Episode 5: Norman Goco

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Welcome to Factory Ops Exchange, co hosted with the US center for Advanced Manufacturing, where we shine a light on the people powering the world's best operations. Lauren I'm Lauren Dunford, CEO of Guidewheel and thrilled to announce today's guest, Norman Goko, an incredible operations leader at ATI Materials. He brings nearly four decades of experience in aerospace, including Honeywell, Raytheon and now ati, and is known not just for delivering results, but for the team culture and the empathy that he really excels in building. In this conversation, Norman shares how he sees leadership, especially as it relates to the plant floor, how to bring new tech to the plant floor in a way that sticks, and how to win over skeptics. Can't wait for you to hear it.

Hey everybody, I'm Lauren Dunford from Guide Wheel and I'm here on Factory Ops Exchange with a fantastic guest. Norman Goko, works at ATI Materials, leads an amazing culture of continuous improvement, and my team and I have had the honor to work together and just been so impressed with his thoughtfulness around this area and thought a lot of folks could probably learn from him. So, Norman, if you're willing, before we dive into the core conversation, which I'm sure will be a lot of fun, just to share a little bit of background about yourself and your passion for this topic.

Thank you, Lauren. Appreciate that. My name is Norman Goko. I work for ATI Forge Products here in Irvine, California, and I've had over 39, almost 40 years of experience in the aerospace business. I started working at a metallography lab and I did that for six years straight out of high school. From there I went to a fastener manufacturing company for 15 years and did all sorts of different positions, did lots of implementation, was project manager of a lot of different projects, and then from there I went to Honeywell for another 14 and a half years and I was numerous positions there, starting from a manufacturing engineer to a lean specialist to a value stream manager, which is synonymous to an operations leader. And then from that point on I went to the labs and actually managed their whole facility after Honeywell. Then I went to Raytheon and I worked there for a short period for three years and got more experience in that location until finally I'm here at ATI Forge Products in Irvine and I'm loving it, love it.

And what a set of just incredible logos and experiences and learning from such a variety in the operations.

Yeah, and I'd have to say that from each company that I've been at, I've really picked Up a lot of new things and a lot of met a lot of new people, was mentored by a lot of different experts. And I feel like that's part of my growth in the aerospace business.

From that mentoring and set of experiences, what has stood out to you as characteristics or examples of what a great leader in operations looks like from your perspective?

Okay, so I really feel that the individual needs to be able to listen. Listening is key. From that point on, the leader has to be able to make decisions and needs to be able to communicate properly. Those three things put together, I think really, really make a good leader.

Love it. Any tactics or tips or ways of listening, making decisions, communicating that you've seen over the years, Any examples of how you learn to do those things?

Yeah. So, you know, when people say listening, I think people always think they're just hearing, but it's really more than that. It's really observing. It's really even watching them in action and seeing how they interact with others. Right. So that you're able to understand their personality, how you could meld with them and how you communicate better.

Yeah. Love it. And I think one of the things that stood out about you as an exceptional leader that I've seen in the way that you interact with others is you really think about culture and have done an exceptional job creating an amazing culture in the org. How have you done it?

Well, number one, I think most companies, most people take it for granted that you're going to be able to make these changes. But what they don't realize is that there's this organizational piece that is mostly forgotten. And what I mean by that is being able to focus on the soft skills. Obviously, people communicate differently, so knowing the personality of each is key to being able to build that bridge so that you can have that trust amongst them. And I think once you build that trust, then they're more apt to listen, try, and if it doesn't work out, they'll share and collaborate. And that's really some of the key ingredients to pull from individuals so that you form that teaming type foundation.

Yeah. Any examples that come to mind of a situation where it was hard to build it? Trust. Build trust at first, but you got creative. Or of the ways you usually approach a new team environment and build that trust.

So just to give you a little bit of background of my experience here at ati, I've only been here for about a year, in a month. And of course I've had to acclimate myself with their processes, their procedures, along with the different leaders Both middle and upper and understand how they work and how they communicate. A good example that I have is one of the supervisors decided to make a change. And when he decided to make this change, he basically just did it without really speaking to anybody. And man, the feedback he received because of that route he took was very negative. A lot of the people felt like they weren't brought into the picture. They didn't know what was going on. They had thoughts that they wanted to share, but they felt like they were excluded. And so because of it, what I created was a 6M change log and M change management process. And what that is, is when I say M, it basically talks about man, machine, mother nature, measurement method, and it basically refers to anything that refers to those stems will, will become part of that change that needs to be discussed. If you don't start with that, then you're going to catch people off guard. And as it is, change is very, very difficult for most. And so if you don't kind of prep the foundation for that change, it's never going to be successful. So with this new change log, it's basically answering a couple questions, understanding why are we changing? What's the scope, what does success look like? If we don't do anything, then what's going to happen? Right. And so you kind of give the questions and answers and you communicate that to all so that they understand what the justifications are and the implications. And so by doing so and then actually logging it in the change log kind of makes it official. Right. And then so when people start to create that change that people understand, okay, this is not working, I'm going to recommend this. And they're more apt for that collaboration piece.

Yeah, completely. How is implementing the change log gone? How did you roll that out?

So I actually had to create standard work. And standard work basically steps you one by one on what needs to happen. And that part of the standard work is to actually answer those questions that I just discussed. And once that's done, then you basically communicate it to all. You get everybody's feedback, you might even tweak it a little bit so that you include other others input and then you proceed with the change. So I feel like it's working great. I feel like it's that missing piece that wasn't accounted for and now I think everybody appreciates it.

Yeah. Oh, great example. Love it. You also, I mean in, in your experience, you've been exposed to the best of the best of methods, tools, ways of doing things, metrics to track now that you're taking your experience and deciding what to use at this moment in time. Are there tools, processes, things where you're doubling down and have absorbed as really use? Are there metrics and tools that you used to. Used to use or used to track that you don't anymore? What has that evolution been? I know that's a little vague, but throwing you.

Yeah, no. Let me see if I can kind of put this together in an organized fashion. I think I'm going to have to give credit to Honeywell. Honeywell actually gave me a lot of the training that I needed, taking Six Sigma and Lean and combining those two in order to make me knowledgeable about the tools that are available.

The whole purpose, though, was to kind of break down the silos, right? Kind of figure out how do we take all the departments, all the business functions, and pulling together as one so that they're integrated, so that communication flows up and down so that.

Everybody'S coming together as a team, bottom line. But like the metrics that you talk about, in a lot of those companies, we always start with safety, and we call it sqdep, Right? Safety, quality, delivery, inventory and productivity. And on a daily basis, we would go over every single one of those metrics. And of course, safety is always number one because we care about the people. Without the people, then we can't be successful. And so here at ati, it's a little bit different. They don't necessarily go with the SQDIP per se, but safety is number one here. We do work with heavy machinery. We even wear hard hats. We have all our full PPE together and we even give the people the power of. Of stop authority. If they see something that's dangerous, they're empowered to say stop. We've got to call the supervisor. Take a look at this. We do what we call a slam. And basically that's us watching, noting, and making changes if necessary.

Yeah, fantastic. Are there any metrics that you used to track, be excited about that you're not as excited about anymore and why? The answer might be no, but throwing that in there too.

Okay, so me being here for just a little over a year, the metrics that I'm seeing are a little bit different than the other companies I've worked at, but definitely here at ati, we look at output, we look at our backlog, we look at our DMRs, that's our discrepant materials rejects, for example, and also some of the other stuff like capacity, attendance. Right. Every company has a different skew on what they want to see. And it's a different driver for them. So as a leader, when I come into a new company, I need to understand what they're tracking. And if I feel like there's something ineffective, I'm going to say so. Right? And I'm going to show them, hey, this is a better way of taking a look at it. But it's kind of impromptu for me to make changes right away. It's better for me to sit and listen, observe, understand their process and then make recommendations.

Yeah, absolutely. What are you watching in terms of technology in the space? Those different tech trends? What are you saying? Wow, I'm going to follow that. And what are you saying? That's overhyped?

Well, okay. You know, AI is one of the big things, right? We are not using that currently, but I'm kind of excited to see where it can take our company. A lot of automations. I'm all about automation here at ati. There's a lot of manual processes and slowly but surely I'm trying to implement what we need in order to make us more successful. I'm not sure if you've ever read Innovators DNA, but in Innovator DNA they discuss five discovery skills and it says that if you don't keep up with the times, you will be left behind. So, for example, you know, you could do a Kaizen event and you can make all these improvements, but if you don't revisit that process and let's say the next six months, you, you might be outdated already. So there's a lot of people that even take it very, very personal. They say, oh, that was my idea. We made so much money out of it and now they're changing it and I'm very upset. But in reality, you need to go revisit it because in six months, technology might have changed, your business pursuits might have changed, and those changes that you were responsible for might be outdated. So it's important for you to stay with the times. So AI is definitely one of them. The other one is 3D printing. Right. There's a huge part about 3D printing associated here at ATI and there's a lot of proprietary information in regards to that. But eventually you're going to see 3D printing more ingrained into our business.

Exciting. Now I can't wait to follow the public information when it gets police. Got it. You also have lots of experience rolling out new technologies and finding thoughtful ways to take advantage of the power of technology and also get people engaged in that process. That's a skill to Roll things out. Well, you've rolled out Guidewheel. Beautifully driven, really good results. I imagine there have also been things that are hard or implementations that you've tried but didn't go well. What have you learned? And maybe some examples you can share of implementations that have gone well. Implementations, tactics you have, and then also maybe examples of what's not gone so well and what you've learned.

Yeah. So I, I would have to say that Guidewill has been one of the better implementations. I, I think your team has actually did a really good job with informing me of what's next, what's the agenda. Right. Because with me understanding that, then I'm, I'm able to communicate that to the, to our leadership as well as to the floor. And I feel like we've actually taken them incrementally through the process with the logistics part of the hardware being implemented to getting them trained on the software, understanding what they're accountable for. And you know, of course we did this through the change management process that we created and so that made it a little bit more easier, more systematic.

Let me tell you though, I mean, we've also had some pitfalls, but I think what really counts is we're able to address it and move on. Right. It's, it's like we have a beautiful system here called Guide Wheel that's going to basically tell us the information that we're looking for and remove a lot of the manual steps that we were doing previous to Guide Wheel. And so that alone has been like a big thumbs up, both leadership and on the floor. They did have something before which was very, very manual. Guide Wheel is just instantaneous, it's real time. So automatically we'll get alerts, automatically we'll be able to go down there and understand what's going on. And now we're even empowering the operators so that they could be autonomous and put in those facilities tickets to get things fixed. And now they don't have to wait like a whole.

24 hours to report what's going on. It's happening now. I think Guide Wheel is a really, really good example of a good implementation. Even though we've had some points where.

We'Ve encountered some pushback because it was too new. But that's pretty evident in any change you make, you know, and you just have to be resilient. Resilient. And I personally feel that one of my best qualities is, is my tenacity. I don't give up. I don't give up. And I always feel like, hey, if you're dealing with people, there's always a way to get to their heart and have them join the group versus abandon you. Right.

I love that. Any specific examples of resistance where you were tenaciously able to. To get to their heart? How did you do for anyone who wants to learn from the success there?

Oh, let's see. So I think when we were first starting to train the folks on tagging, they really weren't sure how to do that. Right. And so we provided them with instructions, with videos. We actually sat with them and walked them through it step by step. And I think eventually they realized it's not that hard, you know, and this is basically telling people that, oh, it's important to do this because this is how the company makes money. If we're not running our machines, then the machines are idle and we can't have that. And so I think that's just kind of like them coming to the realization, okay, now we understand why this is needed.

See an example of something that didn't get implemented very well. I think it was my first example, you know, where, where one of the supervisors wanted to almost like force a change upon the. The folks down on the floor and they just, they just weren't having it. They weren't prepped. They didn't know what was going on. Their world was changing. Especially when they've been doing something for 30 years and yet nobody's discussed with them why something is changing. It's really all about the change and how you manage it.

Yeah. Beautiful. You've had incredible mentors over the years. You're also a mentor to others.

Yes.

What is either some advice that you remember and that sticks with you that you've gotten over your years, or what advice would you give to someone starting out their career as a up and coming operations leader?

The first thing a leader or a leader to be should really keep in mind is don't be so quick to make changes. Understand first how the current process works, and then after you do that, then identify specific things that.

Will make the change and be profitable in the future.

That's pretty powerful.

And I think it kind of like links to some of the things that I've discussed. Like, for example, like if you do a value stream map on a certain process with hopes of trying to find improvements, you need to bring the team together and you need to do it as a team, not by yourself. Because with the team, you're going to get additional inputs that you may not be aware of. And especially after you get the value stream Map completed value stream map. It's basically a visual illustration of the pro of what the process looks like, right. And it talks a lot about, you know, the steps, talks about the inventory that you hold, talks about, you know, all the transactions that are happening in order to get that process complete. And part of it is the team members going into the value stream and identifying what they call undesirable observations and then later on grouping those undesirable observations into like, into affinity diagram and understanding what the low hanging fruits are, what can be easily implemented and what are the ones that are going to take a little longer to, to complete. Doing that, I've noticed has always been very, very effective. There's prep work that you have to do as well. You should always do takt time analysis, line balancing so that you can understand where bottlenecks are. And basically at the very end you kind of just sum it up and you, you prioritize what actions you're going to do first versus ones that will take a little bit more effort.

Love it. So much good stuff. And I just love also how you draw from all the different best practices and tools and processes, but also know them so well that you've got your own way of pulling them in. Anything else you want to add before we close?

If I were to start a new plant from scratch, what tools would be non negotiable? I definitely think guide wheel is critical, right. Because Lauren, you can't imagine how much it's automated some of our work. I used to spend about three hours every morning just collecting data and now it's like within my fingertips. And in real time I could just look at the scoreboard and understand what machines are running and what machines have issues. I'd also make sure that we have a robust SPC program because in any kind of machining operation you're going to need something that tracks the dimensions and that you're within your tolerances, right. Or within at least your upper and lower control limits. And then I think another thing too is have a very strong ERP system in place. Currently right now we have something that was kind of homegrown and I mean one of the things in my.

In my list of experiences is an implementation I did with an ERP system at a smaller company. There was a lot of pushback in doing that, but I remember when we were getting very, very close to implementation, I decided, okay, for the next three months we're going to do dual systems and then we're going to compare the two and a lot of people were like, excited because they felt like, oh, we're going to prove Norm wrong, that our system is better. And they. And after the three months were over, it was identical and even better. And the reason why is because the ERCP system was all integrated. It was talking to themselves. So whenever something happened in shipping, it would hit the finance right away and it would show up in the income statements and in the balance sheets. And so before all that was, like, manually done. Amazing.

Norman, thank you. So appreciate it. What a great conversation.

Thanks so much for tuning in to Factory Ops Exchange. If Norman's insights sparked any ideas or made you think of someone you work with, please pass this episode along. It's how we grow this community of incredible leaders in this critical sector of manufacturing. You can follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And if you have a moment to leave a review, it helps others find the show. I'm Lauren Dunford. Thanks again for being here. See you next time.

Sam.