specific certain circumstances we have what is called a. Let me pull it up here real quick. We have a change request form and what that does is it allows us to put in something for, let's say if what wasn't our issue itself, it was an issue that came from a supplier. We're not going to specifically count that towards our KPI if it was, if it was something that was out of our hands. So a lot of things, they normally go through two to three different sets of individuals prior to it actually being validated and sorted to clearpoint.

Excellent. Can you show us how this works?

Yeah, absolutely.

That you can share within clearpoint.

So the first one that I can show is our EHS department and our ehs as mentioned, is our environment Health and safety. And one of the things interesting about Eldor is that I know a lot of people are familiar with 5S. Eldor has actually implemented 7S is what we call it. And it's just an extension obviously of the same thing, but just to a different standard. Eldor is probably one of the cleanest facilities you will ever see. If you absolutely wanted to, you could probably eat off the floor, but I don't recommend it. But it's something that could be done. There is no speck of dust on any machine, under the machine, within any spot of the plant. So we do measure our 7s is what we consider it under clear point. And we have this set up to be on a weekly basis as well. But we have what we consider major non conformities, medium and minor. Now these aren't set by any audit regulatory systems or anything, but these are what are set by elboard standards that we have. And that's how these measurements are taken. And a lot of the times for the 7s, we have an audit that is completed the previous week and it is done by one of our EHS specialists. They'll go through and they'll audit the plastic side and the plant side and find anything that may be out of place. So for example, an example of a minor non conformity could be that you did not put a tool back in the correct placement and a toolbox. That's kind of the level that El Gore will get into with other manufacturing. But what we'll do is we'll combine our minors, our mediums and our majors into one set. So we have the minor set up as a 0.25, the medium setup is a 0.5, and a major setup as one. And within a week, depending on how many nonconformities are found for that specific part of the plant, they combine them together to give you an overall score or actual in this case. So, for example, this week was not a hot week to see. The previous week you could see we did have three minor nonconformities that totaled to 0.75, which put us within our tolerance and target. So our target was set at 2 and our tolerance was at 3. And now it does have a varying score. So depending on, you know, how your 7s does, it will be a sliding scale. So for this week example, week 29 was way out of target and out of tolerance. So there was a score of zero, which as the previous week we got the full score of 10. And you could say for May of 20, 24 of an actual of 3 which put us right at the bare limit of our tolerance, which gave us a score of 4. And with that we usually keep our reporting on a. At least for the weekly reports we have that at a five period scale. So you'll see the previous four weeks, including the month within this. So we start at week 26 since given that June. Well, well the following period that we're in June follows week 26 and then 2728 in the current week that we're in for July. And then we usually will show our monthly averages or sums depending on the KPI below. And within our dashboards of every KPI we kind of show the initiatives that it's affecting. So it does affect the safety, which is our overall safety for the plant and the assembly safety. We have the target owners. We will have an analysis which isn't complete for this week because this is the week that we're reporting on. So this will be done normally by today or tomorrow. But once they conclude their audit, for example for ehs, the EHS specialist will come in and put in an analysis for that week and then we'll have a recommended plan of action or path forwards moving forward to better prevent these same circumstances from happening the following week. And then again, just for basic knowledge of the actual KPI and every one of them, we have the calculation which for this one is fairly simple. It's just a sum of the non conformities found and then the unit that everything is measured in.

Yeah, this is great. This shows, I like the way you, you combine some weekly and monthly reporting in there because even though you kind of scroll through some of the charts you saw your non conformities were really trending down month over month, you know, from April kind of down. And then you have this one blip. It'll be interesting to see what the analysis is in the next day or so before you do your reporting. Now do you have to do like, do individuals have to do analysis for all, all measures or do you have rules? It just seems like there's still a lot of moving parts in weekly reporting.

We do have it recommended while we prefer to have anything that is out of target to have an analysis. So whether it's just within tolerance and out of target, they're still supposed to be putting in a recommendation. And then the same obviously is expected for being out of tolerance completely. So it's. If it is in green, then we want to see why.

Gotcha. Okay. You talked about maybe showing something else or was this going to be the main one?

This was the main one within EHS. I mean we do have multiple KPIs within our EHS part. So for example, as mentioned as we have, the plant itself does have the plant general safety. But both of these being plastics and assembly, these are total to affect the plant safety itself. And that's kind of how I mentioned earlier how the plant is the major parent card and the assembly and plastics are the children. The children themselves, I guess you would then say have grandchildren to the actual parent of the plant. So if you can see on this, Eldor is the main parent and then the three that follow and then every department within it is what feeds the individual three which lead to the first.

And so would it be common for individuals to be just kind of reporting in one particular department or would someone own some pieces in logistics and facilities and plastics? Like do a lot of the individuals just look into one department or do they have access to see how what they're doing impacts the rest of the plant?

So it does, that does vary department to department and by individual base. So currently our EHS manager is our facilities manager. So for example, Joseph Ray does actually have every site of the facilities department itself. But when you get into logistics, we do have some functions that were quality is affecting some of the numbers that they are seeing. So we do have some users that are inputting some data into other departments. Usually two at the same time is because it's the same report in a lot of cases. So you know that one specific report may have 20 different data numbers that we do need to put into clearpoint. But instead of having 20 different people do it, if you have one individual person that knows specifically where all those numbers go, they are then allotted to recommended path to go ahead and input the numbers for everybody.

And so, so when we think about the, the weekly reporting versus monthly reporting, do your weeks add into months and like do you have a leadership team getting together on a monthly basis or do they all. Is everybody kind of all in on weekly? How do you, how do you think about these pieces?

So we in just about every KPI that we have, they all do if they are reported on a weekly basis, they all depending on the KPI, some average copy and paste so forth to every single month. And then the same formula would follow in for the yearly as for the weekly. We report like most things during the weekly basis, but we do have that which is Tuesday, I mean Wednesday, Thursday. And then we will have a monthly report on the 15th of every month. The weekly reports are usually a combination of all the specific supervisors or People who do input the data for clearpoint and then the plan scorecard itself which is on the 15th of the month is usually plant wide and is reported to everybody to see the outcomes of the entirety of the plant and what we can do to actually move together as one.

Excellent. So it sounds like it's been been pretty of a leadership team getting together on a monthly basis or do they all. Is everybody successful for you? I like the smiley faces and frowny faces.

That was something that we actually specifically requested by for clearpoint to have for.

Us and they kind of all in on weekly.

How do you.

How do you think about these pieces?

So we and just about every KPI that we have, they all do if they are reported on a weekly basis. They all depending on the KPI some average copy and paste so forth to every single month. And then the same formula would follow in for the yearly as for the weekly. Thankfully made it o something that was used on our previous KPI reporting and they just wanted to keep it. The very elder is very specific about their reporting.

I like it.

I like it.

So what is like when you're. You're looking across Eldor, what's. What's kind of next on the horizon for reporting?

So currently since the US Plant Belleville was the first one to implement clearpoint, we plan on moving it forwards and actually rolling it out to Brazil and Turkey possibly in the near future. So we are doing a lot of R and D but we're at the moment for other components that we're looking into. But the plan moving forwards with clearpoint is to first implement it into Brazil and Turkey. Brazil being first because it is a smaller plant. And then depending on how the rollout process goes for that we'll tweak a few things to see how we can adjust it to make it easier for the next plant and then go. We report like most things during the weekly basis, but we do have that which is Tuesday, I mean Wednesday, Thursday. And then we will have a monthly report on the 15th of every month. The weekly reports are usually a combination of all the specific supervisors or people who do input the data for clearpoint and then the plant score global.

Well, hopefully you get a few trips to Brazil out of this. What about within your. Within the d' Alville plant? Any, any adjustments that you're. You're making there in the future.

So Ricard itself which is on the 15th of the month is usually plant wide and is reported to everybody to see. Currently Eldora is growing. We do plan on adding a few More lines to our assembly plan. We currently have L402 is what we call it, which is now being completely ran in a process automation standpoint. So we're getting, we're in the process now implementing that into our KPIs and then eventually the plan is built to sustain what we call L403 and L404. So once those lines are fully assembled and running to full speed, we will then implement that also into clearpoint. So every plant is going to have the potential to grow within once it even has clearpoint. So for us we have almost two lines within clearpoint which can go up to four. And then other plants will have, you know, more or less depending on the size.

Gotcha. I know you had talked to me last week about how you are thinking about doing some communications like even putting some dashboards up inside the plant so to make the data even more transparent.

Oh absolutely. So it'll be the outcomes of the entirety of the plant and what we can do to actually move together as one.

Excellent. So it sounds like it's been been pretty successful for you. I like the smiley faces and frowny faces.

Something that we've been asking for for a while and Eldor has finally agreed to getting well actually TVs and putting it on both the plastics and assembly side to where we can. Then we have to work out the way we're going to do it still. But we're going to be having it to where it shows our KPI data on an hourly basis basically around the whole plan. So you could just walk by the wall what we consider it the wall and see the KPIs themselves and what needs to. That was something that we actually specifically requested by for clearpoint to have for us and they thankfully made it something that was used on our previous KPI reporting and I just wanted to keep it happen.

Yeah, it sounds great. I mean it would be really, really interesting to be able to see your, you know, your clearpoint charts kind of up on the wall and see, see how you're doing and how you're able to. To push your non conformities down. Make sure, you know, give you the extra incentive to. To put that tool back where it belongs.

Absolutely. They'll be looking for the frowny faces especially.

Well Jacob, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it. It sounds like it sounds like to me. You know what I like about your story is the way you're like you talk about operations and strategy being just intricately the various.

Elder is very specific about the reporting. I like it.

You know, intertwined, let's say, is like you, you have to be able to see that operations data to make those strategic decisions on how you improve the line, so to speak.

Absolutely, I like it.

So what is like when you're, you're looking across Eldor, what's kind of next on the horizon for reporting?

So currently, since the US Plant Daleville was the first one to implement clearpoint, we plan on, I mean it makes every second counts within the automotive world. So if you can see it right then and there to make an adjustment moving forward that's going to affect the rest of the day. You know, that alone can save you thousands of dollars. Right. So clearpoint has been a great tool to implement at Eldor. I'm ready for it to, you know, be seen on the TVs and actually move out to the other plants to where we can all be intertwined at that point as well. Recording schedules.

Excellent. Well, we look forward to being there along the way.

Thank you again on moving it forward and actually rolling it out to Brazil and Turkey possibly in the near future.

And for your time today and thanks for sharing this story.

Yeah. Thank you, Ted.