Scott Springer is the operational genius and founder of Cherrywood Consulting Group. Scott's career, originating from his time at the Naval Academy and subsequent roles in manufacturing, exemplifies transformative leadership. He discusses his pivotal role in rescuing failing operations, emphasizing the importance of aligning people, processes, and equipment to achieve success.

Scott shares vivid anecdotes from his experiences, including turning one of North America's worst-performing plants into a model of efficiency and safety. His approach blends rigorous process management with a deep commitment to employee training and empowerment, revealing that most operational failures stem from inadequate processes rather than people's failures.

Listeners will gain insights into how systematic, thoughtful leadership can result in astonishing growth and operational excellence, as evidenced by Scott's story of driving a company to achieve five years of consecutive 100% growth.

Want to learn more about Scott's work? Check out their website at https://chelwoodgroup.com/.

Connect with Scott on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/springer-scott/.

Key Points with Time Stamps:

• 00:00:30-00:01:21: Introduction of Scott Springer, highlighting his background and anticipation for the insights from an operations perspective.
• 00:02:16-00:03:14: Scott details his initial leadership role in a struggling manufacturing plant and the immediate challenges he faced.
• 00:05:02-00:05:45: Discussion on turning around multiple plants and becoming known as the "turnaround guy".
• 00:06:04-00:06:37: Emphasis on the crucial balance of people, processes, and equipment in successful operations.
• 00:10:23-00:11:09: Scott elaborates on the necessity of repetitive training to instill effective operational habits.
• 00:13:14-00:14:20: Insights into manufacturing practices in the US compared to Germany and Japan, stressing continuous improvement.
• 00:16:36-00:17:19: Scott discusses creating a culture of continuous improvement and the importance of a conducive work environment.
• 00:22:16-00:23:53: Scott shares his experience of driving 100% growth year over year at a fast-growing company, highlighting the role of operational excellence.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;21;14
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Scott Springer. he's the founder of the Cherrywood Consulting Group. And when Scott was coming on the podcast, I was really looking forward to this because he's an operations guy. that's not a strength of mine. And we haven't had many guests from that. And one of the things in Scott's background is he saw a company achieve five years, five sequential years of 100% growth per year.

00;01;21;16 - 00;01;36;01
Craig Andrews
And be able to scale an operation like that is just amazing. So listening, I think there's going to be some great insights for whatever type of business that you have. And so Scott, welcome.

00;01;36;03 - 00;01;39;12
Scott Springer
Oh thank you. I'm glad to be here. Excited about it.

00;01;39;14 - 00;01;59;13
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So I you were telling me that kind of early in your career, you, you were actually trying to get away from, operations. You had started off in manufacturing, and you're like, okay, I'm done with this. And somehow that you just kind of boomeranged back, but at a higher level.

00;01;59;15 - 00;02;16;21
Scott Springer
Yeah. so I was started on my career. I went to the Naval Academy. I was in the Navy when I got out of the Navy. They recommended me to go into manufacturing. Went into manufacturing. You know, I was in manufacturing, what, six, eight years or so. And then I was going to start my own business. I always had just like serial entrepreneur attitude.

00;02;16;21 - 00;02;34;15
Scott Springer
Right. But I had a headhunter call me to be a plant manager at a bungie plant in Modesto, California. and, you know, me and my wife were kind of debating back and forth, you know, job security, plant manager, crazy entrepreneur, lifestyle, you know, which one do we go with? And, you know, we decided I had a business.

00;02;34;15 - 00;02;53;16
Scott Springer
We kind of sold it to, you know, one of my operators. And we, decided to take the plant manager role. And that was my first true leadership and manufacturing role. You know, other than being like a team leader, Coca-Cola before that. But it was like it was a total turnaround. You know, I was hired because the plant manager was fired.

00;02;53;16 - 00;03;14;16
Scott Springer
The warehouse manager was fired. It was one of the worst operating plants at the time in North America. a lot of injuries, you know, permanent disability on the one guy. And, I had to come in and, you know, try to apply everything I learned. And I was young in my career. Figure it out, turn the plant around, and we did it.

00;03;14;18 - 00;03;27;19
Scott Springer
I think I was telling you earlier, day three. I'm driving someone to the hospital. You know, it's my third day on the job. And here's someone in the front seat of my pickup truck bleeding on the way to the emergency room. Because it was just an unsafe plant at that time.

00;03;27;21 - 00;03;29;25
Craig Andrews
Oh my goodness, what happened?

00;03;29;28 - 00;03;48;12
Scott Springer
Well, it was just, poor procedures for leadership of the at the time, and she actually got her hand caught in a conveyor. if you've ever seen a conveyor in a manufacturing plant, if you can imagine, she had her hand underneath the belt of the conveyor caught in the sprocket, and I get called out to the floor.

00;03;48;12 - 00;04;07;18
Scott Springer
And when I see your hand in there, I'm thinking there's not going to be fingers on that when it comes out, you know. And they got everybody's gathered around, you're taking the belt apart. And, she actually she was fine. She had all of our fingers. Didn't even break a bone, believe it or not. just a bunch of cuts and lacerations and stitches on her hand was all she needed.

00;04;07;21 - 00;04;15;01
Scott Springer
But, you know, got her hand out, wrapped it up, immediately, raced to the emergency room, and, she turned out fine. You know.

00;04;15;04 - 00;04;37;09
Craig Andrews
Like you, you know, talking about going in and and saving a failing operation. It's. I mean, it's a bold move. I mean, I was thinking about the, Yeah, I saw a story recently about a ship, its, naval ship tying in, the and, it was where they call them a landing dock or something. That's basically where.

00;04;37;09 - 00;04;38;03
Scott Springer
They. Yeah.

00;04;38;04 - 00;05;01;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah, where they shoot Marines out the back. Yeah. And, and she was the third commander relieved of duty in, like, less than five years. And it's one of those things where, you know, if I've been. Yeah, you look at that and be able to walk into something, they're been failing. That's it's not exactly an exciting proposition for me.

00;05;01;26 - 00;05;02;20
Craig Andrews
It is

00;05;02;22 - 00;05;18;03
Scott Springer
It is not for. And what's funny is, like, I turn that plan around, we end up being, like, one of the hallmark plants of the company. Then they asked me to take over a couple other plants. I'm a director over three plants. Turn those plants around, go to a fourth plant, you know. And that one I actually had trouble with.

00;05;18;03 - 00;05;39;04
Scott Springer
There was a 50 year old plant. Not one. I could never get completely turned around. And then after that, I was just headhunted to position the position, the position to turn places around. I became the turnaround guy, you know, and I would go in and I was first that first 1 to 2 years. It is stressful, long hours getting a place turned around.

00;05;39;07 - 00;05;45;15
Craig Andrews
I would bet that there are some common issues, some themes that you find again and again and again.

00;05;45;17 - 00;06;04;08
Scott Springer
Yeah, it's all it's a combination in any plant. It's people, processes and equipment. Right. So do you have the right people in the right positions? do you need to get new people that you got to train people up? You know, always try to promote from within if you can. unfortunately, some people get stuck in old habits, bad ways.

00;06;04;08 - 00;06;20;29
Scott Springer
And, you know, unfortunately, sometimes you got to move them out. Not too often. No, most and 95% of the time we're able to, like, retrain people, move them up, and then the other thing is it's a lot of process and bad processes. And then people are blaming, you know, managers and supervisors are blaming the people because of the bad processes.

00;06;20;29 - 00;06;37;05
Scott Springer
It's like, no, no, no, 95%, 99% of the time people are good people and they're doing what they're told or incentivized to do and then fix and fix the processes and things start working, and then it's just dialing in the equipment, you know? Yeah.

00;06;37;07 - 00;06;46;06
Craig Andrews
Well, you know, one of the things I've learned over the years is if it's possible for somebody to do something wrong, eventually they will do it.

00;06;46;06 - 00;07;09;11
Scott Springer
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The whole, you know, the joke all along was don't idiot proof because I'll just make a better idiot, right. You know. We we joke right about that. But you can, you know, you get to the point where you rely on people, you delegate down, you, you know, give them some authority, and then they make the right decisions most of the time.

00;07;09;13 - 00;07;22;26
Scott Springer
Yeah, but you got to train them to do it. They don't they don't just naturally do it. They weren't taught it in high school. You know they're not taught it in college. Right. That's stuff they gotta learn on the on the shop floor. You know, in the job.

00;07;22;29 - 00;07;36;01
Craig Andrews
And that's a really good point. And, you know, I'll tell you a weakness of mine. I've largely compensated for it. But I have this belief in my head that once I've told somebody something, once they've heard it, I don't need to repeat it.

00;07;36;04 - 00;07;54;24
Scott Springer
Yeah, that that's probably the biggest gap in leadership and management in manufacturing. You do you think? Well, I told that person it's like, well, how many times did you tell them, did you follow up. You know, it takes like, you know, everybody's different amounts maybe take like three weeks to make a habit. So you gotta follow up every single day for three weeks before it becomes a habit.

00;07;54;27 - 00;08;16;18
Scott Springer
Some people say it's five weeks. Some people say it's three months. You know, it depends on the person and the habit. You're trying to change. But just because you tell them once, yeah, 90% of the time they're not going to do it. You gotta follow up every day. You gotta talk to them consistently. You know, encourage them, coach them, and then then eventually they'll change their habit or change the way they're doing things.

00;08;16;20 - 00;08;33;11
Craig Andrews
Any tips on how to have that be more coaching and less badgering, you know, so picture picturing the the you know, the the worker who sees you come in like, jeez, here comes Scott again. I know he's like, I can just play the tape. Hey, Scott, I'm going to play the tape. I'm gonna. How do you find that line?

00;08;33;11 - 00;08;34;24
Craig Andrews
How do you do it? Slowly.

00;08;34;26 - 00;08;58;00
Scott Springer
There's there's a couple things is you're not necessarily talking about the actual process. You're talking about the goal. Right. And so let's say in a manufacturing plant the goal could be we want zero quality mistakes. Right. And you want to actually called a term called pokey okay. Like what can we do to absolutely make sure that you never make a mistake because you will make a mistake, you know, and I, I tell people you're going to make mistakes.

00;08;58;00 - 00;09;18;03
Scott Springer
Everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes, right? But what can we do to make sure that we don't make a mistake and don't make it about the person, make it about the process and what the goal is, you know, so the goal is higher productivity. The goal is, you know, better quality products with less rework. goal is, you know, more shipments on time.

00;09;18;03 - 00;09;35;02
Scott Springer
Whatever the goal is, depending on what department you're talking to and focus on the goal, not the person. And if you don't focus on the person, then it becomes they become less defensive, right? They become more cooperative or collaborative to try to achieve the goal, whatever that is.

00;09;35;04 - 00;09;55;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and you know, when you were talking about repetition, so you were in the Navy, I was in the Marines. And, you know, we spent two weeks at the rifle range in boot camp, and the first week we were sitting around these 55 gallon drums with targets painted on them, and they would have us recite things about, you know, how we were aiming at the target.

00;09;55;08 - 00;10;04;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah. We spent an entire week dry firing at a 55 gallon drum. Yeah. And was just getting the reps. And so it became a habit.

00;10;04;14 - 00;10;23;05
Scott Springer
Yeah, yeah, it it is a repetition. So it becomes a habit. You know, once it becomes a habit, the old ways go away. And that repetition does work. You know. And if people understand why you're talking to them every day, why you're going through the repetitions on the rifle range, because I was I was a rifle instructor in the Navy for one summer, too.

00;10;23;07 - 00;10;47;26
Scott Springer
So it's the same, very similar thing. And, when I was at the Naval Academy and it was that was a lot of fun. but you follow the same methodology in manufacturing or in business. It was like you have the desired process or procedure. You have your desired goals designed to process to achieve those goals, and then just keep repetitive following up with people until it just becomes a habit and you don't have to follow up anymore.

00;10;47;27 - 00;11;08;02
Scott Springer
Maybe check occasionally to make sure people haven't veered away and even if they veered away, maybe there's a reason. You know, it's not that they got you know, people always say they got lazy. It's like, oh, let's double check. Make sure they're not. It could be a reason why they're not following the procedure or process, but sometimes it just they reverted back to their old way or they've taken a shortcut.

00;11;08;04 - 00;11;09;03
Scott Springer
Yeah.

00;11;09;06 - 00;11;18;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now one of the things one of my passions is seeing manufacturing come back to the U.S., I just it haunts me.

00;11;18;28 - 00;11;20;16
Scott Springer
Absolutely.

00;11;20;18 - 00;11;36;11
Craig Andrews
And and especially now that, you know, China's beating the war drums. You know, I don't know if you know this, but 90% of CMOs chips worldwide are made on the coast of Taiwan, next to flat land where it's easy to land tens of thousands of troops.

00;11;36;13 - 00;11;45;23
Scott Springer
Oh, I know they're made in Taiwan. I didn't realize they were like, flat land in the factories. Right. But it makes sense because you're going to build factories on flat land, not in the mountains, right up.

00;11;45;25 - 00;12;00;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah. I mean, literally in one day, if China decide to land on Taiwan literally in one day, they could control most of the CMOs fabrication, capability worldwide. Yeah. And one guy.

00;12;00;28 - 00;12;09;07
Scott Springer
I knew that about Taiwan, I didn't realize it was like that easily accessible by China to actually take over the factories. That's interesting.

00;12;09;10 - 00;12;35;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah, it's I mean, I've been by those factories and it's like within one within a one mile radius. You just have all this global capacity. And so that's one reason why we should bring it back. But the other reason is I, I mean, I don't buy into this mentality that we're going to be a service economy. I Germany is the number two exporter in the world.

00;12;35;08 - 00;12;39;26
Craig Andrews
And if Germany can figure out how to do it, we should we should be ahead of Germany.

00;12;39;29 - 00;12;42;25
Scott Springer
Yeah. So go ahead.

00;12;42;28 - 00;12;54;02
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No. So what? Yeah. Counting up to you. What what would you tell businesses that are debating, you know, do I manufacturing in the U.S.. Do I do manufacture offshore.

00;12;54;05 - 00;13;14;06
Scott Springer
You can almost I mean I would say nine times out of ten you can manufacture cheaper in the US if you follow good manufacturing processes. Right. I don't when I go around from factory to factory around the US, I don't think we're good at manufacturing. Right. And in a lot of factories, we could be. It's not hard. You know, I was able to turn plants back on, like world class.

00;13;14;08 - 00;13;41;16
Scott Springer
I just go visit some German plants, go visit some Japanese plants. Some Taiwanese plants actually go in and look at the difference when you walk through a factory in Germany or Italy or Japan, versus when you walk through a plant in the US. There's a big difference. You'll you notice it right away. It's a different level of safety, a different level of focus on quality, different level on continuous improvement, where every day I want to improve.

00;13;41;18 - 00;14;02;21
Scott Springer
I think sometimes in some U.S. factories are like, yeah, we're made in the USA, we're great. But then they don't try to get better. You got to have that continuous improvement, constantly be getting better and better and better. Because if you don't, somebody well, somebody will. Somebody is in the world, you know, because we have more of a global economy.

00;14;02;21 - 00;14;20;01
Scott Springer
You're competing with everybody, not just the US. There is somebody who is getting better every single day. And if you don't get better every single day, you will no longer be first place. You will get better. So you got to keep getting better every single day, especially if you get towards the top, you know, you get top 10%.

00;14;20;01 - 00;14;27;26
Scott Springer
You better be trying harder because people are trying. Now you're the target, right? People trying to get better than you.

00;14;27;28 - 00;14;36;09
Craig Andrews
You know, the the one thing you can know for certain is if you're number one in your market, there's almost certainly somebody that's hungrier than you.

00;14;36;11 - 00;14;44;27
Scott Springer
Yes. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. If you're not continually improving, why you're number one, you won't be number one for long because someone will pass you up.

00;14;44;29 - 00;15;05;08
Craig Andrews
You know, about five years ago, I started talking about Google, how I felt like we were witnessing the apex of Google. And, you know, people are talking about breaking them up. Google is a mess right now. They're and there's I don't believe their search engine is the best search engine in the world anymore. And, it's starting to get noticed more broadly.

00;15;05;08 - 00;15;35;07
Craig Andrews
And, you know, they got beaten by, ChatGPT and Bing. And so they threw in their AI summaries, and these AI summaries are telling kids to play in the streets or telling you to drink two liters of urine every day. I mean, they're just coming up with these horrible answers, and. But it's that concept where what I was saying, they seemed distracted about 5 or 6 years ago, I, I felt like Google had lost taking their eye off the ball.

00;15;35;10 - 00;15;46;07
Craig Andrews
And the ball used to be shut up for work every day and make the best search engine in the world. And I felt like they got distracted. And I think we're starting to see them fall from glory.

00;15;46;10 - 00;16;07;15
Scott Springer
Yeah, yeah. Just because you get lacks a day. So when you become number one or number two, like it's a general tendency for businesses to be lax a days ago. And I think it's a job with like the CEO, president, you know, the leaders of the company to constantly set new goals and reinvent themselves to stay ahead. And I think they get casual about it.

00;16;07;15 - 00;16;10;18
Scott Springer
And then that's where that's when the fall starts.

00;16;10;20 - 00;16;36;10
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So come back to manufacturing in the US. What do you so having a spirit of continuous improvement, having a culture of continuous improvement, what would be other things that you would tell businesses they need to do to bring manufacturing back to the US and have it be cost effective?

00;16;36;12 - 00;16;53;28
Scott Springer
You got to create a good culture. Okay, so you got a culture of continuous improvement, but just a general culture where people actually like to come into work and kind of enjoy it a little bit, you know, and there's a lot of things. I mean, I could talk for hours on this, you know, but there's a lot of things to do.

00;16;53;28 - 00;17;19;18
Scott Springer
Just make it a place people want to come to work and be proud they're working. Their part of it is showing goals and achievements and sharing what the business is doing with people. Inclusion of the employees. Right. The other thing that we do, and part of it is because of our generally lower salary range compared to other world, you know, everybody says we're higher than other countries, but we're actually generally lower.

00;17;19;20 - 00;17;46;02
Scott Springer
you look at like Germany, much higher base rate. They're dominating in manufacturing. So they automate more. They're able to automate stuff. A lot of times it's hard to justify some automation in the US because the base rate of somebody doing it manually, you can't justify it. You know, when you run your financial analysis, it's like it's on the fringe of whether it's worth buying that robot to replace a person or two people or whatever the automation is.

00;17;46;05 - 00;18;00;23
Scott Springer
So you end up having people doing it manually. People make mistakes when somebody is doing something a thousand times a day manually, there's going to be mistakes. When you automated, you know, get those mistakes right. As often, you know, you still get some mistakes, but not as much. Right?

00;18;00;26 - 00;18;01;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;18;01;27 - 00;18;27;20
Scott Springer
And so I think a lot of people, they look at tech, we do it to ourselves. We look at we're looking for the quarterly return, the quarterly cash flow, the quarterly balance sheet. And a lot of companies are resistant to invest in process and automation to make a better product, to make a more consistent product, to make a lower cost product, you know, unit cost.

00;18;27;22 - 00;18;34;23
Scott Springer
And, we end up paying the high, you know, having armies of people doing manual work and a lot of factories.

00;18;34;25 - 00;18;46;20
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. You know, and another downside, I say about shipping things off to Asia, especially China's. Once your IP gets over there, it's and the genie's out of the box.

00;18;46;24 - 00;19;08;22
Scott Springer
they steal it. Yeah, they steal it right away, without a doubt. Yeah. You know, they they share it amongst themselves. You know, they might have a sister company that you don't know about and they're, you know, their company won't sell to somebody else because you signed an NDA with them, but they share the technology with somebody else who then can sell it to everybody using your technology and process.

00;19;08;22 - 00;19;29;18
Scott Springer
Right. The only time I would say, you know, China is good. China does some good manufacturing in some areas. Right. But it's that low cost, low, low tech stuff. They're, they're good at I mean they can dominate it that when you're looking at the high tech where you have IP, you don't want to send it to China because it's it'll be global in no time.

00;19;29;18 - 00;19;31;17
Scott Springer
They'll share it with everybody.

00;19;31;19 - 00;19;55;23
Craig Andrews
Well and I've seen that I mean I used to I used to be in the semiconductor world semiconductors for mobile phones. Okay. And and, you know, there's a, part called power amplifier. That's the thing that amplifies your signal. So it's strong enough to get back to the base station. And that had been something that would have been dominated by U.S. companies for, for decades, just because of our technology.

00;19;55;25 - 00;20;27;24
Craig Andrews
And one of the companies I worked for, set up shop in Beijing. And sure enough, they had people stealing, stealing IP out of our shop in Beijing. Yeah. Now they have a competitor based in Beijing. Yeah, a a technology that the Chinese. Nobody outside the U.S. a little bit in Japan. Yeah, a little bit in Japan. you know, 1 or 2 companies in Japan and like three companies in the US had dominated this for decades.

00;20;27;27 - 00;20;31;10
Craig Andrews
And now they have a Chinese competitor because they let the IP go over there.

00;20;31;13 - 00;20;59;10
Scott Springer
You know, and it's interesting if you think about it. So when I was getting my MBA many years ago and a lot of quite a few people in our class who were from China getting their MBA in the US the way they think, it's obviously different than us. Okay. So in the US, if you have this IP technology and if you were to go share it with a competitor illegally, it's like unethical, you know, you might be able to legally do it and be able to get away with it, but it's still considered unethical, right?

00;20;59;13 - 00;21;09;11
Scott Springer
When you go to China because of their culture and the way they've been raised for the last hundred years, you know, even before the Communist revolution in 1904, you know, but let's just say 100 years.

00;21;09;13 - 00;21;09;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;21;09;28 - 00;21;25;07
Scott Springer
If they don't share it with their society, it's considered unethical in their culture. I actually the way that that's the way they think, you know, they want, you know, it's better for the global world. It's better for all their people. If they were to share this with everybody.

00;21;25;10 - 00;21;47;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I actually tie it back to Confucius ism that you can find. And that's way older than 100 years. And that's not unique to China, right? yeah. Japan is kind of a bizarre country that that's the your IPS safest. And as far as Asia, your IPS safest in Japan than any other any other country in Asia. Yeah.

00;21;47;21 - 00;22;04;29
Scott Springer
And that's the way they're raised. Their raised, you know, community first. And, you know, to society first over yourself. And that's just the way they do business. And I don't blame them. It's just you got to be aware of it and you got to be cautious when dealing with them.

00;22;05;01 - 00;22;16;13
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So you had this this one company that you joined and you ran five years, 100% year on year growth.

00;22;16;15 - 00;22;40;16
Scott Springer
Yeah. So, vital protein. So was a great company. I, you know, I get a call from a headhunter. Hey, they're looking for a VP of ops small company, and I didn't know if I want to go work for a small company. You know, it's a smaller company. I probably. I think it's small scope. Ever started working in, you know, the size of the company and, interviewing with the owner, and he's like, you know, curbside checkers, genius guy, very smart.

00;22;40;18 - 00;22;56;21
Scott Springer
and they were growing fast already. You know, it wasn't me causing it to grow up. They were already growing fast, but they were outstripping their manufacturing supply chain. They were going to build a brand new factory there. You know, finalizing the lease for this new facility. They know if I want to go with the small company. Of course, I didn't believe he was going to grow 100% a year.

00;22;56;24 - 00;23;12;17
Scott Springer
You know, previous companies, you know, I got sales people. Yeah. If you fix operations, we're going to be able to grow 20% a year. And they never do. They never did it. Any place I worked at it, they always like had another excuse why they couldn't grow sales 20% when they fixed places, so I don't I did personally I didn't think he was going to 100%.

00;23;12;17 - 00;23;33;26
Scott Springer
I probably even told him that right. But the thing that enticed me was I was able to I was going to get a blank slate on building a manufacturing site. Previously, I always inherited like sites that were poorly designed, poorly laid out, or just not optimal. You know, sometimes you report, but just not optimal things I would have done differently to make it more efficient.

00;23;33;28 - 00;23;53;17
Scott Springer
And I was getting a clean slate. We were getting a building with four walls and columns, and I could design every room. I could design the lines, I could design everything inside the factory. And that's what really had me go there to be able to do that, you know, you know, and, and it's like, yeah, maybe we will grow 100% a year and that'll be great.

00;23;53;20 - 00;24;01;25
Scott Springer
And we did. We grew 100% a year. And I got to design a factory and try to keep up with everything. It was it was a crazy time, especially the first couple years.

00;24;01;27 - 00;24;09;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, there's I mean, anything like that. There's always some crazy ups story, some thing just.

00;24;09;23 - 00;24;30;09
Scott Springer
Oh yeah. Yeah, I, I'm going to write a book on them someday, you know, on all the different stories, especially that first year. So like, when I take over, it's like we're behind on everything or processes that are laid out with our equipment where the exceeding the capacity of our current small, tiny factory, and I'm like, new factory is not going to be built for a year.

00;24;30;11 - 00;24;51;06
Scott Springer
And so we started immediately going out to all these cold manufacturers. So we were running at 100%, you know, like why I 100%. It was 20 hours a day, six days a week. We were running, we gave Sundays off and then we had four hours a night for cleanup. We had a cleaning crew come in, but then we had to go to car manufacturers, and we're like, bringing in almost a coal manufacturer a month.

00;24;51;08 - 00;25;11;05
Scott Springer
Within the first year or two, we got our new factory built, you know, and then our new factory was going to have a handle that capacity, no problem. And, one of the funny stories I remember we were going into Costco. Costco. It's huge. And loading into Costco, like, we already loaded in on Costco, off our own manufacturing for a few regions, but we're going to go into more regions.

00;25;11;12 - 00;25;27;09
Scott Springer
And so we had to get a car manufacturer that was going to make it for us for a few months that we built our new factory. And, I don't know, I mentioned the name of the manufacturer, so I had a supply chain person who was not performing well, and I kind of had to demote and move them over.

00;25;27;09 - 00;25;44;19
Scott Springer
And I said, okay, here's your one job. You need to go to this car manufacturer and you just need to every day be there from when they start to when they finish, look at the bottles every 30 minutes, make sure they're making it right, make sure the quality's good. The seals label all that, all the quality checked. You're going to be a quality person.

00;25;44;21 - 00;26;07;13
Scott Springer
No problem, no problem. Scott, we can do this and so weeks ago buying and making this stuff and we're getting these truckloads in a product from them. And we had a whole warehouses full of these large blue tubs. Right. Like this size tub. I mean, just hundreds of feet in each direction, just rows and rows of this product with little narrow two foot.

00;26;07;13 - 00;26;25;03
Scott Springer
I also you can walk through and count them. And I'm sitting in my office one day and, Andre is one of our quality supervisors. He comes in and he's just like this white look in his face. He's like, Scott, we got a problem. I'm like, what is like, all the Costco cans are burnt seals. I'm like, all of them.

00;26;25;03 - 00;26;44;28
Scott Springer
He's like, well, no, but five out of every six. I was like, there's no way they burn. I'm like, the guy was there every day inspecting and I don't see his name. Right. And so I'm like, I got to see this. Okay. So whatever meeting I was in, I stopped, walked out there with Andre. You know, we go out there and we look and sure enough we open up five out of every six and they're burnt seals.

00;26;45;00 - 00;26;48;24
Scott Springer
And I'm like, oh my God. And we're loading in the Costco. Like in a couple of weeks.

00;26;48;26 - 00;26;49;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;26;49;12 - 00;27;05;28
Scott Springer
You know, and I'm like, my heart's racing. I didn't sleep for like 2 or 3 days. I was just like the total adrenaline I was just have to call the boss, let them know. It's like, okay, we got a problem. By tomorrow, we'll have a plan and we'll get this fixed right? You know, and he's just like, what do you mean all.

00;27;05;28 - 00;27;31;14
Scott Springer
But I'm like, telling you, Kurt, I saw it. They're all burnt, right? You know. And so next day there's Kurt, right? And I'm pretty tall. I'm like six foot two. He's like six, three, six, four like an inch or two taller. Me, we're both pretty tall. And I got a brand new director of supply chain, a sort of working for me like that week, usually that week or the week before he just started, you know, he, like, inherited this mess with me.

00;27;31;16 - 00;27;55;17
Scott Springer
and and he's shorter. He's like five foot five, five foot six. So we're out there encouraged, like, let me see how these burn cans. So we go walking out there and somehow we got into a position where it was like, me, Vince and Kurt in this narrow aisle. So vintage between me and Kurt and me and Kurt, we are passionately heated, yelling at each other, not mad at each other, mad at the situation voices are raising, and we're yelling over the top of Vince's head, right.

00;27;55;20 - 00;28;00;27
Scott Springer
It just started like, I think it's his first time meeting Kurt. Even.

00;28;00;29 - 00;28;01;09
Craig Andrews
I mean.

00;28;01;12 - 00;28;15;15
Scott Springer
I'm like, Kurt, I'm telling you, they're all burning. Yeah. We started opening up cans. He just opened up a can, and I'm like, this better be a burn, see? Right. Because if he opened up wanted, it wasn't burnt. You know, he's like, that's not. But sure enough, the first one he opened up is burnt. The second one you open up is burnt.

00;28;15;15 - 00;28;31;17
Scott Springer
I'm like you'll find one out of six. That's good. That's our average age. It's like he's like, what are we going to do? I'm like, we're figuring it out. We got meetings later on today and we ended up like, we figured it out. We worked. We worked a lot, made some more, loaded in on time. no issues.

00;28;31;17 - 00;28;58;06
Scott Springer
But that Vince always talks about. It's like, here I am, like the first week and I got the guys, you know, my boss is yelling over the top of his head, and he's like, he can't go anywhere. He's stuck between me and Kurt, just wedged between us and, you know, and we spent the next few days just trying to figure out, sorted through what right can we rework these are where can we make more, you know, to make sure we were loading into Costco on time and we were able to do were able to get it done.

00;28;58;08 - 00;29;01;27
Craig Andrews
Wow. That's amazing. You know you're talking to.

00;29;02;01 - 00;29;08;05
Scott Springer
70,000 cans. Do I mean it was not up to you.

00;29;08;08 - 00;29;40;25
Craig Andrews
but, you know, I think those are the opportunities to really make things shine, you know, and that's the opportunities to, you know, I think people quickly forget that there's no such thing as a perfect company. There's no such thing as a perfect supplier. Right. And and so when these things happen, you know, it's it's the perfect suppliers, actually somebody that can have something go horribly wrong and quickly create a plan to you have to correct it.

00;29;40;27 - 00;29;44;01
Scott Springer
Yeah. And they, they tell you it went wrong before you discover it.

00;29;44;03 - 00;29;44;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;29;44;18 - 00;29;57;17
Scott Springer
They tell you how they're going to fix it. They fix it and they fix it in their time line that they decided those are the great suppliers, the ones that hide it and try to sneak it through you. Those are the ones you got to get rid of. Yeah. Right.

00;29;57;20 - 00;30;04;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And I'm picturing a couple of examples in my past.

00;30;04;09 - 00;30;21;24
Scott Springer
Gets a weird spinning of all the times that that happened because, yeah, like you said, people don't they get caught in their company in anything. Oh, we're having these problems, but nobody else is. Yeah. Because you don't read about it in the paper. But everybody is having those problems. The best companies in the world have problems all the time.

00;30;21;26 - 00;30;37;17
Scott Springer
Yeah. And but they just they recover faster and they, they learn from their mistakes. They fail forward where other people fail backwards, you know, they try to hide it or they don't try to fix the problem. They're they're like covering it up and hiding it. Those are the ones that aren't going to succeed.

00;30;37;19 - 00;31;01;12
Craig Andrews
You know, when I was in the semiconductor world, why am I when my customers with Siemens in Germany and I had a, I had GM that would promise anything they asked for knowing he couldn't deliver on it. When he made the promise. And it became my job to go tell the Germans we were going to fall short on on what we promised.

00;31;01;15 - 00;31;24;10
Craig Andrews
And sadly, I got very, very good at it. But it's what you were talking about. It's you won. You don't lie, you know? Two you just you make sure they know as soon as possible. Yeah. with the Germans, if you can point to some systematic, failure, something in your system that failed. Yeah. They just love that they eat that up, you know?

00;31;24;10 - 00;31;33;25
Craig Andrews
Hey, here's, here's here's the process that failed us. Here's what we're doing to change that process. Here's what we're doing to close the gap between what we promised we would do and what we're doing.

00;31;33;28 - 00;31;54;14
Scott Springer
The Japanese, Germans, Italians are fantastic at adopting. And this is what when I go out and I talk to people and all the plants I worked at you, the Toyota Manufacturing process where you're continuously improving, focus on the process, not the people you know. I hate when a supplier sends me a corrective action report for an issue they had to like.

00;31;54;17 - 00;32;20;25
Scott Springer
We retrain the people, it's like, No, it was like it was probably a process issue and you're blaming the people and that's always a yellow flag, a red flag for me. You know once in a while it is the person. Most of the time it's not you know usually it's a process related. And that's why the Germans I mean that's why they're so good at manufacturing, like you said earlier in the call, it's because it's like, what's the process, what's the improvement to the process you're making?

00;32;21;00 - 00;32;22;24
Scott Springer
And that's why they excel.

00;32;22;26 - 00;32;42;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should be ahead to Germany. I think we should be ahead even ahead of China. As you know, we should be. We should only take it as a minor consolation that we're number two exporter in the world. We should absolutely be that, I believe. And, we just need to get back.

00;32;42;24 - 00;32;54;28
Scott Springer
I think people use the excuse that wages are lower elsewhere, and that's why they're beating us. And to me, that's an excuse. You know.

00;32;55;00 - 00;32;56;29
Craig Andrews
I got an example of that.

00;32;57;01 - 00;32;59;02
Scott Springer
so I went to. Yeah.

00;32;59;04 - 00;33;18;14
Craig Andrews
semiconductor world. everybody knows semiconductors are manufactured in assembled in Asia. And I had a I was in charge of a product. I inherited it, you know, I joined the company and they're like, okay, here's your product. And it was we were getting killed on on margins. And I kept saying, well, we need to work on the cost.

00;33;18;19 - 00;33;42;29
Craig Andrews
And they're like, oh, we already tried. Not possible. And eventually I got them to agree to let me put an assembly dock out to a, supplier in Colorado, an assembly house in Colorado, Assembly house in Colorado came back and quoted half the price that we were paying in in Asia to do exactly. And I'd used them with my previous company.

00;33;42;29 - 00;33;58;08
Craig Andrews
They could handle high volume. they were very, very good. And so. Right. There's an example. If we could do something as simple and menial as assembly of semiconductors cheaper in Colorado than in Asia, we should be doing more of that in the US.

00;33;58;11 - 00;34;22;12
Scott Springer
Oh, absolutely. Always like I I'm a big NAFTA fan. So I think anywhere in North America helps the US, whether it's Mexico, Canada, US, we all there's so much synergies between those two countries. And a good example I had I saw I was in a plant was a plant manager years ago and one guy he was working for us and we're in a plant meeting, and he's talking about how low labor in Mexico and export labor.

00;34;22;12 - 00;34;38;11
Scott Springer
That's how I lost my job. Right. And we get into this discussion. You know what? I'm digging into the facts and I'm doing this in front of like 70 people, right. You know, and I don't know where this conversation is going to go. So this guy is working in a factory in the US and they shut it down and exported it to Mexico.

00;34;38;13 - 00;35;01;08
Scott Springer
Right. Quote unquote Mexico. We're like, okay. And when we dig in deeper, we find out that in the plant in the US, because of, you know, union pushback and all this, they had 12 people running the line, right? They had 12 people making it very manual process, very low quality. They build a plant in Mexico and move it down there.

00;35;01;10 - 00;35;24;20
Scott Springer
The same basically the same manufacturing line automated. It was only two people and nothing to do with the hourly rate of those people. It was the resistance of the people in the factory to automate that got the plant shut down. And then they just, you know, where are we going to build? Well, we ship a lot to Mexico, and let's build a plant in Mexico and let's automate it and make it very automated.

00;35;24;22 - 00;35;31;12
Scott Springer
And they went from they went from a dozen or 15 people down to two making the same amount of product.

00;35;31;15 - 00;35;32;28
Craig Andrews
Wow.

00;35;33;01 - 00;35;50;00
Scott Springer
You know, it's like what a cost savings, you know, and it has nothing to do with the hourly labor rate. The total labor rate was, you know, a fraction, you know, two over 15, you know, 10% of what it was, but had nothing to do with the hourly rate in that situation. You know, sometimes it is the hourly rate.

00;35;50;00 - 00;35;57;00
Scott Springer
But there was because just the resistance of the factory to automate was what pushed it out.

00;35;57;03 - 00;36;15;20
Craig Andrews
You know, Scott, you know, I could go on for another hour. This is such a crazy discussion. I'm really enjoying it. But we do need to wrap up. Okay. so again, your company is the Elwood Consulting Group. How did people reach you?

00;36;15;23 - 00;36;37;14
Scott Springer
they can reach me with, by my email. Scott at Chatwood group.com. It's l wood group. Dot com. Or they can go to the website, find me there. you know, there's a contact, there's, ways to book interviews at WWE. Joe Wood group.com.

00;36;37;17 - 00;36;41;09
Craig Andrews
Okay. Well, Scott, thanks for being on leaders in leg seats and.

00;36;41;11 - 00;36;46;04
Scott Springer
Thanks for having me here. It was great discussion.

00;36;46;04 - 00;37;15;02
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;37;15;04 - 00;37;38;14
Craig Andrews
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00;37;38;16 - 00;39;49;00
Craig Andrews
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