Manufacturing Industry is Seeing a Skills-Gap That Technology Created, But Can Solve

What does it mean to manufacture a stronger standard? At Degeast Steel Works, it means to solve challenges and help facturers achieve more through our people, our technology, and our belief that anything is possible. This is manufacturing a stronger standard. A podcast by Degeast Steel Works. Hi, everyone. It's Derek Degeast here back with another episode of Manufacturing and Strong standard. And we're actually here right now at FabTech twenty twenty three, and we just got done with our educational session where I was talking about bridging the skills gap with technology. Now I thought it'd be good. Just to show it's done. We're still here on the show floor here. We want on a quiet corner, and we're gonna talk just a little bit about what we talked about today because it was an exciting engaging conversation. And this isn't your typical skills gap conversation because the problem is you hear that term and just yawn. I mean, I was looking back even in two thousand fourteen. My first time to FabTech. I ever came, and we were talking about the skills gap back then. So this isn't a new thing, but we keep talking about it. Over and over and regurgitating. And everything that I'm hearing is just the same old thirty thousand foot view, and we're just bitching about the problem. So we're gonna talk about some things that we're doing that actually address this skills gap and how we need to look at it because there's a couple topics that when you actually do it day to day that come up past just talking about skills gap. So what we're gonna do is that what's going to talk about maybe some things we're not gonna just sit and we're gonna to blame on the education system to say it's the government's fault or blame it on the next generation. We're gonna actually give you some tools that can actually move you forward. So the good news is is that we're things that we can do today that will help you be successful. They'll there is a general expectation that all people coming in to a job are going to be able to have technology to be able to use and help augment what they do. This is expected. This isn't, an exception because it is available. Look at look around everywhere you go. You have technology. People grown up. The next generation were grown up with digitally plugged in twenty four seven. So to think of the expectation of taking their phone away and unplugging them, and now telling them, okay, new person, now that you've lost that, now you got this person over here who's been here for twenty, thirty years, and they're gonna show you how to do what you have to do. And then someday, maybe you can be like them. They'd be like, Hellmo. I'm not doing that. I'm out of here. This is not I'm not gonna do that. That's not what's gonna happen. So there are ways that we can use technology to help bridge and talk and talk about this. And then once you have that technology in your your facility, we need to talk about how that impacts your two groups of people. And your two groups of people that you have are your skilled people that have the knowledge, that learn these things over time, and your new employees that have to learn and figure out how to do the new job or task. So we're gonna talk about how that impact is because They have different expectations, both of these groups. And for you to be able to bring any technology or have them even show them something, you're going to have to be able to address what their expectations are and find a way to talk to them. So the current skilled employee, let's talk about them. They need to teach and work with this new employee coming in. Their expectation of this new employee is that they're gonna go through all the trials and tribulations and the time invested that they did to learn that skill and become an expert craftsman of it. And if the new employee doesn't, it causes distrust, and there's a lack of earned respect that is hard to overcome. And this so and what they end up doing is they protect that information. That's theirs. They don't want to really give that out Also, they think if I teach this person this, what I know how to do, now I lose my power. I am now expendable, or they're gonna keep this person that's getting entry level position, and they're gonna cut me. They're gonna get rid of me. So there's an inherent need to save and and protect what they know and not train that. Now you look at the incoming employee, the person coming in that needs to learn the skill. They expect to have access to technology and automated equipment to help them learn those new tasks and skills. They they also have they don't have the patience or being held back or think that it's almost feels disrespectful to be able to be an only spoon fed certain bits of information, and sometimes they feel It's only enough so that they can fail. And that they feel that the the people that are there want them to fail at times, or They didn't give it to them, and they they can something that can be very benign can become very, very, very toxic very quickly. So they'd want to have access to information. And if they get stuck in a manual task that they feel should be automated, they're out. Cause there's a lot of options out there in the world. So they're gonna move on to the next thing. So we owe it to the industry to talk about this and find tools because there is way too many options out there for the young, people to any person, young or old today, of career opportunities, jobs that pay well. Jobs historically that didn't pay as well. Now you can become a delivery driver and get paid as much as a welder. So now the skills trades every industry is fighting for the same labor positions that manufacturing is, and I tell you right now, we're losing. So We owe it to the industry. We owe it to ourselves that when we get a chance, when a new employee or potential person comes in the door, we have to be ready. To be able to meet them and meet the expectations that they have and be ready to address what you have internally with your team to make sure that's gonna be success So here's a couple things that are hitting us. So our training plans historically into the matter what industry you're in is that you teach the person how to do that task, And once they know that, that's good. Like, I can now move on job solve problem, and I can move on to the next thing. And historically, they'd say ten, fifteen, twenty years. Today, it's different. Baby Booners, they they typically stayed in a job before you even called this a job. Not a career, but a job for at least eight years. And then as they moved all the way down, it went from eight. The next generation was six. Then it was four, and now gen z is is two. And gen z is six age six to twenty four. Now I've got a couple young kids, and I'm no. That their attention span is a lot less. And I don't know how that statistic can measure a six year old, but a TikTok video that attention spans about ten seconds. So if we we can see where the trend is going. And so our process of teaching someone, and that's now solved, and that can now move for another ten plus years, is now gone. You can see now as that ten plus year employee trains one of your people, new people to do something. It's statistically they're gonna be gone in two years. And look at how many years you have left to your people with the knowledge. Your two or three hires away from that knowledge being completely gone. So look at your processes. Just walk out. And if you look around in my shop, I look around, and I think of all the processes that we need to document. If this if we weren't already starting to address it, I'm already a little bit panicked. So we have to look at this. We had to find ways to be able to move forward and document these process. And we're here at FabTech, and we're displaying our Lesta USA booth. And so I say, what better fitting way to talk about the products and the services that we're providing and building for our teams and we're now helping our customers do. Let's talk about how those things can be applied to the skills gap, how we can take the legacy knowledge, the tribal knowledge of your best people and capture and save that so it can be used again and and them away from retraining people they're gonna leave so that you don't lose that information. So the technology, once that's done, so that's the the scariest spot of where we're at. On the other side, successfully, many companies have found very cost effective ways to be able to bridge that skills gap up to very big capital investments. But once that's done, when you're able to capture that legacy knowledge and you're finishing operation and you're training those new employees, on how to get the impact. It changes your production and your training completely on do you do new hires? So you don't have to take your skilled people out of production to retrain new hires over and over again. So those skilled people, now it wants to see you've documented and you've got your processes in, and they're placed digitally for other people. They can move on to other things, and they don't have to come back. Because one, two years or last that person leaves Your experienced people are right back reshow on the next person. And the more times they have to do that, the more times they think this is a waste of my flipping time. And so that that keeps happening, eventually, like, you know what, driving a truck every day and by myself and listening to my music doesn't sound that bad. Because this chain in the next generation, it sucks because they don't do what I do. They're never gonna learn what I have, and this isn't working. So if we can show them, you don't have to do that anymore. Help us get this, and you can move on and help in this next area. Learn a new skill. You're not trapped anymore. And now if you're a new employee, you come in and you feel empowered. You're able to be able to use that information and reference it, and you can help you without having to go bother the person They're not trying to be a pain in the butt. They just need to be told how to do something because there's how would you know? You'd learn right now historically this over time and experience. If you don't have either one of those, if you digitally are given that, now they can learn. They learn quicker because that's how people learn today. Who here uses YouTube to learn how to do things. It's how we learn digitally. We see how things are done. So once that's done, you can also learn quicker because you're that's how we have learned how to how to bill to bill it how to do something. As well as that is now when you see something, it's digitally shown, and you're able to do that on your own, you get instant gratification, and it's very empowering because, you know, you just it correctly. You're not worried about maybe I remembered right. I don't wanna bother them, so I'm not gonna say anything. I think this is how I remembered it. Then they come back and you're now the person that showed you is you're in trouble. Quality rejected what you did because you didn't do it right. You have less even less engagement less confidence in what you're doing, and eventually they're gonna quit. So by doing this now, you can get your end to level people up to speed quicker. You can keep your your, your legacy knowledge and your experienced people productive and moving forward, and it can work really, really well. So this is done now we've we've been able to we show that that's possible. Now, what are some ways that that can actually happen? That sounds really great, Derek, but how are they doing this in the finishing world? Couple ways we're doing this is that we're taking the processes on a paint line. So whether it's be batch, power and free, continuous line, There are processes done, how you hang parts, how you mask it, how you tape it, how you prep your parts, how you package them, Those steps right now are all tied locked into the brains of your best people. What if that didn't have to be that way? Because oftentimes, with you're in the finishing world, you take parts and it's you look at for hanging. People just put the parts on there any which way. Some really focus on getting line density. Some just put them up there. I go to factories where they have people almost crawling on the ground trying to paint a part. They're crawling up and down their hands and knees or their line density is awful because people don't know. They're just putting on the parts so they don't know. Or if they do it really well, shops do it well, it's tied to that certain person. You get into the masking and plugging area. Every part, every customer is different. We plug this hole. We don't plug this hole. We mask this. This customer does really care. Oh, we grease these holes. We don't plug these holes. There's no way that you'll be able to understand what to do unless you've done it over and over and over again. And that's tied to the legacy knowledge of your best people. So to people today, we're using technology, production management software. Less to USA Degeese built a software platform to be able to trigger and automatically present work instructions, just visual. Take a picture with your cell phone. Draw a couple arrows, highlight. Use hooks hooked twelve inch hooks and hook here and here and here. Now, anyone can walk off the street, look, find the bin of twelve inch hooks, grab the twelve inch hooks take the part, hang it on where it's shown on the picture, and you have it properly hung. They didn't have to go get the person that nose would hook to use it and say, well, we use these hooks over here in this bucket. And then we put them over here and make sure these are plung this way, or it'll trap water. It will do this or you have to do that. It's overwhelming, and people get frustrated. So by doing that, that can be taken care of. Same with your masking and your plugging in the same way. So that as well plugs hooks, they all can be easily, easily brought in. And it doesn't have to be expensive software. It doesn't have to be a fully integrated talked to someone in our educational session this morning that are using their cell phones, taking pictures, and tying a picture of how the parts should be hung to the work order. And it's a so it's it's there for everyone to be able to use. So it's a really unique simple way that they're just using their phone and they don't have to pay for anything. So just get started. Take start taking pictures, document it, and tying it to your part, to be able to get your hanging your masking and your plugging and your packaging instructions documented so they're not tied so that you can concentrate and rely on process over the individual because individuals go on vacation. Individuals get sick, and individuals retire. And, unfortunately, sometimes, individuals quit. That information is too critical to your companies by a building in success to be tied to that one person Another type of thing that people are doing is we're using sensors on flow. So, and and we look at your paint side, we can We can look at a couple different things. Actually, I like to talk about this on our self learning robot side. You can take the tribal legacy knowledge of your painters, and you can teach the robot how to bail to do it. So all the nuances, the gun angle, the trigger pulls, the things they learned over decades of in the paint world. Now you can use that information it to the robot, and the robot can become an extension of them. That's them in the booth. So there's huge engagement There's huge empowerment. We get them out of the booth. Remember, we're not replacing them. Now they can help help understand how you'd like to prefer packaging. Now that you're or how you're doing your hanging, or now that you're using a robot, maybe this is how we did it before, but now that I know how this is done could add another row of parts on here. I could increase a line density. I could increase production because of how I know how to paint, how I've taught the robot, how to be, to be in the booth, Now I'm out improving my operation. So we're giving our people things to build a move to ways to learn new things that empower and use and honor the experience and the knowledge that they have, be able to use technology, to be able to keep that information and present it in a repeatable, consistent way. And then they can now show other people how to do that, and they can move to other areas and continue to grow and learn new things and create an gauging way to work inside your paint line, whether it just be hanging in packaging and prepping and, packaging up to training robots, self learning robots. You need no programming experience at all. In fact, on our line, we have over seven hundred programs have been made by our two painters that have never left the paint line and never sat at a computer or a desk. So it can be done it can be done. So now that you've talked about, we can standardize your process for your hanging and for your packaging and your prepping. We now can standardize and can keep the legacy knowledge on your paint side. Now we look at the application process. How are you gonna repeat what the robot in that system is doing? We actually have, flow sensors that can be used a liquid side. You can buy it and integrate in with any types of equipment. And on the powder side as well now, we have flow sensors that tie the actual flow of your liquid and your powder to the program that you made, and the technology will watch the system. So think of it as like your EKG machines in an where you've got all your rooms. You don't have someone standing over the room, making sure they're still breathing. They're sitting back. They've got all the rooms and see the heartbeat of every single room. And you're monitoring using technology to monitor them. Same thing can be done in the powder in the liquid world. We let customers say I have sixty powder guns, and I have no idea. What the each of them are doing. In fact, and when it doesn't look right, I know our guys just turn it up. We turn it up higher and higher and higher. Makes it easier to spray without having to move closer. I make sure I got enough powder coming out of my top reciprocator guns, but you're blasting way too much at the bottom. So we're having quality issues that are happening, and they don't know how to control it, and they don't even know where to start. So now by you as in sensors that can monitor your guns, You can make sure that you can balance your flow. You can change out a gun tip, or you can also look at your on the robot side. You don't have to worry about running out of powder. No one has to bathe sit a line, worrying about running on a powder because the sensor will let you know, stop the line. If you have a gun tip clog, or something happens your flow gets too high because your your your nozzle's wearing out, and you're getting too much powder on. Now that is gonna be monitored from the program from experienced people so you don't have to rely on legacy knowledge of the application process to make sure you can be successful in your day to day. So a couple other things is that we look at how we're going to be able to use this out on the on the shop floor. So now we've talked about how we've used it on the line, how we've used it on robots, and we can monitor application equipment as we look at, okay, we've created time for our people to step out of the day to day. What are they gonna do? There's a these are your people that are have the legacy knowledge. They are doers. Most likely, they are the ones that get stuff done. If you don't have something for them to do, when you create that capacity and that time for them, they're gonna go right back to what they're used to doing. So there's a couple things tools that we use. One of them is called the j curve. Now j curve something I have thought papers on, if you wanna look at our website, and we'll be doing podcasts in the future on them talking to some of our team. It's not a concept we came up with, but we've adapted it and used it in our facility. It talks about when you implement a change, when anything that changes, whether in personal, whether in, dissolution of foods. If you wanna go on a diet, you wanna lose weight, you wanna exercise, you wanna get a new piece of equipment, you wanna change your process you're going to change what you're doing. The expectation is you get a new cell phone, you get a new piece of equipment. It's gonna increase my productivity. We're gonna get better. I'm gonna get s skinnier. My muscles are gonna start popping out. Everything's gonna get better. That's the perceived things that's gonna happen when you change and add something new. But in reality, that isn't what happens. Things get worse. You have to adapt. You just changed variables that have not you have not calculated and that changes things. You get sore. You're hurting the next day. You don't. Mars don't pop after two days are working out. You need time. To be able to adapt, and you have to change what you eat. You have to go to the gym. Same thing with the out of process. You change a process. You solve that problem, and you create two more. But there are new problems. So you move forward, and you help move forward. And so the j curve, is this a graphical, of how the expectations had to be managed. And if you address them upfront, you say that, k, this isn't gonna be great right away. In fact, productivity is not gonna prove. It's gonna get worse because we have to adapt because this new process is gonna show the things that we are doing wrong. Or that we weren't ready for. So we're gonna adapt, and we're gonna do these things. Here's a couple processes that we can do to help make us move forward, and we can keep the motion out of this process so we don't quit and we don't get negative about it, but we keep our energy focused on moving forward and documenting and improving our processes so we can get to the productivity gains that we are after from the beginning. And once that changes, once you get through that, and if we can minimize that dip, which is called the j in the j curve, and get to the other side, you're gonna be successful, and you're gonna keep people engaged. So if we take our people out of the paint booth, your best people, you wanna talk about how we can get them engaged and help and move your company forward. You didn't get replaced. You just were given time to improve another process. Time to be able to help us get more productive, ways to get more parts, ways to get our quality better, and be able to make your system better, which they want to do. They wanna be successful, but they're stuck in what they do. We talked about how we can use technology to help manual processes. We talked about how we can use it to do use robotics with self learning. And they'll add application side. We create capacity for your people to be able to move you forward. One other powerful tool that do your building towards bamble to do is create goals, production goals, typically for your team. It can be incredibly powerful. As I've toured along, and I've moved through different facilities all over the country, even in Europe, I saw some really unique ways. People are using simple production metrics that are attainable to bring people together. In one facility over in Europe, they were using coding information. So everyone that quotes a part, you have a you know how much coating material that you're gonna use of your surface area. So this company cleverly used the quoting surface area of the material they use for their parts, and they created from there a list of all the orders and then all the material needed times the quantity to get a total amount of material that they were gonna need and color for every order And then from there, they know how much they could produce per day, and they would take all their orders, and they would build, what's possible for the capacity of their system, into, the daily hit list. This is what they're gonna tackle for the day, and they post that out there on the shop floor. And that also then would show how much material they needed to do the job. So now inventory and stock levels can be watched. They're able to see how much orders, how much material they need for the orders, how much material of each color they're gonna need whether it be liquid or powder for each day. And now their team saw the goal for the day. They saw what they needed to get done, and that helped them not just look at the clock to barely get to the next break or lunch, but how much how they doing towards their goal. And there was a and there was actively moving towards reaching that. In our own facility, we didn't have that initially because we had excess capacity. We built the most automated job shop contract, automated robotic paint line in the country at the time. And what we used to take us over fifty hours into Saturday to be able to do, we could do in less than two days. So we had excess capacity, and then we got good at just being busy. And we kept busy instead of getting productive. And then as we needed the production, we couldn't change that up. So as I was traveling the country, I saw furniture companies. I saw coding companies, manufacturing contract, job shop, and OEMs using certain tricks to be able to help them move forward, we embrace and use that as well. We created a production metric for what we'd only peak done every once in a while, as a goal for each day. And we saw an immediate gain of about forty percent in production in the first week. I had people calling me at night telling, no, it was the weekend on the weekend. They called me on the weekend instead of the first week and said, Hey, Derek. I had this great idea. If we do this, if we add these pieces over here, and we get this stage in the morning, we can start sooner. We'll be able to get more, we'll get more low bars out by the end of the day. So on the weekend, their our paint team was thinking about our paint process, and they were excited enough to call me, which is super cool. So they were enjoying. They wanted to come to work, and they started working together. Our team, our team, which had their painters, and our paint prep guys, and our packaging people were not talking. They were all staying busy, and they were, and they were busy working, but we weren't productive and working together. So we took more of a batch style, turned it into flow because they're working towards a goal, and the teamwork that was set created an engaging that they were enjoying doing. And that helped improve our our production, it went up forty percent, another forty. We're we've doubled our production on the line. Yeah, granted, we had the capacity, but we didn't have the mental in the physical capacity before we created goals, and they started working together to actually do it because the perceived emotion was on busy and I'm overwhelmed that put out fires all day. Now just we're empowering them to work together and giving them something to focus on They created ways to be able to double their production with the same amount of people with using the equipment and the technology of documenting their processes and using cell phone and robots. This is being done all across the country. As another manufacturer, do furniture manufacturer. I mean, you can learn a lot from other industries as well. So is a wood industry. It's very similar to the metal. I've said this before. They have all the same processes and just done in a slightly different way, and it smells different. But in the Woodside, this is a furniture company. They had a total units where they wanna ship per week, and they allowed their people to move and cross train between departments to help them reach their goal. And if they reach their goal, when it was met, they're allowed to leave at whatever day or hour and get paid for forty hours. So there was a very large enticing benefit and perk for them to be able to produce and get the units out. It was still based on time and the revenue of each of their jobs So for for the company wise, it worked out. They still met their goal for a company, and their people were able to do that. I saw never saw people so motivated, and moving, and engaged in what they were doing. With people that were flowing between bottlenecks, to be able to help make sure that they were reaching their their units that were done. They didn't shut down in whole department because they knew that starting the next week, they had to get to their total goal again. So there was a balance flow of bottlenecks that that were being snuffed out, and the flow is moving, and their goal is usually to leave around ten or eleven on Friday. And they'd get paid for their forty hours on a week instead of working all day on Friday. And it was happening. It was really, really neat to see. One last thing is I saw was out a large UTV man motorcycle manufacturer recently, and they had their UTV assembly line. And on there, they had total units. They wanted shipped just like the furnace company. But one thing that was very unique, and it's a problem that we had as I set metrics out throughout our shop, was that they were so focused on that on that metric that would cause other problems. Either we overproduce something, which caused another bottleneck or without creating the right additional goals, we also would incentivize sometimes potentially the wrong thing. So this company or like hey, people would change. Like, I got ten people today. Some someone's on vacation. I got nine. And someone called in sick. This day, I got seven. Next day, I got twelve. So my goal, it wasn't accurate anymore. It wasn't achievable, so people started ignoring it. What this UTV company did is they had in the corner that the employee count an employee count racially, would create how many units that they would produce based on the employee count. So now if someone was sick and your team count went from ten to eight, your production goal changed accordingly so that it was achievable. Now people could stay on task and they could hit and get to where they needed to go. So these are some really neat examples of how you can use goals to be able to help people cleverly work together stay engaged and help move production and forward and help you continue to improve. And a lot of it happens organically. Because people want to reach the goal. They want to feel like they had they went through the day. It didn't just like you mow the yard and look turn around the grass is long again. It feels accomplished. You feel like you did something. So this is some really neat ways that you can use the tools and the data that you're now gathering, and you can use it in a way to be able to help people, enjoy what they're doing. So as we recap, as we looked at, the different ways technology can work with people. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And when you are bringing automation and you're bringing new technology, something new into your facility. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. You need to talk about it. And you need to talk to both differently to both of your groups the people that have been there for a long time and how they look at the work that's there and the new people on how they wanna use it. And we gotta bridge that gap together to use technology to document and standardize your processes, to build and improve your finishing operation, and help you and your company continue to move forward while we're training talents and helping create employee retention and engagement and still improving. So thank you for joining us today on manufacturing a stronger standard. Check us out on LinkedIn. Look at our podcast, go to our website Look for our thought papers. Download this one on bridging the skills gap. Look for our upcoming one on the j curve. And other ways that we're empowering our people, helping our customers and companies move forward and embrace technology that can help them stay relevant, help them stay productive, and achieving more. Thank you. What does it mean to manufacture a stronger standard? At Degeast Steel Works, it means to solve challenges and help manufacturers achieve more through our people. Our tech and our belief that anything is possible. This is manufacturing a stronger standard, a podcast by the guest still works.