Do You Struggle With Pushback In Your Traditional Shop？ ｜ Machine Shop Talk Ep. 102

So you work in a shop where everything's going more or less okay, work is getting out the door, but things are still being done the way they were 30 years ago. What do you do in this situation? And if you want to, how can you help make change? What's up guys, Ian Sandusky from Lakewood Machine and Tool back here again for Practical Machinists. And today on Shop Talk, we're going to be diving into this wild world of trying to make changes you want to see happen in regards to technology as an employee at a shop. But before we do, make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on notifications below to make sure you never miss a video. Let's get into it. Okay guys, so as promised today, we're going to be talking about something I have seen, heard, and experienced many times over the years. And that is something that someone also came on the Practical Machinists forums asking a question about. They kind of have this exact same scenario on their hands. And I thought it was a very good opportunity to touch on this, you know, with a bit of a real world situation. So to quickly summarize what the poster said, they came to the Practical Machinists forum saying that they have just started at a shop. So this is not a shop where they've been working for 20 years. The way they pitched it, it kind of sounded like this was a fairly new situation. And they said this shop has good technology. So they have good software. They have good tooling. They have good machines. You know, this is a shop where they have invested in good stuff to make good parts. That said, while some of the guys are, you know, kind of eager and excited to try new things and make things faster and do things better, there's a lot of programs and things he's, you know, the way things are done, where he sees they're really outdated. So, you know, there's programs that could be way faster than they are right now, or things that can be optimized, or, you know, suggestions that they think they can make to make the shop better. And he's wondering how to implement these kinds of things he would like to see happen without ruffling any feathers and without, you know, getting anybody angry at him coming in and saying these kinds of things. But, you know, he wanted advice from people who had been in this scenario before to see what they thought. The forum had some great suggestions, but first, just to touch on my own experience with it, this company here, Lakewood Machine and Tool, my old man started it in 1988. So we've been here for 35 years now. And because of that, you know, this is something I have seen a lot. Back in the 90s, we used to be a tool and die shop when we opened, strictly tool and die. You know, I've said it before, we had 10 guys at 10 manual mills, and that was what we did. We were one of the first ones in our little area to bring in CNC technology. So, you know, we have a 1994 Haas BF3 over there that we bought brand new in 94, and we still have it. But we really were, when you see the way some things were being done back then, and, you know, I still see some of the programs and fixtures that we have from then, not that we use them now, but really it was a matter of doing the best with what we could. You know, you have to remember that, A, the training for CNC was not what it is today. There were no YouTube to go check things. You were reading things out of books. You were learning from a guy who may have seen it before, but as it was a fairly new technology in the mainstream, you were kind of stuck doing the best you can. You know, we were working with machines that were loaded with floppy disks. You know, so the program had to be very small. So there were no fancy moves. Mastercam, which we were using at the time, didn't even have dynamic tool paths. You know, the computing power wasn't there. Since we were a manual shop, we were using a lot of high-speed steel tooling at the time. I think we were using insertable tooling that was made for manuals in CNCs, you know, and none of this is a criticism of the way things were being done. It was the best way people knew how to do things at this shop at the time. And while I certainly wasn't the one who came in and said, yeah, we have to change things over because I didn't know any different, you know, and there were a lot of very intelligent machines here that, you know, figured it out. This is not saying I did this myself by all means, but it did take a long time for us to come around on certain things. You know, one scenario I think I've said a million times here before, but it always sticks with me, the issue of tooling. Everything was programmed with a 5.8 10 mil because for some reason, that's how we did it. You know, unless you needed something smaller. Switching that to a half inch or three quarter has saved us a lot of time and money over the years. In other words, there's a lot of things that even if you want to change and you're trying to change, it can take a change of mindset and opening your brain up to make those happen, essentially is what I'm saying. So if you're coming into a shop where, you know, you're seeing things done a certain way, before, you know, you go, well, no one here knows what they're doing, blah, blah, blah, you have to step back a little bit and say, okay, this shop has been running this way for X amount of years. Maybe there's a reason for it, maybe not, but let's be a little gentle with it. So anyways, to go back to the form, there were a lot of really good pieces of advice here. You know, as I always say, the Practical Machinists Forum has decades and decades of experience on there from guys who have run shops, and they're in their seventies now, they've been running them since they were 20. There are guys who have, you know, seen everything under the sun. So it's a great place to get advice. And this was definitely the case in this scenario. So the first piece of good advice I saw was, no matter how good you are, let's say for a moment that the person who came on with this post and wanted to make suggestions, and they're already being kind of, they're already kind of doing this because they're saying they don't want to ruffle feathers, but let's say that they are a brilliant machinist. I don't know how many years of experience they have. Let's say they've been machining for 20 years. They know what they're doing. They're a really, really smart machinist. They have a lot of talent. No matter how good they are, when they come in, if you want to start making suggestions and you want people to take you seriously and not get offended, the first thing you need to do is be humble. If you walk into a shop, no matter how talented you are, like you are God's gift to machining and everyone else doesn't know anything, it doesn't matter how smart you are. Yeah, you might make some changes. It's not going to go as smoothly as you could hope. It's not going to be effective. And you're probably not going to get along with any of your coworkers. You know, to some people that's not important. To a lot of us, that is. You know, especially if you are a new person, you want to go to work, you want to enjoy going there. You don't want to have friction in your daily life. You probably want to be humble. So the big thing you need to do is not go and start talking down to people. Don't walk up to a program and say, who programmed this? This is hilarious. Because the guy who's running it may be the guy who programmed it. Maybe it's a suggestion that he hadn't thought of. Maybe you don't know his experience or their experience. You know, you need to be humble. The best way to try to do this is to first just ask questions. Hey, I see you're using a high-speed steel drill in there and then boring it out. Would it make sense to, you know, have you tried looking at a insertable U-driller for that or whatever, whatever your suggestion may be? Because if you go in and you just say, you shouldn't be doing that. You should be using this. You may not understand the reason that is happening. No matter how good you are. You know, when you say, why are you using high-speed steel instead of carbide? You have to be using carbide. Although we can all say, well, yes, carbide is faster than high-speed steel. Maybe there's a good reason for it. Who knows? If you go in and you try to impose your will on somebody like that, you're just gonna get pushed back. But by asking questions, hey, do you know what? Have you thought about trying to speed up the spindle speed on this? I think you might be able to get a little better finish. You're giving them the opportunity to explain themselves. Yeah, do you know what? This is actually a really unstable work piece, blah, blah, blah. And then you can go, well, hey, actually, I've seen these really cool clamps that can help make that a more stable work piece. And then you can get the conversation going and you're working together to try to solve the problems and get the suggestions you want implemented out there. So that's the first thing, in my opinion, that you should do. Really be careful about the way you approach things because the last thing you wanna do, and I understand, guys, that some people will say, well, if they don't know what they're doing, too bad. I'm gonna show them what's up. And you know what? Good luck. Some people have great success with that. I don't. But that's my first suggestion that I saw on the forums there that I thought was good. The next piece of good advice I saw on there, if you have suggestions that you wanna get implemented, is baby steps. So if I walk into a shop as a new employee and I see they're using all of one kind of brand of tooling and tool holding, you know, they're using ER collides, and I say, guys, this is silly. We should be using heat shrink. We should be using brand YF tooling that's twice as expensive, but we're gonna get 500% more performance out of there. Even if you're correct and they are gonna get 500% more performance out of it, you're suggesting a change this big when you've been there for three months. You're suggesting they spend $150,000 to retool, to bring in a heat shrink, to get all the heat shrink tooling, to reprogram everything. That's a huge suggestion to make. You know, if someone could walk into my shop today and say, hey, you're running brand X machines. If you ran brand Y, you'd make a lot more money. Yeah, but also replacing all my machines with brand Y is gonna cost me $5 million that I don't have. Making baby step suggestions is always a better way to be taken seriously. So instead of saying, hey, we wanna use brand YF tooling, and I think we should use X kind of tool holding. If you say, hey, for this one job, I really have good experience with this brand I like. I've used them at other shops, I really like them. Do you mind bringing in a couple of, you know, three pieces of these end mills so we can give them a shot on this job? I think you're gonna like the results. That's a way more palatable suggestion. Remember, at the end of the day, it's not your shop. You have to make suggestions and hope people take them. But if you kind of guide them into it and help them make the decision, it can really help. Because then they may see, hey, listen, we actually got 500% more performance out of that one job. They may be climbing all over themselves to spend that $150,000. You know, it's, you have to show them through these baby steps what your idea is so that they can evaluate it. You know, hey, we should reprogram all our machines to use this kind of tool path. Well, that may be a three-week endeavor to go through and change all the programs. And you know, three weeks times X amount per salary per hour, that's a lot of money. But if you say, hey, can I reprogram this one program? And you show them, hey, this is how it works, you're gonna be taken a lot more seriously. And you know what? People are really gonna be looking at your suggestions after that to try to make things better. That's how you build a reputation at a shop. Most scenarios I hear where people are getting a lot of pushback, it's because they come in and they wanna make big sweeping changes all at once. And as a guy who may have just been hired to be a programmer or a machinist, you know, you're gonna butt up against management, you're gonna butt up against ownership. You have to be political no matter where you are on the food chain. That's kind of where we're getting at here. Lastly, and this was echoed a few times in there, and I'm inclined to agree, and that's if you're at a place and you have suggestions, they're not being taken seriously, and you're unhappy with it, as much as we kind of, you know, some guys love job hopping, some guys say job hopping is the worst thing you can do as an employee. At the end of the day, if you're at a place where you really like optimizing programs, and the company you work for doesn't value that, they just want parts out the door, they don't care about shaving 10 seconds off a program, and that's the kind of stuff you want to do or you find valuable, there's probably another shop out there that's gonna fall all over themselves to hire you for that role. You know, if you're at a job shop or a prototype shop, and they don't really care, you know, if it's a 10 hour program, if you're shaving 20 seconds off it, it's probably not a good fit. If you're at a huge production shop, and you can save them 15 seconds per cycle, that may be, you know, you might get a huge bonus out here. There's a lid for every pot, and if you're in a place where, you know, there's just not good chemistry between the kind of things you like to do and the suggestions you want to make and the things you find important, it's always worth looking to see maybe there is another place that does, because, you know, there's a lot of different kinds of shops out there. There's a lot of places that do all different kinds of work. You may be really good at what you do, and it may just not be suited for the shop you're at. Simple as that. You may be the most valuable employee at another shop, while here you feel like you're pulling teeth every day you go into work. So it's something to think about. In any case, guys, I'd like to know in the comments below, how do you deal with the situation? How do you help make your suggestions implemented? What are some tips for people to help ease these suggestions so they're not ruffling feathers, you know, because that is important to a lot of people. But let me know in the comments below. And as always, make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on notifications below to make sure you never miss a video. Thank you very much for watching, guys. You take care.