Rooster's Revenge

I am a strong believer in three things:

1. The universe is governed by a creative intelligence
2. The universe always creates the best possible outcome … eventually
3. The universe rewards those with positive thoughts to do positive things

The universe favors those willing to get back up again after getting knocked down. It conspires with those with a dream for a better reality to make it so when the time is right.

I stumbled across a nice poem written by the father of a professional poker player that is a friend of a friend that sums up my beliefs. I hope you enjoy it!

The Universe Conspired to Help

The man had a dream

He knew what he wanted, it seems

Once he was sure in his heart this was it

He vowed someday that he would achieve it

He wasn’t quite ready to do his thing

But he felt fairly certain what the

future would bring

When one day the time was right

When he was ready to fight the good fight

He conquered all his excuses and set forth

To take the risk-fraught first step

without any remorse

Once he took the first step down the line

The universe conspired to help make sure

he was fine

He never dreamed he would accomplish so much

That the universe would give him such

incredible luck

Now older and wiser he understood the hardest part

Was convincing himself that it was time to start

-Phil Hellmuth

Now is the time to start a brave new world in the tool and die industry. Are you ready?

Eric Kam wrote a great post today about how geeks obsess over the wrong things.

When a geek tells me about some cool functionality that only a PhD would understand, I respond with “who cares?”. If the answer to that question does not boil it down to a time or money savings for the end user, then the answer is in the question.

This mantra is not limited to functionality. It also extends to the user interface.

Some companies obsess over their look and feel to the point of considering it to be proprietary. Who cares? Probably no one.

Here is the acid test for the user interface design: If you can answer “yes” to one or more of the following, then your UI matters.

• My competitors have copied my user interface design.
• My competitors have hired away my user interface designers.
• My competitors have hired a user of my software as a consultant for the user interface design.

In most cases, the UI is a secondary benefit to the user. Functionality that provides a time and cost benefit to the mass market is the only thing that matters.

“East bound and down. Loaded up and truckin’. We’re  gonna do what they say can’t be done. We got a long way to go and a short time to get there. I’m east bound just watch ‘ol Bandit run.”

That classic Jerry Reed song from the Smoky and the Bandit songtrack sums up where the Motor City and its legendary tool and die industry is heading these days.

After having a front row seat to the “Not Invented Here” syndrome for so long, I am optimistic that the time is now for new ideas from entrepreneurs.

There is a well-written article in the June 2009 issue of Wired magazine titled “Beyond Detroit”. This article speaks about how the Detroit Three must embrace innovation from startups in order to survive beyond the government loans and bankruptcy restructuring.

I have been waiting two decades for this. I see a stronger, consumer-centric American automotive industry emerging from the current state of disaster. But only if the Detroit Three leadership embraces outside ideas and technologies.

I have been an outside insider for a long time waiting for a shot. That time is now. This cowboy will put the hammer down and give it hell.

Die shops and components suppliers have been doing business the same way pretty much since the Candlestick telephone was invented. The last game-changing technology revolution to hit this space was the fax machine.

The Request For Quotation (RFQ) process sucks. It is error-prone and time-consuming for the buyer of tooling components. It is labor-intensive and high-risk for the seller of tooling components. The process is a lose-lose.

I often equate the RFQ transaction to the Candlestick telephone. In those days, the transaction between callers was interrupted by the switchboard operator. Speaking with the operator first is a barrier to what the caller really wants: to speak to the person they called.

If the person did not answer, one had to call back three times to communicate their message. It is like sending out three quotes: you hope to get one response as quickly as possible.

The reality of quoting is this: at a $65 burden rate, it costs the buyer of tooling components $1 per minute per person just to purchase something.

The adage is spend money to MAKE money, not spend money to spend MORE money.

The seller of tooling components has the same problem: burn $1 per minute per person to quote jobs that they have a 33% chance, at best, of closing.

The die industry needs a new phone.

The key to increasing the competitive strength of manufacturing is to automate custom transactions in the front office.

Overnight successes do not happen overnight and new ideas are sometimes not so new.

While employed by an automotive OEM company in 1993, I was recruited to assist with a business process reengineering effort conducted by an outside consulting firm.

My contribution to the endeavor at a macro level was to stop doing what Alfred Sloan created and do what Billy Durant would do if he were alive: run the car business like the soft drink business. Let me explain.

Soft drink companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola make two things, and two things only: marketing and syrup. That’s right, syrup.

They do not make the bottles. They don’t make the cans. They don’t even mix the syrup with water and pour it into the bottle or can. Independent companies do this for them.

The syrup is the product design. Water is water, and cans are simply transportation vehicles for the product.

Roger Penske recently purchased Saturn from General Motors. He is quoted as saying:

“The proposed acquisition marks the beginning of a new business model in this industry,” he wrote, “a model in which the distribution side of the business controls the brand, and manufacturing is conducted by one or more sub-contractors.”

Now, if only the other automotive companies would follow Penske’s lead, the industry as a whole would be better off. Workload would have a chance to be leveled at the manufacturing site. Economies of scale would increase utilization while reducing costs.

And, a fundamental shift in the business model like this would lead to another idea I have been preaching for a long time: build the vehicles on demand.

There will come a day when a customer walks into the showroom, test drives a vehicle, and orders it to their specifications. The vehicle would then be built on demand and delivered to the customer’s home in 24 hours.

Ok, maybe 48.

When I hired into General Motors as a die design apprentice in 1986, we were bred to be contractors from the moment we walked into the K-1 Lobby at CPC Headquarters, the former Fisher Body building.

Within weeks of completing our 1,500 hour basic training, many of us in the group of 12 were moonlighting die design work. My design company was called Stamping Technologies, Inc., or STI for short.

A typical week looked like this:

Monday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Lawrence Tech: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour deliver progressive die design package

Tuesday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Macomb College: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour creating progressive die strip layout

Wednesday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Lawrence Tech: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour finishing progressive die strip layout

Thursday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Macomb College: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour finish and submit progressive die design quote package

Friday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• STI: 7 hours progressive die design

Saturday

• STI: 18 hours progressive die design

Sunday

• STI: 17 hours progressive die design

The total work week was 125 hours. It stacked up like this:

• 55 hours day job
• 24 hours college
• 46 hours moonlighting

We did this week in and week out for several years. There were two key things we did to achieve this level of performance:

• Trained our bodies to go without sleep
• Created an engineering system to “put the lines down once”

Over two decades later, I still find myself working those extended hours. I work anywhere from 28 to 40 hours straight before taking time off. When we were young, we would take only six hours off. Now, I have to take twice that time off to recover.