Description
Key Learnings
- Learn how to break big problems up into sprints
- Learn how to implement simple processes to help manage customer involvement in product development
- Discover how Fusion 360 can help with agile manufacturing
- Discover key areas that could help you on the road to agile manufacturing
Speaker
BRETT COTTLE: Welcome, everyone this morning to my class on the road to agile manufacturing with the help of Fusion 360. I am a new AU speaker. I came to AU last year, really enjoyed the experience. And I thought it'd be really cool to be able to come back and share a little bit about what myself and my company do in New Zealand, and how some of what we've learned through our road into agile manufacturing could potentially benefit some of the people at Autodesk University.
So to get started, little bit about me. I am the CEO of Vertigo Technologies at the moment. I have a bunch of other co-founders. I was the one who drew the short straw and ended up as CEO. It's a very challenging, but very rewarding job, and I've learned a lot. I originally came from the production industry, and I was a systems technician solving problems on large-scale events.
So I did that for about seven or eight years. [? So ?] [? running ?] around where time's a problem, and you need to be able to solve things and get things working because the show must go on, at the end of the day. So I'm used to standing behind the screen, not in front of it. That's all right. We'll see how we get on.
I thought I'd just explain a little bit about-- put a little bit of a video to you guys about my company and Vertigo Technologies, and what we do. We're a really open company in how we operate. We share everything we do. We don't put patents on anything we do. We're all about we've got the next best idea already stored away, so we know that if someone else comes along and was to copy what we're doing right now, well, great maybe that [INAUDIBLE] and we've already got another idea that we're going to pick up and be able to carry on with.
And that's the whole point of agile, and that's the whole point of what I want to try and get across today, is it doesn't matter what you create today, as long as you can build systems and structures, and you can build an ecosystem within your business to be able to pivot and create something different tomorrow.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Vertigo Technologies design and develop desktop CNC machines at their HQ in Westport. Being DIYers at heart, Vertigo design and manufacture everything they can in-house, using state-of-the-art technology. By constantly challenging themselves, skilled staff are working to make the machines better, improve the manufacturing process, and continue building a successful company.
CNC machines from Vertigo Tech have found a welcome home in many kiwi businesses, from sign writers through to engineering companies. And Vertigo Technologies is growing fast, as they expand their capability to focus on export markets.
[END PLAYBACK]
BRETT COTTLE: Cool. So just a little bit about us and what we do. As I said before, we are a very open company. So if you guys have got questions during this, I really want this to be a real interactive event. I want you to fire things at me. I really want to share some of our journey. Agile is something that I've become very passionate about.
I didn't know what agile was. We were just doing it anyway, when I first started the business. And it wasn't until we employed a software developer that he came to me and said, hey, actually what you're doing is very agile in how you're managing the business and how you're manufacturing the product. The methodology's behind it, you're just not putting fancy words behind it and terms.
So we do operate in a very lean way, but I'm very careful in saying that because we pull apart these individual methodologies and pick and choose what works for us, because nothing-- not one shoe fits all with every business. So I think for us, it's too easy and I've met too many businesses that say, I'm a lean business or I'm an agile business, just because they've got a couple of Kanban boxes in their workshop, and all of a sudden that makes them lean, when really, unless there's their staff and their team truly, fully believe it and understand how it works, they're not.
What is Agile? Does everyone here know what agile is fundamentally, from a software sense? OK, coo. So agile does come from the software industry. The core values behind agile are being able to deliver value in increments throughout the project, not just at the end.
Most people here, I imagine, have played games, or downloaded software, or even the [INAUDIBLE] Fusion. You pay a price at the beginning, and you're always getting value throughout the lifecycle of that product. And the question is, how can we do that for hardware? Most of us in this room, I imagine, are designers and engineers. And it's a hard thing to do, because you can't just push through another component update or push through another electronic circuit board.
You actually have to be able to justify upselling componentry or push through updates. Or value add is also doing things like providing training or educational material. If you can continuously do that throughout the product's lifecycle, then that's all value add, as well. Breaking work up into small, deliverable chunks-- getting customer feedback and integrating that into the project plan.
At the end of the day, your customers are your business. Without your customers, you wouldn't have a business, so it's incredibly important to be able to integrate what you were doing and the feedback that your customers give you within your project. And being every document that is really important, as well.
Delivering incrementally is something that we have struggled with because we want to get the product perfect right now. But I think, at the end of the day, being able to release a small chunk of something or release something that you know is OK and ready for market-- and you could do so much better, but at the end of the day, it'd be really good to be able to get some feedback from your customers before you go and spend all that extra money in polishing that product of.
So with the product that we develop at the moment, it's a desktop CNC router. The way that we've gone about it is we've developed the machine, the core platform of the machine. We haven't put any fancy software or firmware on it. We've just made it work. It's sort of a minimum quantity of what we could get out there.
Got a bunch of feedback of our customers. Customers came back and said, hey, great product. What about this? What about this? We collect all that feedback, and then that goes into updates, whether that be hardware updates where we sell little modular add-ons that the machines can take, or perhaps the firmware or software updates that we push through, as well.
Part of what we do as a company is we do everything in-house. We've tried very hard from the very beginning to do that. It hasn't been easy at times. We do all our hardware design. We do all of our assembly. We do all our manufacturing, and software, and firmware, and electronics development. And we were only a team of two 18 months ago-- sorry, 2 and 1/2 years ago, when we first started. And now, we're a team of 12 working out of a little town in New Zealand with 5,000 people. So it's possible anywhere in the world to do this.
One of the problems with agile and the way that agile's come-- if there's some software people in the room, they'll realize that agile's become very corporatized. It just means a bunch more paperwork that everyone's got to fill out, and set of standards that you've got to live to. And that's not fun, at the end of the day. Agile was created to try and reduce some of that a little bit and try and break down some of those barriers.
So there's a group at the moment, [? created ?] Modern Agile. Modern Agile is about four key areas. It's about making people awesome, delivering value continuously, making safety a prerequisite, and experiment and learn rapidly. Most of those are fairly self-explanatory. Making people awesome-- at the end of the day, that could be your staff, that could be your customers.
Like I said, your business revolves around your customers and your staff, at the end of the day. You don't have a business, if you don't have staff. You don't have a business, fundamentally, if you don't have customers. And if you can build a product that helps your customers to be awesome, then you're going to have an awesome business and you're going to have-- your business is going to flourish.
Making people also internally, making your staff feel really good about what they're doing, being up to empower your staff-- something that I'm incredibly passionate about is allowing my staff to learn, and fail, and make mistakes. And it's something that a lot of businesses I've walked into, they get the CV of the staff member and go, actually, no, sorry, you can't do this, rather than going, OK, let's see what we can do to make it happen and make you be able to operate the Haas milling machine or the UMC, or whatever it might be. It's about finding ways we have to empower those staff to learn.
And experiment and learn rapidly-- experiencing and learning is part of business fundamentally. It's we need to continuously develop our products. We need to find ways to test something out and fail fast, and then pick ourselves up and try to again. And making safety a prerequisite-- people don't come to work to get hurt. People come to work because they want to do a job, and they want to earn some money and go home and support their families.
And also not just physical safety, but people want to know that, when they do speak up about something-- whether it be something they don't like about the company, or something that they'd like to see changed, or just a general idea-- they want to know that they're not going to walk away from there being laughed at, or they are being put down. I've personally worked in companies before where just perhaps my idea was a little bit silly or stupid, you get laughed at.
And it's not fun being an employee and having that happen to you. And I think a little simple things like that and making sure that every staff member has the opportunity to be heard, they're going to be a lot more focused and a lot more passionate about the business, at the end of the day. And I've already spoken about delivering value continuously, and that is a fundamental fact of this too.
Daily stand-up meetings-- so daily stand-ups are something that we've been doing now for at least the last two years, even when we're only a team of four people. Does everyone here know what stand-up meetings are? Few hands. OK. So stand-up meeting is something that-- it's sort of a toolbox meeting.
Every morning we get together. We all stand around in a circle. Only one person's allowed to talk at a time. Quite often, a lot of companies will do something like, hold the spanner or hold the screwdriver, and only the person that's holding the screwdriver is allowed to talk.
Now, the major point all of those stand-ups is to be able to just have a quick catch up with everyone on the team, be able to give everyone 30, 40 seconds-- or a minute, at the maximum-- of time to be able to talk about what they are up to for that day and also challenges that they've had perhaps the previous day.
Stand-ups is a really great thing. It doesn't take any paperwork to implement. You just go, hey, guys, I want to have a stand-up today. We'll come around in a group. We have a conversation. Someone leads that stand-up and says, these are the things we're going to talk about today.
Stand-ups have been hugely powerful, like I said, to what we're doing. Our staff are very motivated in what they're doing every day. We don't have a [? sit ?] [? chart. ?] I go, hey, you need to do this and you need to do this. All our staff members, when they come to work every day, they know what they've got to do based on what stock has currently run out from the day before, or they've all got set jobs and set tasks that they need to do every day each anyway.
So we've broken up all of our daily routines between the staff. Things like cleaning the [INAUDIBLE] box out on the back of the Haas that's one staff members job. That's what he does every day. And we always rotate that, and make sure that at the end of every month, everyone gets a go to go and do something. It means everyone gets the opportunity to learn these things.
And larger companies, stand-ups can be a little bit difficult. So the way that we work it, sometimes you work it is you'll break it up and you'll have smaller groups throughout the class-- sorry, throughout your company. And then all of the team leaders, they'll all meet and do their own longer stand-up, and they'll give each other a couple of minutes to talk about what the department's doing. But yeah, stand-ups are something that before we did anything else, stand-ups was the first thing that we started doing.
AUDIENCE: I have a question.
BRETT COTTLE: Yeah?
AUDIENCE: What's the purpose of standing up, as opposed to sitting down?
BRETT COTTLE: Because you're doing it in the morning, it's keeping people very active. Quite often, in a lot of workshops, we don't have a whole bunch of seats around. And when people sit down, they slouch. They aren't quite as active. People, when they're standing up, they want to move because they don't want to be standing in one place.
Rather than have long-winded conversations or fall asleep from the chair, they're more likely to get moving a little bit faster. I don't know where the stand-up thing comes from. It's an agile term, again, but it's something that I think works really well. We have actually tried sit-down stand-ups. They don't work as well. And I know that personally, because I'm known to fall asleep in chairs.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: What's that? Sorry.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Yes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Correct, yes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Absolutely. That's it. Yeah, that's right. Cool, so continuous delivery-- continuous delivery, like I said, is something that we've started to do really well at the moment, is being able to build really modular products and be able to continuously deliver on those products. So a lot of our customers, they'll buy a product. They will point out things that they don't like or point out issues. They will be able to submit those issues to us using change request forms, and we'll implement those solutions or those ideas that those customers have had. And we provide all of those modular components as upgrades that the customers can then buy and upgrade to later on.
Releasing educational material-- tips and tricks tutorials. It's something that works really well, as well, as a continuous delivery item. It doesn't have to be the physical product. It doesn't have to be the direct product. It can always be extra material that's complementing that product. But again, it makes customers feel really happy to know that they haven't just bought a product once off and then it becomes last year's news, but that product continues to grow as they grow and learn.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Product development, what we can learn from agile software development-- change control is essential. R&D and production must be separate. That's something that we've had a few challenges around. We don't have a huge workshop. We had R&D became very entwined with our manufacturing, and things do get mixed up.
When you're only making minute changes to something, it's too easy for a staff member to go and grab that component and go and put it on a product, when perhaps it's not tested. So making sure that you find ways to be able to divide your R&D from your direct product manufacturing.
It doesn't take much to do that. The way that we've gone about doing that is, whenever someone is not working on R&D directly, we have R&D boxes for each individual project, and then we have a shelf that those R&D boxes live on. So you load up your thing into that R&D box, it goes in the shelf. That doesn't get removed. It doesn't just get left on a workbench.
Staff empowerment-- staff empowerment, like I said, is one of my most important things, and one of things that I like to get across the most is your staff are your business. Sometimes staff don't feel comfortable in sharing their ideas, and I know I've been in that situation, like I was saying earlier. It is something that we need to work better as humans to try and help.
I've seen that personally. Majority of my staff, they don't have traditional manufacturing backgrounds or engineering backgrounds. Most of my staff come from areas like slicing and dicing [? fish ?] or working on trains. And most of them never thought they'd be in an industry like this, but I would much rather hire someone that has a passion, that doesn't have the skills, than hire someone that's got the skills but no passion.
And skills are easily taught, at the end of the day, and it's something that I've worked really hard to do. So some of the stuff that I've got on paper are very unemployable due to history and backgrounds, and that. But at the end of the day, they're actually some of the most passionate staff I have. And you get out your staff what you put in.
Listen to them. Staff, just sit down and fundamentally listen to them. Every month, I usually put aside at least 5 to 10 minutes with every staff member and just listen and hear what they have to say about life, about what they're up to. I ask them about their kids, or their wives, or their family. And I want to know that, because at the end of the day, if I'm interested in what-- in how they're going, they're going to be a little bit more interested in how I'm going.
It's too often that you get an employee that goes, oh, the boss doesn't really care, at the end of the day. He'll just replace me. But if you can show that you care and you look after your staff, then they're going to look after you. There's nothing worse than having a staff member having a bad day and walking out on you when you needed that staff member on that day. And I'm sure we've all been in workplaces and experienced that sort of thing happening.
Your customer is your most powerful development tool. Develop products they really want, not what you think they want. And this is something that I've touched on a little bit now, and it's very true. The way that we go about developing products is we develop an initial concept. We'll put that initial concept, whether it be to some kind of Facebook poll, and then we'll see what people think.
So the simple thing here that we were asking is, do you think there should be a chamfer around the outside or no chamfer around the outside? Might seem like something silly, but it was amazing to see the sort of response that we got from customers, and customer engagement, and the ideas that they were coming up with around us.
So this device here is a dust boot for us a desktop CNC router. Helps remove the dust. You put it on, connect a dust extractor or a vacuum up to it, and it follows the tool around and helps remove some of that dust. We went through about five or six iterations with this. We went from making polycarbonate ones, to ones out of PVC plastic, and finally settled on an aluminum anodized dust shoe.
So yeah, we're lucky enough that we can do everything in-house. We now do all our anodizing in-house. We do all our machining in-house. Again, we've learned. We don't have anyone in-house that's qualified to do anodizing, per se. Everything that we've done is through research.
And the way that we started anodizing and that is I chose one staff member, and I said, right, OK, you've got an interest in anodizing-- we've talked about it before. What I'd like you to do is spend the next couple of weeks researching it, doing some design, figuring out how we can set up a cost-effective anodizing space. And that staff member went away, spent a bit of time watching YouTube videos, and came back with a really cool anodizing setup that has been fundamental to what we're doing now.
So yeah, Facebook polls. It might seem like a silly little thing, but at the end of the day, it really does work. And because of that, we were already pre-selling dust shoes before we put this Facebook poll up. We were selling maybe one dust shoe every couple of days. The day I put this poll up, we were selling two to four a day after that, just from customers being able to clearly see that we care about what they say.
Staff training is another little thing. Some of you guys may have seen this concept used before. So we have these Kanban cards. The Kanban card is-- it lives in all our little boxes, all of our product boxes, and that. And it has a QR code on it, and that QR code is just created by a little QR code system that I'll talk about a little bit later on. And that QR code links back to a YouTube video. And that YouTube video allows [INAUDIBLE] staff to be able to scan the QR code and then go and play that YouTube video and show how to do something.
So we're continuously making these little videos on every process in our workshop. It's a really simple and easy way for someone to we have to scan something and be able to have a little bit of a reminder, if they haven't done something for a little while. So we've got YouTube videos for how to empty the chip tray in the Haas, or how to crimp. Again, it might seem like a really silly little thing to do, but it's something that works really, really well.
They don't need to be long videos. They don't need to have audio on them. They don't need to be cut and have music over them. At the end of the day, what you're trying to get across is how to do that thing and to do something like this-- this whole process, I did this before I left New Zealand last week, and I think the whole thing took me about 10 minutes to film a little video, throw it up on YouTube, create a QR code, and put it in the box.
It was just another one. We do throw our logo at the end because we do publish all the videos we make, because we want people to be able to utilize them, if they-- a lot of product manufacturers, like Molex, they do do videos on how to use their crimpers. They just aren't very good, so we like to be able to contribute and show people how to do that stuff. And at the end of the day, we want to be able to give back with what we're doing. We want to be able to help other little manufacturers.
The sole purpose of why Vertigo Technologies exists the way it does is because I'm passionate in seeing other people turn their ideas into products. And the best way to turn your idea into a product is to have a little tool-- benchtop CNCs, 3D printers, laser cutters-- and we have to design something and turn your idea into a product. And that's fundamentally why Vertigo exists. And by us being up to publish these little videos, then the people that are buying our products, this is all value add, at the end of the day.
Because they're coming up with ideas. They're buying our little machines to be able to manufacture something, and then they're able to go is our little videos, that we're not charging for, for them to be able to help turn [INAUDIBLE] little product until a business. And then they're going to continuously come back to us, as we develop new products and new machines.
AUDIENCE: We've done somebody similar, and I don't [INAUDIBLE] every employee has to have access to their smartphone and [INAUDIBLE] YouTube. And [? sometimes ?] [? that's OK. ?] I'd love to hear if you have any ideas on-- I'd love to [INAUDIBLE] tablets and have a [? chalkboard ?] that they could just use those [INAUDIBLE].
BRETT COTTLE: Yeah. Yeah, it is. So one thing that we're doing, and one thing I hope to expand on is next year, I do want to come back to AU and do another talk on it, and over the next 12 months, we are going to do some little software development tutorials, and we are going to release some of the open-source code that we're developing at the moment. So everything I'm showing you here today is tools that everyone here can go and download and use right now.
Fundamentally, it's not the best way to do it, but it's an easy way to do it. John's right, in the sense that it would be really good to have some little application that lives on it so you don't have to download all these different systems. You just click on it. It plays the video. And it means that the staff don't have to have their phones in the workshop, which can be a hazard, at the end of the day, as well. So yes, it is something that we're working on, and it is something that we will release. And again, it's about contributing back to the community, and it's something we want to see our customers utilizing and people like you are utilizing.
Has ever on scene change request forms before? Engineering change request forms-- cool. They're normally long-winded, but it's a paper you've got to fill out and then go and put it somewhere in a box. No? So the way that we do it, we have a simple Google form anyway. Again, it's something really easy-- anyone can create. It's free. You can jump up, create a change request form or product change request form.
We make two versions of this change request form-- one that our customers have access to and one that our staff have access to. Now, the point of why we do that, there's two [INAUDIBLE] slightly differently as well. It means that our customers can have direct influence into our products. So they can be able to request changes and some changes, and that's something that we've actually got really good feedback from being able to do, as we do have a lot of customers that have manufacturing or product development experience, and other ones that are using machines more than us.
So they quite often will notice little bugs or issues, and then they'll submit those as product change requests along with a little bit of an idea. Because there's nothing worse than just getting someone saying, it doesn't work. And then quite often, you're going, well, it works for me, but I just don't understand. What could we do better? Maybe the idea that they have is not the best idea and maybe it's not going to solve the problem, but the idea that they have planted a seed.
And that's why it's really important, for those people that do submit ideas, for you to ask them things like, how would you do it better? Do you have any recommendations on what could work to be able to solve this little problem? Yeah, Google Forms are a really simple way to do this. It's really important for me. I have to document issues, and record team ideas, as well as issue notifications.
How do we manage all the noise from input from customers, input from staff, and all the stuff that's coming back-- the stuff that we put on Facebook to be able to get reviews from people? We use a little Kanban style project management board. I imagine most of you here have seen systems like this, digital Kanban systems. Cool. So we use a program called Trello. That's the most common one that we're using at the moment. We have used other programs.
Again Trello is free for you to be able to basically set up a system like this. There are paid power-ups to do extra things, like have email integration and that sort of stuff within Trello, but fundamentally, Trello's free, and it does work really, really well for any team. It's a great way to manage things from projects to R&D, to being able to manage stock and inventory. A little bit later on, I'll show you how we do manage stock and inventory using Trello. We do have our own system, but initially, we were using Trello to be able to do that.
So up here on your right-hand side there, there's a card. That card provides information, such as what goes with that thing or what you're testing out. And then you've got your individual channels here. You can move any of those cards around through those channels. So you can set things up, like dust shoe inspiration. So we quite often will search Google and then find a bunch of inspiration, post it on the inspiration side.
And then when we're doing tasks, we'll create individual tasks. And then when they're in progress, move them into progress, and then in review. And it's a real simple cloud-based way where anyone-- I can pull this board up on my phone. I can pull it up on my computer. I can collaborate with other people. Again, it's a really simple way to be able to manage product development or anything. Again, it's free.
Is there anyone here that hasn't seen a system like Trello, that would like to just see a little demo of how it works? OK. Cool. So this is that Trello board that I was just showing. Now, what's quite cool with it is I can just come and grab a task, and I can bring it into in progress. I can then click on that task, expand it. I can see activity date, when things were added to the card.
I can then go and do things like create a checklist, and then I can go and add items to that checklist-- [INAUDIBLE] pins. Simple little things, but again, it's a way that you can go and tick stuff off, cross stuff off. And when you do have things like checklists, they'll come up with a percentage of how complete they are on the front. And at the moment, see it says here there is 0 out of 1 things that are currently complete, because I just added pins. And it's a great little way that you can create individual subtasks, and you can create lists to go with those tasks, such as checking off things.
Trello's a great system, because you can just drop and drag images, you can drop and drag videos into it. You can write descriptions. You can copy those cards to spreadsheets. When you create a card, you can have it update to a spreadsheet. You can email-- which I'll show in a minute-- to Trello boards, as well. Again, just a really simple, easy-to-use way to be able to create and manage projects.
AUDIENCE: Is that something that's [INAUDIBLE] available to the shop floor too?
BRETT COTTLE: Everyone, yep. That's right. So we actually have a screen above our Haas that's got Trello on it. Well, it used to have Trello-- now it's got our own system. But fundamentally, when we were building our own system, we wanted to be able to see what we wanted to be able to integrate to make it work, and Trello is a great pen and paper way-- even though it's not pen on paper way-- it's sort of scratch way to be able to create little systems to figure out what you ultimately want to create.
I think too often, we go-- we want to develop the system, and we spend all this money hiring a software developer and developing a system, and then we go and use it, and work out that it doesn't work. So what we find works really well is trying to use freely available tools to mock something up, and make sure it works, and test it out for a couple of months before we actually spend any money on software development and develop our own system.
AUDIENCE: [? Is there ?] a way to use [INAUDIBLE] [? chalkboard ?] [INAUDIBLE] sort of the large touchscreen? It doesn't have to be [INAUDIBLE].
BRETT COTTLE: Yes, we have. It works really well on Raspberry Pis.
AUDIENCE: OK.
BRETT COTTLE: Yes, Trello does work on a Raspberry Pi-- with a touch screen. Yes, yes. I don't if you know the little [INAUDIBLE] touch screens you can buy, retail touch screens you can buy. They've got USB for the touch screen, and then they've got an HDMI cable quite often. They're a really easy way to be able to do it. But yeah, touch screens, really helpful [INAUDIBLE] able to [? drag ?] cards across.
And that's something that we actually now. So all of our assembly and manufacturing ventures, they have a little screen. People can drop and drag cards over it. Again, we've made our own system that we will be releasing. We're not entirely sure how we're going to do that, but we want to be able to share it with the community and be able to see how it's used. We're not a software development company. We'll leave it up to Autodesk to sell software. We want to be able to just provide some little tools that people can use to make their journey to manufacturing a little bit easier.
Another system that we use with Trello and these sorts of Kanban style boards, as well, is being able to scan a QR code-- one of those QR codes that I showed you before to create the video. Now, on the back of that Kanban card is another QR code. Now, that's a reorder QR code. Now, all that does fundamentally is that QR code has an email embedded into it.
I scan it with my phone. It opens an email. I send that email, and it creates a brand new card in Trello. It happens instantly, and hopefully I'll show you a little demo in a minute, just to show you how easy it is to do. Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Is there integration with assigning those tasks to employees where it goes back [INAUDIBLE] calendar?
BRETT COTTLE: Yes. Yes, absolutely there is. So at the top in Trello, where you can see [? Team Visible, ?] so you can continue to add people and add members to that team. And then you can do things like set up dates. On an individual card, when I go into it on a minute, I'll show you there's actually places where you can assign it, and then assign completion dates to those employees, as well. So that's something that we do use quite often.
So this is my mockup Kanban reorder board. So you guys can say, again, really basic. Doesn't need to be anything fancy. It works. OK, back to my spreadsheet there. And again, I'll just open a little QR code app on my phone, scan the QR code, click the link, and all it does on my phone as it opens my email. And when it opens my email, I just hit send. I don't have to type anything. It pre-populates the email based on the information that's in the QR code.
Now, there are little suspicious simple tools to be able to do this. I've got one written there. I made this using QRstuff.com. I've got no affiliation with them. It's just a simple tool that I found that works really well for creating pre-populated QR codes. So now if I go back into that Kanban board, we've now got one that says [? blue pens ?] just showing up there. And that was purely from a scanning that QR code. I haven't had to do anything else.
So imagine the ability to do something like this and have a QR code on every item in your workshop. So like I said before, we don't like to call ourselves lean. Yes, we do operate in the lean way, but fundamentally, we have Kanban cards, and we have Kanban boxes for everything-- from nuts and bolts to componentry. And every assembly-type [INAUDIBLE], every machine in the workshop has a little monitor on it.
One of the big problems we found with manual Kanban cards is the amount of walking involved to be able to have it working well. Quite often with a Kanban system, if you've got a large space, you need to walk from the space over here over to this space to be able to say, hey, I need to reorder this product. So the way that we've gone about doing it is, by having a QR code on the back of those Kanban cards, that employee that's working that area can just scan that QR code.
That item will then shop on the Haas to be re-manufactured, and the Haas operator can just drag this around the board. So we have individual boards for individual stations, and those QR codes only go to those individual stations.
AUDIENCE: Do you have any long lag time parts [INAUDIBLE]?
BRETT COTTLE: Any long lag time parts? Yes, we do. So at the moment, we actually use the same system to be able to email and create purchase orders for sending for ordering components that we do order in, so that are longer lag time parts. We've got some manufacturers that have a month, six weeks on some of our steel componentry. And the way that that works, again, is that same system calls-- we use if this, then that.
It's a really simple online way where you can trigger things. You can push and pull, and trigger actions to happen. We use that system along with our counting system [? Zero ?] to be able to create a PO, and then automatically send that PO to the supplier. And unfortunately, that automatic-- sorry, it's not automatic between [? Zero ?] and the supplier, but it does create a PO within [? Zero. ?] And then every day, when one of our staff members is checking [? Zero, ?] they can approve those POs and send those off to be purchased.
So again, it's a really simple way. No one's got to remember to tell someone to reorder that thing. It's just a simple instinct to scan the QR code, send that email, happens. Don't type and--
AUDIENCE: Who makes the Kanban parts?
BRETT COTTLE: We do.
AUDIENCE: Anybody?
BRETT COTTLE: Anyone. Sorry? Yes, we do. Anyone makes those Kanban cards. So the way that we've got to set up is we have a PDF. And we have an editable PDF set up, and anyone can go into that editable PDF set up. It's on everyone's desktop computers or it's on everyone's screens, and then they can make little modifications to those Kanban card setups.
Now, there's certain things they can't edit. They can't edit the product name. They can edit descriptions. If they think their description needs to be edited, then we give the full responsibility of that to the employees, because at the end of the day, if they're finding something a little bit confusing-- there's two products that are similar, and like-- then if they want to distinguish those a little bit better, then that's not a bad thing. So yeah, real easy-to-use system. Any questions with this stuff anyway? Any other questions?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Yes, I'm getting onto that, as well, yes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Give me a second, I'll get it get onto that, as well. Cool. So is anyone using a system like-- push pull system like this at the moment for manufacturing? John. OK, yep. There are tons of other systems out there. You don't have to just use Trello. We've tried Monday and Asana. They both work really well. There are loads of other systems. Again, majority of them are free. And it really depends on what you're to achieve with it, what style you like, if you do want to go onto a paid plan, what kind of paid plan you want. And the pricing all varies, so just choose something that works well for your business.
Focus is key. Stick to what you're good at and build partnerships with companies that have complementary products or services. That's something that we've been hugely passionate about, again, and we've worked really hard to do, as we do-- in the beginning, we did try to do too much. We were trying to do software, and we were trying to do the tooling, and we were trying to do all these different things. But one thing that we've found really key to our success right now is building key partnerships with a tooling vendor.
Now, we stock their tooling, and then, when the customer wants to reorder, they actually reorder directly from our tooling vendor. No, we don't make any money from that, but what that means is our tooling vendor is actually out there advertising our product, as well. We've got now twice the power to be able to push our product out to market. Another company that we've had a key relationship with is an Autodesk reseller in New Zealand.
They do software development. They do Autodesk reselling. We push Fusion 360 really heavily with our product. It's a really simple way for our customers to get into the market and be able to learn how to design. Now, most of those paid customers aren't paying Fusion 360 users yet, but eventually, and hopefully, one day they will be. A lot of our customers are really enjoying Fusion, and it's a great entry into that market.
Now, the relationship with CAD Pro has worked really well for us, and it's been hugely beneficial, in the sense that, when they do have events at trade shows, we have one of our little machines on their stand. And it means that they can fundamentally show customers how to do something in the virtual world, and then how to make it in the real world. And a lot of people learn better when being able to see something like that.
And I think you get to a point in a country like New Zealand where saturation becomes a problem with software. And you saturate the market they already knows about design software, and Fusion 360, and Inventor, and these sorts of things. So being able to find other new and unique ways to be able to demonstrate how someone can turn an idea into a product, even if they aren't an engineer or they don't know about the software, is a great way to do that. And being able to partner with a company like CAD Pro Systems and being able to have them demo our products while demoing Fusion 360 and Inventor has been beneficial to them. It's been beneficial to us.
Collaborate-- as I said, finding businesses that have a complementary product or service. It's worked really well for us, not in just tooling and not in just software. We've done it as well with some other hardware development. We needed to develop some hardware that another company actually needed, so we made little modifications to make it suit them more, just because they were going to use more of that thing than us. And again, it's just something that meant that we could combine our powers and order twice as many of these little things.
It was a silly little [INAUDIBLE] roller, little plastic roller that we needed to order. This company happened to need to use a very similar product. They wanted it designed in a particular way. We wanted it designed in a particular way, but we had more design freedom than them. So we were lucky enough that we could make that little change, and now we put our buying power together and being able to buy twice as much, thus getting a better price.
Now, collaboration with Fusion 360, as you were saying. So Fusion 360 has been something that our business has been built on. Originally, I was a SolidWorks user, as a lot of people have been in the past. And Fusion 360 has allowed us to collaborate in a way that we couldn't before. Now, unfortunately, Fusion doesn't have the same collaboration tools as it used to. I think some of the collaboration tools were pulled out a while ago. But that doesn't matter, because we didn't really use them.
I think the way that we use collaboration at the moment, fundamentally, is just having the ability to add extra people to be able to view and see a file. So from staff, on the left-hand side here, we've got a production machining folder. And that production machining folder has all of those staff added into that. It's a really simple way where staff can be able to see a project, make little changes [? in ?] [? that. ?]
And on the right-hand side there, we've got product design folder. And again, I've added in some key people that have helped me develop that product, whether it be from [INAUDIBLE], whether it be from engineering support-- just someone that can click on it and review that, and review what I'm doing. And the great thing about Fusion 360 is you can-- because it has version control, you can go backwards and be able to review an old version. The one thing that I always instill in everyone is being able to make a note when you save a new version, not just save it as user. That way, it's really easy to see who saved that.
Simple setup instructions-- might seem really silly to do something like this, but actually, this idea came from one of my staff members. He said, hey, I know you do these printouts from Fusion 360 at the moment that tell me what tools and all the rest of it, and give me a little picture, but he said, it's all words. At the end of the day, I'm in the workshop. I'm busy, and I don't want to read. I want to be able to just look at something and be able to understand what's going /
Now, this is something that I did in Microsoft Paint. You just use the Snipping Tool and use Microsoft Paint, and be able to add in Opp 1, Opp 2, Opp 3-- be able to show all my tool [? parts ?] down there, all the tool numbers down there. Now, that setup sheet has now got twice as much information as the setup sheet that you would traditionally download from Fusion or Inventor. It's actually giving me [? set ?] pictures of each of those operations-- the setups, how they work. Is this something you would do, John?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, we actually do [INAUDIBLE] we'll do exported sheets showing setup folders, and we'll usually actually hand make them.
BRETT COTTLE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: People tend to treat laminated [INAUDIBLE].
BRETT COTTLE: Yeah. So we do exactly the same thing. This here we laminate, and then we put holes in the corner, and then they go on a folder. And then, again, it's got a little number on the back of it that just shows the setup number. So when someone scans the QR code to be able to import-- push their inventory or push a new order to the Haas, they can actually see on that Trello board the number of the setup sheet. And they can go into the little book, select the number, see the stock size, see the setup, see the operation, see the tools that are used. Again, really simple way that you can do it. Doesn't cost anything.
AUDIENCE: Do you use the QR code [INAUDIBLE] individual setups and have them on the back of the cards so you can actually fold up the file [INAUDIBLE]?
BRETT COTTLE: It's something that we're working to do, but it's not something that we have implemented right now, no. Again, we've just kept everything bare bones basic. There's so much we would like to implement. And I think one of the fundamental things that I was talking about before about lean and that is lean, at the moment, the way it operates is it's a very card-based system. It's a very physical system.
There's nothing wrong with a physical system. They do work, but it does limit the possibility of being able to push a file directly to the Haas when that needs to be done, or being able to create a record, or if you have multiple sites, being able to push a new product to be manufactured to that other site. Because the downfall about a physical card is someone has to get in the car and drive to that other site to drop that card off, which is not very efficient anymore at all.
Keeping the conversation going-- I don't know if many of you know that Fusion 360 has this really cool tool that I think some of us really forget, is comments. When we're making changes, any changes at all, we add comments. The ability to be able to select-- use the arrow tool and select and pinpoint a part or a piece on a part, and then write a note about that, it's something that we use on a daily basis. I've trained everyone to be able to use that.
If you're making any form of change, you add a note. If it's going to affect anyone else, you should add a note. Keeping the conversation going is really important. Along with Fusion 360, keeping the conversation going in Fusion 360 by adding notes. We add tools like Slack and Telegram. They're a great little way that everyone's got Slack, everyone has got Telegram, and everyone can message each other, and share files, and share folders.
[? Our ?] Slack channel actually has one and in there for design changes. So whenever one of those design request forms are submitted, that actually goes directly to a Slack channel and says, so-and-so has just submitted a design request or a design change. And again, that's a really simple way. I don't need to go into Google Sheets and check if someone's done that. I get a notification if someone's done that. It's not an email. It's not clogging up my email. It's a channel on Slack.
Does anyone here use Slack or use Telegram? OK, cool. So again, it's free. It's a really simple little easy way. Autodesk, as you can see up there, actually has Slack channel for all the speakers. It's a great way to communicate with the other speakers and share ideas, and that. So yeah, any questions? I wish that I did a 90-minute class now, because I actually had quite a bit more to talk about.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: How do we handle the change management? So the way that we handle change management at the moment is that form's obviously submitted. And then once that form's submitted, every week on a Friday afternoon, we sit down and have a design review meeting. And that design review meeting is around a whiteboard. We whiteboard it out. We come up with the ideas.
And then from there, we then go and implement that change. And then once that change is implemented, at that morning stand-up, that's when everyone is notified about a change. And that's usually the person who's leading the stand-up. Myself or my production manager, we'll usually go, this is the-- this change is going to be implemented on this date. And then we have, again, another board in the workshop where that change will be put up.
So everyone, when they're first coming in, they'll see that change. And that's usually up there for a couple of weeks, just in case people forget. But I think the way that things flow through our workshop, we don't make enough stock for it to become an issue. We always utilize the old stock before we do implement any solid changes. And we always make sure, if it's a change that requires someone to know something different about how to assemble something, we always get all the staff together again and run a little training exercise to make sure everyone's aware of how it's done. Kevin?
AUDIENCE: Quick question, is your agile manufacturing methodologies and tracking production [INAUDIBLE].
BRETT COTTLE: Yep.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] looked at utilizing more working with the Fusion production model?
BRETT COTTLE: Yes, we have. And it's something that I came to the classes yesterday and listened to a little bit about that. Fusion Production is something that we will-- at the moment, we're looking to implement as a production system. But fundamentally, I'd love it if Fusion Production had the ability to do basically what we're doing with pushing and pulling Kanban cards. So if Fusion Production had the ability to scan a Kanban card and have that show up as a new order for the Haas for a workstation, that would be brilliant. That would be a game changer, in my opinion. And that's something I would pay for, just that ability.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Yes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: [LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: I've struggled to delegate procurement [INAUDIBLE].
BRETT COTTLE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: We actually have a procurement officer. So it's a recent thing. We employed someone about a year ago, and he didn't work out in his role. And we got him to do some ordering one day when I was away, and he did it-- actually did really well at it. And he was quite happy. I think one of the challenges-- and I wanted to try and cover challenges a little bit-- that we've got is not everyone's me and not everyone can haggle the same as I can about stock. And not everyone cares as much about the quality as I do.
At the end of the day, it's my business, and I've worked hard to build the business to the way I have. And I think it's something that we need to-- it is a challenge, and it's going to be an ongoing conversation to how we can do that. Joseph, who does procurement for us, he does a great job, but unfortunately, he doesn't-- he can't get the same pricing that I can get. And he can't get the same deals and lead times that I can get.
It's just something that, when your business-- when things revolve around you or revolve around you being there, it's a little bit harder to be able to achieve that.
AUDIENCE: He's a full-time employee?
BRETT COTTLE: No, no. We only have him on about three hours a day. That's something that he wanted to do. He's a young university student, so he studies in the afternoon, which actually works out really well. So again, there's a little bit of trust that has to go along with it, but that's all about staff empowerment. It's very easy to win people out that you can't trust, but it does mean that I have to give him my credit card or I have to give him access to accounts.
Again, it can become a problem in some businesses, but providing you build trust with those employees and they've got no reason to wrong you will steal from you, then that's not a problem.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] supply chain [INAUDIBLE]?
BRETT COTTLE: Yes, we have actually. So that email system, that QR code system, like I said, we [INAUDIBLE]-- it shows up in [? Zero ?] at the moment, and then someone manually pushes that PO directly to the supplier. So there's no someone that-- you don't have to pick up the phone anymore. It's actually pushed directly from our accounting system.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: No. No, it's something that we're having real challenges With and if anyone here's got any ideas, I'd love to hear them, on how to get-- a lot of our suppliers, again, are very old-fashioned. Half their team probably wouldn't know what a computer, let alone how to use one. It's just an unfortunate thing about-- so one of our major suppliers is a sheet metal company, and they've been operating for 90 years or something like that. And some of the staff are in their 70s and 80s. And it's just a hard-- and they do a brilliant job. I can't fault their work, but unfortunately, using computers is not their strong suit.
I have seen systems before. So I went to a tech conference-- [INAUDIBLE] anyone here's heard of a company called Tait Radio or Tait Communication? They're a radio. They make radios in New Zealand in Christchurch. Their radios are used worldwide, from police cars in the US to buses in the UK, and all their radios are manufactured in Christchurch. They've actually gone to their suppliers and they have put their own systems in [? their ?] [? supplies. ?]
They're little cheap sensors. They use Raspberry Pis and Arduinos, and things like that, but the fundamental idea was they wanted to be notified when stock was leaving their suppliers, not just having to chase up tracking numbers, which is a really cool little idea. But Tait are an incredibly forward-thinking company in how they operate, and then that's something that I've tried to follow a little bit. Cool. Any other questions?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BRETT COTTLE: Yes. Yes.
AUDIENCE: Are you going to [INAUDIBLE] or are you going change things [INAUDIBLE]?
BRETT COTTLE: Stand-ups will become a little bit more of a problem, but again, like I said, it's being able to break things up into departments. So we'll probably have a core manufacturing department, and they'll have a stand-up. We'll have an office department-- they'll have a stand-up. It's something that'll work-- I think will work really well. Yes, we will continue the growth. We're expected to double within the next 18 months.
And that's something that we are building into all of our systems at the moment. That's why I said earlier on that we no longer use Trello and we no longer use that QR code system. That's all free. We have actually started to build our own, just because we want to make sure that we're not relying on a third-party system. We just want to make sure that it's going to be bulletproof what we are using. And once that is developed, that system, we hope to release some portion of it to everyone.
Cool. Well, thank you very much for coming along. And like I said, I am a first-time speaker at AU, and I'd love to come back again, so don't forget to fill out your survey. I'm really passionate about the stuff. I'm passionate about AU and what Autodesk is doing, and I'd really like to have the opportunity to come back and share again sometime.
[APPLAUSE]
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