title: The wide spectrum of business models in sheet metal fabrication
author: Next-Gen Metal Fab
contenttype: podcast
publication: Next-Gen Metal Fab
published: 2025-02-18T12:40:00-05:00
sourceurl: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/podcasts.thefabricator.com/xTdJ8S49vuBlMcFd3g4Uj3imKK3mUzvsjVkNYcie.mp3
word_count: 11023
I mean, I could probably sit here for two hours and ask Kale about some questions because I've learned a lot from Lance and kind of their approach from things And he's helped steer me into this is what works and what hasn't I've learned a lot from that Kale kind of takes this like fast lane approach to things to hold other extreme that you know We're scratching our heads on some things like how could we do it that fast? Oh, yeah Kale comes right in with that Welcome to the next gen metal fab podcast. I'm your host Tim Heston in each episode I'll be joined by your rotation of co-hosts Caleb Chamberlain from Ashcutt Cody Lee from everyday technologies and Lance three kill from all metals fabricating Together we'll talk about what the future could look like for precision sheet metal and tube fabrication Discover your path to leadership excellence at the FMA annual meeting February 25th to the 27th in Chandler, Arizona This premiere event offers a unique opportunity to connect with prominent figures in the fabrication and metals industries enabling the exchange of ideas collaborative solutions to business challenges and the cultivation of strategic relationships Visit FMA MFG.org for all the details and now back to the episode Thank you so much for joining us for this next edition of next gen metal fab And today I am joined by a wider panel than usual Beyond just Caleb Chamberlain. We're now talking with several folks So I'll let them go around and introduce themselves and kind of give them a quick background of their business And where they're coming from you sir. Thank you for having us Tim. I am Lance Therocchio and the third generation owner of a sheet metal fabricator Called all metals fabricating. We're located in the DFW Metriplex here in Texas and we specialize in sheet metal machining welding powder coating and assembly including electrical assembly Companies been around since 1953 and in my family since 1978 Cody, why don't you introduce yourself and and and where you guys are coming from? Appreciate the opportunity names Cody Lee CEO owner of everyday technologies out of the Sydney Ohio area So we're about 30 minutes north of Dayton Where sheet metal fabricator as well. So we do a laser form weld powder coat Assembly we have some stamping capabilities as well and we also have a sister company Called everyday wire technologies where we do wire harness and cable assemblies as well. So Both those are are located out of here at Sydney. I purchased the business Three years ago a little over three years ago prior to that every day has been around for close to a hundred years and some shape or form But the owners previous to me owned it for about 25 years. So I've stepped into the business and kind of taken it from there All right, all right, and then and then finally Caleb Chamberlain of Ash cut He's he's been with us before but just just a refresher of everybody's memory We have bring me through quickly how you got into this business Caleb Chamberlain and Ash cut were based out of Spanish for Qtah Open six years ago We've really focused in on the high mix low volume market And we ship all over the United States and we we tend to absorb the smaller jobs that most most shops are Less equipped or less interested in handling. We'll take a prototype job online our software handles everything automatically And we'll ship with lead time just quick as same day And that's where we've optimized around we don't do any production work But we do the high mix stuff really effectively Yeah And you know the reason why I've caught you know that we're all sitting together is because you know Again, this is called netcha and metal fab. This is about to get a new generation of shop managers shop owners just getting into the business And so Cody just kind of bring me through a centuries-old shop So so you know, what's the what's the history behind every day technologies and and how did it launch? Yeah, so I believe the start date was 1928. It was called everyday manufacturing back in those days Really where they got their start was making Like several different product lines for chicken coups of all things So I guess the story was is back in those days. It was pretty common for folks that have chickens in their backyard So whether that be the chicken coop or the tross that they would feed out of A lot of galvanized different materials And so I've actually got in my office that was handed down to me Several catalogs from back in those early days and so yeah That's that's pretty much where it got its start and then you know essentially from there on until probably the I don't know. I would say early 90s. It was pretty much just evolved into a a job shop So where we live in Sydney Particularly Shelby County. It's pretty dense manufacturing. So we've got You know Honda engine plant here as well as you know air stream uh Copeland Or Emerson several different large OEMs that really just kind of sparked a bunch of different Smaller manufacturers back in the day to help support those whether be through tier one two or three And so you know we kind of lived off that for a long time and then Like I mentioned 20 25 years ago or so the the owners previous to me was two brothers. They acquired the business and they they'd own an operated business In the past and they were really responsible for kind of Graduating to more of the contract manufacturing, you know servicing direct OEM production type work And so they grew some some accounts in that regard over those years and then by the time I got into the picture You know, we had grown quite a bit acquired some smaller businesses and Yeah, and then we're pretty much I want to say exclusively OEM production work where we're starting to dabble into some more prototype You know quick-turn production, but uh, but yeah, that's that's really the evolution there over the last 90 so years What when did you buy the business? So it had been August of 2021. So just over three years ago So so the question is why why metal fab your family is not and that doesn't have a history of metal fab Trying to make a long story short. I mean like most people I've always been really interested in owning a business and that's you know Pretty high level to say that and not a lot of people really understand what that means and it sounds Like a sexy thing to say, but obviously there's a lot more involved that I've learned in the last three years And what that really meant at the time But how I landed on sheet metal it was really just a coincidence. So five or six years ago Everyday technology did a 40,000 square foot building addition and so the general contractor I was working out at the time of course did that addition form That contractor had you know, they've done a lot Over the years. It's kind of their bread and butter to do you know the service industrial markets You know whether it be Building expansions, you know building pits for large stamping presses things like that So I really got pretty involved with You know those types of companies and really was intrigued with manufacturing as as a whole So you know, I was kind of how I got turned on to the business early on How I landed specifically on every day so My family Kind of indirectly does have some direct ties to manufacturing my father-in-law owned and operated a Fresh-cut produce manufacturing business for about 30 years Him and his brother started it back in 1988 here in Sydney, Ohio and Basically what they would do is they would take their raw material would be you know Romain lettuce out of the field out in California, Arizona And they would you know cut that bring it to Sydney Clean it process it package it and then their end customer would be like a penair bread Fact that was the biggest customer And so they grew that from 0 to 130 million plus in revenue by the time they sold it in 2016 so just Talking to him and and really kind of being a sponge around him as much as I could as it related to just business in general, but Obviously manufacturing's manufacturing you you bring you know, we're all product in and you outspits a finished good and everything that happens in between Could be specific to that industry but more or less the same so we talked to that I kind of you know explaining him these are this is my desire to do one day and basically what he said is you know I'm not gonna just buy a business for you, but if you find their out opportunity You know definitely help you navigate what that would take to get done and that's pretty much what he did so in 2020 Early 2020 I reached out to the owners of everyday technologies I had a mutual connection that just kind of worked there So they got me introduced and and basically I said hey I'm interested in and buy in your business if you were looking to sell and I knew they were you know In their mid-60s or later So if anything they'd be opportunistic at the idea so They didn't know me They knew my father and Walgis because he was kind of you know involved in community throughout the area and basically said if you get if you could show proof of funds We'll engage in an L.O.I process and kind of take it from there and so I did that and Of course, this was right at the beginning of COVID So that prolonged everything way longer than it should have been So we'd end up closing until probably over a year later Yeah, yeah, but that's so I mean, it wasn't really like I went to set out to find sheet metal You know, I could end it up in plastics or anything else Just so happen to be that this is the opportunity that worked out and I've come to love it. There you go All right, well Lance you coming from You know the traditional family background as far as multi-generational shop But but kind of give me the history of all metals as far as you know where your families coming from what it used to be and what it is today So my grandfather he and two of his brothers all three had sheet metal shops and Dallas and one of his brothers still does so You know, we've taken pictures together where There'd be like three 400 years worth of sheet metal experience like just in our family. It's pretty cool But my grandfather and several other people that have worked here are work here currently we're working for AC horn which is a hundred over a hundred year old company that's just sold last year they were mostly in like food processing equipment and so He kind of he'd worked there. He was the foreman GM and worked his way up and and just wanted to provide first family and set You know future generations up for success and so he went off in acquired all metals through an SBA loan back in 1978 and He fired their first are their biggest account the one that they used to like sell the business they were making like grayhound Abenches for grayhound like as you wait for the bus and he built them one time figured out they weren't making I thought they weren't making money on it and and canceled the contract and was still able to quadruple the sales in the first year So he's a he's a workhorse. You know, it's the great the great generation They built this country with their bare hands and so my dad joined him later that first year He was an owner of a sporting goods store and had to line that up and went went on to join my grandfather and they really rode the wave of the telecom boom especially in Dallas is a big telecom hub and the 80s and 90s And so that really built the business up significantly 2000 of course Y2K all the telecom companies had you know purchased double what they need for duplicity And then they didn't need double anymore So that was the same year that we moved into our building at Allen our in Allen just north of Dallas and So we lost I think it was 50 or 60% of our sales overnight While moving into a new building and buying our first laser And so uh, yeah, it was that that's the only year we've ever fortunately had layoffs And in our 45 years our 46 years of owning it in our family um and and that's mostly due to guts provision but also um partly also our model of of and I can talk more about that later but We allow employees to work a lot of overtime and try to keep a lean staff So it allows us to be more flexible and then in the past 10 years we've been focusing more on utilizing automation To be able to ramp up and ramp down without having to you know hire and layoff as many people And so yeah in 2000 we started diversifying a lot and started serving virtually every industry We moved across street from the medical device company um and so we started building all of their parks and Really just now we serve virtually every industry um, I would say OEMs is the biggest but within OEMs, you know, there's a bunch of different industries and I'd say that right now Alternative energy is is our biggest specifically in the wind energy uh sector and then um battery storage as well and included in that and then after that It's telecom is still one of our biggest industries as well. It's like 25% of our business But we we serve virtually every industry aerospace You know as I mentioned medical Railway, I mean it you name it um that we were in it really would spend really big the last year is Data center work. Oh, yeah data center work. Yeah among among many other fab shops doing that as well There lot leads it's a very hot Industry in the past few years especially But but you're no lot but but you're no longer what was it 80 or 90% telecom in the back back in the day Exactly. Yeah, so we've diversified a lot and then you know something I Has started my grandfather and and my dad it always just looked to serve our customers with excellence So that meant like you know, we added a machine shop back in the 90s We bought a powder coating business in the early 2000s or what pain at the time transitioning to powder coating And so they were trying to really be a full service solutions provider for our customers and and that really is more of a contract manufacturer When I came in 15 16 years ago really sort of branding that you know more as a contract manufacturer And just taking on them introducing as much automation as we can To to get really higher volume production work um and you know with the wave of insuring Back in you know, 2016-17-18 that certainly helped um and uh Yeah, it's been a great ride very enjoyable journey right All right now Caleb now for something completely different Ha ha bring everybody through there your story and of some folks some listeners the podcast probably heard it before But just a refresh everybody's memory kind of bring us through how how you came from from the industry you came from and and how you ended up in sheet metal Yeah, well first I I feel like I'm an august company Whether because a personal experience or just longevity of the company That lands the idea that your your grandfather bought your business in 1978 And it's been in the family since and just like wow the amazing history there and the body of knowledge and uh that's so incredible um and At Cody uh I read and Tim's article um That when you joined the company they were operating on a CO2 machine with 150,000 hours on the resonator Yeah, that's incredible I've actually already annoying Yeah, I've wondered uh whether Modern machines will have that kind of longevity You know, I think our Our fiber lasers like run windows under the hood. I don't I'm sure anything with Microsoft brand on it has a 150,000 hours of longevity Bo but playing out I guess actually I'm an electrical engineer My brothers are manufacturing engineer and we just we've always had kind of side projects he and I The one that ended up leading into oscult was a virtual reality motion simulator where you put on a headset Uh, and then you're sitting on this motion activated chair basically a little rotate you up to 45 degrees Uh, which is a lot when you're sitting on it you really feel that anyway you're flying an airplane Uh, and it's moving with you and simulating the motion a lot of fabricated metal parts in there But we were exactly the The wrong kind of job for local shops at least these were one-offs you never turned into production Um, financed or paid for by individuals not businesses So we just really couldn't get the time of day for good reasons But we thought hey, there's there's probably a better way to do this for this type of work um, and uh, so we started oscult specifically to solve that problem uh, we do uh instant quoting and we've we've built the entire software stack vertically to support the operation from From quote to dfm online To production scheduling purchasing the ERP backend So end to end it's all our tool and that allows us to to do thousands of orders every week which is a lot of fun Right, and it's it's a it's obviously you know the low the low quantity model where it's it's you handle the long tail so to speak of of of a lot of orders that that that uh never see the light of day and Otherwise, and you said the majority of orders you don't see again, right? That's right 90% of the parts that we see we will never see again As I'm saying recently 90% of our revenue is from repeat customers uh, so they come back in order, but they're not ordering the same parts and uh, I think when it comes down to doing actual production we do some of that uh, but ordinarily it requires more high-touch sales and relationships than we're structured to handle uh, when you have tens of thousands of customers it's just kind of hard to have a relationship with all of them So they find an outlet elsewhere when they need to get to the contract manufacturing from Right, right, right, man, you mean it code you can arm wrestle for your contact uh, contacts I'll gladly be a sponsor to the website if that's what Well, we have to descend people your way we actually get requests all the time for higher-touch service that we just can't handle and We've sent people to local shops. Lance, you I want to riff off one of the the comments you made about you know the ramping up and down To being able to do that without While keeping your staff while being able to keep lean Um, you know during my years of covering this industry that I think that has been the greatest challenge for a lot of shops Obviously revenue concentration has been a historical challenge for a lot of shops That uh because it's easy to grow on the back of several large accounts You can buy a lot of expensive machines that way and and you can just grow With you know serving this one account with the large quantity orders That's how you turn into contract and you have a long tail of of smaller quantity work But but your bread and butter is that contract work and yet when things go south um Everything goes haywire and layoffs and sue and that And an industry that is praying is always looking to break those um The barriers when it comes to hiring um, you know, obviously higher layoffs are are the last things that new workers want So so Lance does kind of bring me through you know your philosophy of scaling up and down now How automation allows you to do that and kind of the history behind that as far as how you know What you're trying to avoid the lessons learned over time? Yeah, so um I think it really started with my grandfather took you know the idea that they had at ac horn Was was a 15% profit share 401k and so it really started with that and just this whatever it takes mentality to which is one of our core values that he instilled and still is very well You know who we are today where people you know just want to work to get the job done as much as they can And most shops, you know understandably so from as you look at the financials Just make sense to have you know limit people's hours have multiple shifts um and and hire and layoff as you need to You know what I what I believe in that I was fortunate to and you know And here at this model that they'd already set up was that you know the the cost of of hiring is is in you know Much higher than people realize It's the indirect costs laying off your paying you know unemployment taxes every paycheck on every person That's a lot of times not factored in as you're looking at you know You know how to think about that And so like our unemployment rate is the lowest it can possibly be And so just having this model where it allows the employees to make more you know they can they can work You know as mid art we have a flex shifts our shift is seven to three thirty but they can come in as early as five and stay as late as they want Um as long as there's you know somebody else they're working with them We do have kind of a skillets in second shift and then a second shift in our paint shop. So um You know Areas in and in wild so areas where it is more manual processes specifically paint powder coating Um, you just you got to have that second shift, but um, you know, we started Our first purchase of automation was you know a laser with two tower system and And automated you know offloader And so that really in 2016 after that election um, you know, we went from like we were really down and we were like 800,000 You know, we went from 800,000 in November to like 15 and January or February and so we doubled Um, and we only hired a few people and so that laser really allowed us To be able to ramp up quickly and just showcased okay, there's something to this Um, and so we started adding automation, you know, we added uh that same year I believe it was auto loader unloader to our one of our punch presses And have since added a laser punch combo with auto load and unload and a Automated bin cell as well Also have a panel bender that has auto load and we're working on the auto offload right now And so you know our goal is to have automation in every department In the next few years and so we can just be able to you know run around the clock and the idea is use the automation To help you stay caught up When you with things slow down you just don't use the automation as much You know, the only I'd say I don't want to say problem that something you mean Cody we're just talking about the other week is You know, you become with with automation you become so dependent on it And so when something goes down and with the new equipment now it's so electrically based That there's just so many opportunities for for breakdowns Um, that when when it does go down you're you're hurting that much worse So like last month we had you know all three our two lasers and our laser punch combo I'll go down at one point And so it I mean it crippled our sales for the month But anyways, uh, so that that's kind of the downside of it Just want to be you know fully transparent with that as you depend more on automation When it does break it is it is you know that much more crippling Especially if you're busy if you're not then it's not as big of a deal But but we are certainly busy thank god for that So Cody what's your what what has been your philosophy toward automation in the last few years you just took over the business a few years ago What was the state of automation then and kind of what what you're philosophy moving forward You know, obviously I see the importance of it and um you go to these fab tech shows and it's like kid at a candy store and take you realize everything's millions of dollars So they're all luxury type items so you kind of have to balance reality with what makes the most sense for your business But um Yeah, I can agree with everything that that Lance has said there um So when I first came into the business that I would say the And it's still kind of true to this day so to speak but From an automation standpoint, you know, blanking um in both turrets and lasers is uh where the majority of our automation happens And so when I got here As Caleb had mentioned we had a really old laser so we call them lasers one two and three And it's just you know we have three lasers out in the shop floor So when I got here all three of them were CO2 the oldest one being close to 20 years old with Thousand plus hours on the resonator But lasers one and two were tied to a material tower and you know when it worked It was great because you know you could run off shift and you know If you've ever had to go from that type of automation especially loading unload to Let's let's get a jib crane over here because we have none of that anymore It's down and now you're doing it all by hand You really start to feel the pain pretty quick Or material tower went down It was an older piece of equipment And uh basically what what ended up doing was you know it shut us down completely for a while So our our new laser that we had just bought so by the way we replaced that that old laser Pretty soon after I got here two and a half years ago And you know, it's a 10k fiber laser so this things you know really really fast compared to the technology that we had up till then And so you know to not have a any piece of automation on the back side of it Didn't really make a whole lot of sense because it's things cutting so fast and so So basically the material tower goes down We lose all of our automation while we're trying to figure this out and it basically you know quadrupled our cycle time between cut sheets and Created a huge backlog and and a lot of upset customers that we had to navigate through Several months until we kind of landed with plan b So anyways, what we ended up doing there is we just you know we went to um material mover on the backside of our laser Uh, that's not tied to a to a material tower And we found that we didn't have to make the 800,000 dollar investment and we could still get our cycle time with still with not half not higher Anybody i was just a luxury that we've had for many many years and figured we had to have it to To keep going and we've learned to live without it So we're kind of semi-automated in that regard, but other than that all of our press breaks welding um Powder coat we do have an automated powder coat line. So there's some automation there, but um But generally speaking, you know, we don't have the automated press break or robotic welding and things like that And so it's you know, it's nice. There's a lot of those things Sound from my perspective There's obviously a cost benefit with with any of those things that you want to invest in I'm sure you know lands they went through some sort of study or maybe had a particular part that was high enough fine That justified that investment for but for us Historically our volumes haven't been such that I can dedicate I can spend money on a automated press break at least today I'm not saying next year that won't that opportunity won't make sense But it's really just been balancing like what what's really going to solve a point here or a pain point for us in our business With automation and then what just looks like the next cool thing All right, let's mention going to fat tech you really Could expose to it all and you're just like that'd be great. That would be great. That would be great But it's a price tag adds up quite a bit so So I mean, I certainly believe that automation has its place in every shop and some shape or form But for us has just been balancing you know the cost benefit of doing that and like Lan said I mean Even fast forward to this year Another kind of chapter in my book has been you know seen what the economy is doing and the pullback that we've had from a lot of our customers that They're in products a pretty expensive piece of capital equipment. So As interest rates rise and people would become unsure about what the elections doing and all that You spend this you start to see that pullback and for a lot of these OEM contract work that we're so accustomed to scaled back their demand quite a bit and that kind of put us in a What do we do and I mean I could probably sit here for two hours and ask Caleb a bunch of questions because I've learned a lot from Lance and kind of their approach on things and he's helped steered me and uh Hey try this and don't do this and This is what works and what hasn't and I've learned a lot from that but Caleb kind of takes this like prototype and Fast lane approach to things to a whole other extreme that you know We're scratching our heads on some things like how could we do it that fast? I'm just like blown away that osh cuts able to to figure that out so So I guess bottom line is this year, you know, it's forces to kind of find work elsewhere Which is in the prototype and and kind of rapid production world and we've had some success with that specifically in the data center Arena that Lance was talking about but It's funny automation doesn't just have to mean out on the floor with physical equipment There's automation to be had kind of in the front office so to speak to that I think could be talked about oh Yeah, Caleb comes right in with that So kind of describe your pipeline and and how it fit how it kind of has shaped your business Caleb just kind of just kind of contrasting it with With the other folks here on the panel Yeah, Cody would be happy to chat anytime offline Pretty open about what we're doing and love to see I think there's Honestly, I think there's tons of work to do and there's tons of modernization that needs to happen in US manufacturing to make us more competitive globally And I think it's happening right now and I like to The think that maybe we cannot together Accelerate that trend so yeah happy to chat anytime Co-oper yeah, you mentioned software automation. So all these we don't have any material Storage automation we were picking material off shells with forklifts We don't have any loading systems on our lasers in fact Remember one old hand From one of the laser manufacturers came in during an install and he was like beside himself He was like you can't have a laser like this Without a loading tower We actually just use suction lifters and and unpowered bridge cranes To load and it actually works pretty well Especially when you can just like have the machine cutting and then manually load either multiple remnants or full sheets So no automation to speak of on that front all our automation software in front office In fact, we don't have we have zero quoting staff we have No full-time purchasing personnel. We kind of one guy that does all the laser programming and purchasing together And it's not even a full-time job And that's just because We found out quickly that when you expose instant quoting through a website online Which is by the way, it's kind of an easy problem to solve the problem that you then have Is I guess what you wanted which was anyone on the internet can order parts from you um, and it might be an order for one part or it might be an order for a thousand unique parts With different quantities of each and somehow you've got to manage all that so Like 90 95% of our software efforts has been trying to figure out how to deal with that kind of demand And that that's included purchasing automation and Receivables automation scheduling and nesting Our software actually programs the lasers and the press breaks And does the dfm so when a part comes in Our system generates all the production programs for it right then and there and if it doesn't work for some reason It just doesn't accept the work It tells the user the customer why And then the first time we see apart it's it's sitting in and nest on a material sheet that we have in stock um, just for our guide to review and maybe tweak and then hit go and it jumps out to the lasers and then Production takes it from there So pretty automated is that automation um programming for the equipment is that in-house Software as well or using like the oems dedicated software Uh, it's all ours. We started with the oems Their software But we found it was a full-time job just to download part files and import them into the software and fix glitches and Right, you get to program right just with the high volume of unique part numbers So we we wrote all that in-house to actually Programming laser is quite easy. It's just g code and it's all too dimensional right um the press was fascinating I mean, you'd say it like it's nothing but building a post for a machine is a massive undertaking So and i'm guessing that's all built in your e our p system is what that's that's all one system It's all one system and yet unbelievable we have some smart people We've got four full-time software devs that are all quite smart So we've replaced like the normal office staff with like software developers to build our tools Um, it's an interesting kind of mix. I think we're we're actually very much a software company um, but The customer is ourselves so we're this amalgam of a like a tech company plus and a Normal manufacturer. I think that's becoming more and more common too Is you'll see more and more companies doing that but it allows you to just build tools that are a perfect fit for your shop um, and uh like nothing off the shelf. I don't think I mean, maybe you could duct tape you know multiple Software platforms together and get 60 70% of the way there but um, I thought before the the way we do business just wouldn't be possible without an in-house software team Right, it's just too hard to try to manage all the unique parts and Yeah, but do you you see yourself spinning uh Spinning that idea off and and you know because like even what you're describing there on the automation on the front end Um, everything from purchasing to Nesting lasers and press break programs and all that stuff. I mean, obviously Myself lands included and every other sheet metal fabricator. That's those are things that we have to do as well um Whether it be at a different scale or not, but no matter if you're cutting 20 parts a month or 200,000 parts a month you still have to do all those activities Is that something that you guys think well? Hey, we've mastered something here or we continue to like hone in on the Homegrown process that you could go to market separately with just that in itself Elis yourself. We're pleased That's a that's around about wavestand You know, um, we've we have we get that question a lot um especially from potential investors so they see the software product and the challenge is that I think our software is like a perfect fit for us and and uh We've had the benefit of not having to generalize it to support every other operations uh workflows So probably a flat out just wouldn't work for you Just by virtue of the fact that like you know, it's it's a different We do business a very particular way So like it's a hard sell that come up to to try to sell someone software and say well you have to do business our way Right and what because you had talked you had talked about the pipeline approach you have where the product has to be a certain way the dfm Uh, it shows it gives dfm suggestions But it bats it back to the customer saying you have to make the change it's it's a self-serve environment It's not a handholding hey Why don't we try this or that and let's increase Manufacturability holistically, which is what a lot of other fab shops in particular because your cut bend you do not have well yet correct Uh, we've done some welding kind of on the side, but we haven't It's it's hard to automate quoting for welding yes and same with assembly assume too or so if you have sub assembly and When you get to that level level of production, it's it's hard to automate that at present Yeah, the way to look at it is we we just take uh cut bend uh Some various ancillary operations like hardware insertion Tapping powder coating So we just we just do that generic Slice of value if it requires anything outside that generic slice we just have to say no Because we we can't we don't have any engineering staff Our sales staff to to provide that customer back and forth hands on relationship So something as simple as like hey, I just want this little This little rib welded onto this little part and it might be super simple, but like we just We just can't do it It's possible to generalize it, but in the end state, I think there's there's probably two different ways the people are gonna continue to grow their businesses I've talked and wrote about this a lot, but uh Either you you go turnkey high touch Vertically integrated inside one industry or a handful of industries Uh and solve a customer's problem really really well, which I think is kind of the realm that you guys have been in Um or you expand horizontally across lots of industries and you serve lots of customers in that space And I think that that whole like generic service at scale across all industries I think the end state and a in a couple or a few decades is that there will be like Three or four companies doing that And so that's the real answer to why don't you sell softwares? I think our particular software which enables that work We'll have a market of three companies in 20 years and everybody else Um will have scaled more vertically Uh with higher touch sales um which is Which is great um You can also use software to optimize one particular vertical really really well So I think you'll probably start I mean talked about data center stuff There's probably software that could be written to streamline the quoting process for custom server racks or whatever Um Right like for a specific value stream like if you scale up um Specific value stream it could be your own your own mini business with the software attached to that value stream That's right or a mini business I mean it could if you get really good at solving one particular need Then because you've integrated technology whether it's physical automation or software automation Then you'll just tend to soak up that work because you're better at it Um at a company like mine these serves all industries will never compete In that value with that that niche the niche might be a you know half a billion dollars, but that niche being Um that particular service which is really good Yeah So so so lands what you know what what's your plan for scaling over the coming years as far as far as you know your core industries How you're gonna you know that that vertical high touch environment that you're in Yeah, I mean I really like the model of just Study growth slow study growth 510% a year this year. We had a pretty big jump And it was really challenging And so we'd never had the staff for second shift and and getting a second shift stood up and staffing for it was was a lot more challenging than we anticipated um, and so yeah, I've I've had enough of the quick you know rapid growth um And and want to get back to you know just slow continual study growth which is what we've been built off of for 46 years now But yeah, just continuing to serve all the different industries looking for you know we we really focused on alternative energy with the Anti inflation act to put that in air quotes um because I say that because it was really a green energy bill And it was like hey, there's a lot of opportunity there. Let's let's go after that and And be inflation by uh by spending more money, right That's gonna work Yeah, and then um, you know also with the data centers just you know seeing the opportunity there Specifically really started out in Bitcoin mining equipment Which is essentially just data centers and now that customer is growing into Developing AI data centers, but one thing I wanted to touch on earlier and I think these guys, you know did well is just you know To other shops too. It's just you can automate really anything and it's a lot less expensive to automate quoting I mean what Caleb has done is absolutely fascinating. I mean just each each part of what he's built in the software is fascinating I mean scheduling is our biggest challenge Um from a software perspective um, I mean just last week or two weeks ago mean Cody were talking about how can we Automate our programming better um and and talking through strategies there They've already done it you know, uh and so um But that that's that's things even simple things like automating Envoicing and we do have a batch invoicing where at this email is it out to everybody Just little things that you can do to automate um, you know an estimating is it's a really um Uh specific skill set uh that requires a lot of knowledge and so being able to estimate you know automate estimating as much as you can I mean that was transformational for us When uh we saw um, you know material spikes back in 2021 We were having a recoil we're 90% repeat work and we were you know We don't ever have to re-quote that typically this material pricing has been flat to the past decade prior to that And for the most part and um, we were having to re-quote every job And if we didn't have automated quoting software um for the new stuff at least I mean Uh, whereas most beneficial and most time consuming um, they would have been crippling for us So just you know, and I think there's a lot to um these Automating and different Uh, not having everything tied together into a fully integrated automated system That's obviously attractive like Cody was talking about um, but those are really more for OEMs And so how can you automate individual cells where you're not so handicapped if something goes down So you know, we're really looking into we wanted to get some co-lots going in our welding department this year Um, but what we really need the guys to be body and on it and so we just haven't been able to free them up enough with how behind We've been all year to to go spend the time to to get the buy in from them Um, so that's something we're looking I've been working with a hager on on you know They've finally come out with the awfully automated PEM insertor That's something that um, you're really going to have some unique work for but I think they're going to be continuing to make that more user friendly You know, we saw that early on with the prospect automation it really required high volume But now you know, the new systems are so user friendly that you can really have a lower mix um So you know, we're looking at how to automate a little bit more simply without having to go you know spend millions of dollars on a system Right, right, and I was just saying is one big takeaway I had from this year's Fabtech was is interesting I saw a few vendors who uh Who had the ultra wideband the job location Technology and had an interesting kind of a bought experiment with one of the vendors and actually one of the shop owners who who was at the booth You say all right, what if because I mean, we've been always obsessed with machine uptime and asset tracking But the machine doesn't make money the parts do The shipped parts do no matter how much that machine is on it doesn't matter as long as it's available It needs to be available. That's the key That otherwise yeah, it'll go has to be available It has to be in pristine shape It has to be reliable has to produce when you say you want it to produce But parts on the move that's what's important to keep it flowing throughout the whole shop and also jobs on the move From estimating all the way to receiving right rather receiving cash for the job So uh what he said was like well how about this this job tracking software where I could track it and see the dot It's like a traffic pattern on the shop floor and you see the velocity of the of the jobs And I don't care about asset utilization. I care about asset availability And he says if if there's a if there's a traffic jam in front of the break what's going on If there's a traffic jam in front of Outer coding what's going on and there's there's an issue and so he would use that as the feedback loop For uh for uh for for improvement for scheduling for everything And uh, I just thought that was interesting interesting Because we track everything except the jobs uh, you know You know, we track everything in a machine, but often there's it's a black box as far as you know where jobs stand exactly And what's causing the backup and is there a way we can release it later to the floor because we release it later to the floor You don't have the rework because oh there was a change to the job. Why do we release it so early? So later you can release it the better All these things so so anyway, so Cody have you kind of What kind of front office automation Cody have you have you ever been in the last few years or are looking to do What what what do you think uh from a generic sense sense how how you know, you know, what the greatest opportunity is for everyday technologies Yeah, so uh quite a bit recently um, I mean on my third year into this so I mean every year I just learned a little bit more and have been fortunate to make relationships like lands and some other folks that have kind of You know Explore to me to some of these things that exist out there because You know you you come and do a business and you think well We just need to go by equipment and do all these things to be able to take on work But it's like you don't really sit there and think about well First of all, what's your strategy of getting the word right? You got this great equipment, but how you gonna get work on it? And then once you even get that opportunity You don't even think about the bottleneck that's gonna exist next Which is how quick can you quote it and how quick can you program it ultimately get it out to uh Get it out to the floor and As I mentioned earlier, you know this this challenge that we have this year With some of our large roe I'm scaling back and bringing in all this Some of its project work some of it's just rapid Production type work, but nonetheless it requires quick turns relative to the contract work that we have And so it really exploited some of the up front challenges that we had in our office As it relates to workflows from hey, here's what's our of cue to cut this part Lance and I've talked quite a bit about this specifically, but Um, just just two areas on that front is a paperless parts Um, I'll name drop them because they've uh, they've been fantastic. So um We were I think we're on our third or fourth week of implementation of the software so um, but we've already even started using it kind of at a high level As we continue to quote parts we mean I would say in the last couple years we'd probably average maybe 20 Parts that we're quoting rather that'd be one package of 20 parts or 20 different parts from 20 different customers But point being is that the volume there wasn't so crazy because we're just kind of always quoting a little bit more for our current customers And so kind of once we've opened the floodgates so to speak We went from that to like quoting you know hundreds of parts a week um And you know the timeline on those might be two to three weeks and so even even if we can quote them really quick We've got to get them programmed for our lasers and press breaks And that just was like oh my gosh like this is This is a whole new problem So Payable as parts is going to help solve the problem of quoting um, it already has and so I'm excited to see where that that gets us here in early February when we go live with it And then on the uh programming side Again, like Lance said, I'd be curious to know more about Cale's approach to that but We uh, we were working specifically whenever I bought the business we had 1 o'clock lasers and another o'clock press breaks so two different pieces of equipment from a Manufacturing standpoint, but The so the software is that we have to have they they don't talk to each other. It's like Apple and Microsoft, right They have these closed ecosystems where they don't they intentionally don't want you to talk to each other So you're kind of forced into one of their worlds But with that in mind we Basically have upgraded in some of their softwares and it's taken us from a pretty archaic approach to Okay, you've got this great your program and a press break a formed part and you've got this kind of 3D rendering in front of you that shows the press break and the tooling and your tooling library and all that stuff but our guys were still Manually selecting all the tooling and then setting the sequence, you know, how you're gonna run the part I'm like we were just getting done uh closing with paperless parts I'm like this is silly like it's 2024 They've got all this great AI and back-end information on how to quickly Program or a quote apart You're telling me in 2024. I can't automate my programming with this software. I mean this is ridiculous And this wasn't anyone's fault except our own just for not trying to look into that more so you know made some calls and a long story short we upgraded our software and of course there was those features and It's not perfect Probably the same reason kale has to turn away some work because there's some DFM issues that this flanges too short or Whatever the issue is right that That is gonna take this programming software from saying like yep, it's program to Hey, you need to have a programmer look into this and tweak some things um Can be the difference of you know you're you're I guess you're through put a being able to do those things But nonetheless it it's sped up the process quite a bit for so we're addressing those two things specifically one thing I wanted to ask probably more pertains to lance than Kayla but At least for us one of the things that kind of separates us from a lot of folks who do sheet metal for all you guys that are in an industry When you say you're a sheet metal fabricator, there's such a large spectrum there It's the guy that's doing it out of his garage and then There's the five hundred million dollar your company that's doing it right? That's got plants all over the United States and Mexico and then people like myself and lance and then guys like Caleb And it's just a wide spectrum but one of the things that Separates us is that the customers that we do work with these are large OEMs that are recognizable names. They're very sophisticated meaning They tend to be you know a lot of red tape a lot of Tees that have to be crossed and eyes got to be dotted and quality audits and Basically just paperwork at the end of the day But it's part of doing business with them and that requires overhead that someone that Caleb may never have to address But we have to have people on staff It's not like we've got ten of these guys stand around but you've got to have people that understand that can talk to those customers And know what that means when they come in and do a pretty intensive quality audit right to be able to just even quote the first part for these guys And we're we're equipped to be able to do that and that's just that's a human resource. That's not anything else and I don't even know if you can automate it because it's you know, it's so customer by customer, but That that ends up getting us you know Some pretty good opportunities with customers We always say that if we bring them to our shop that's kind of win them over no matter what and then whenever they start engaging in with us with Hey, we need we're gonna send up you know supplier quality engineer And he's gonna do this you know three tier quality audit for you We say well bring it on cuz we do it all the time Versus most people say oh crap like we're to wait and start you know now They've got to get a whole team on it and they're just learning it like we handle those things pretty good But lands out if you guys have those same challenges or customers like that Oh, yeah totally. I mean we just got done doing One from this company from Spain and I mean we've got very good quality and they gave us like 22 things we needed to improve and it's like well, I mean Yeah, we passed our ISO 2001 quality with Audit last week with like one observation That's it So part of that was also them just not really understanding our system and Them kind of be anew into this space, but yeah, I mean that's certainly a challenge and it's it's it seems like it's becoming more That people are doing it more and more So I think that's that's a beautiful part about Caleb's business and and You know one thing I was thinking about too early this little bit off topic with like really every Sheet metal shop should be a customer of Caleb's you know, it's like You don't have you don't need to weld it together. We can weld it together You know and the beautiful thing about a symbol is is most on a prototype most time the customers wanting to assemble it themselves anyways So as long as you can do you know pin insertion which you can that's that's a great feature Or why buy another laser if Caleb can just use this capacity right yeah exactly Like when we get off the seat call I'm gonna Certainly email our sales team that hey, gosh cut use it We need a quick turn, but that's such a unique niche We do a lot of that actually We serve a lot of Babchops that that aren't equipped to do the high mix, but definitely want the production work. So Yeah, the big the big not so secret is that I think that that's really a great place for the industry to land Uh if if somebody can aggregate enough volume to like command direct to mill pricing Uh, like imagine if your service center can send you a blank in one day I'm for less than you could make it for like I actually think that's gonna happen But you mean just one blank like not not an order of volume, but just one Well, imagine osh cut, but with regional presence plus uh Its own level wine and in house material servicing when we're housing Right right right Well and use exactly right like the cost for us to build one You know, I mean, it's got to go through uh flat pattern inspection programming. I mean Quality check at every step, you know, so it's you can build one Yeah, we could buy one with your profit in it probably cheaper than you know, we could make it you know, we're close to Right, but we can't even touch those lead times because they're scheduling complexity, you know And that's okay if you can I mean because you've got the overheads you haven't automated in the office But if you can amortize those overheads across your big contract jobs it doesn't matter at all Um, but yeah for one part it's it's hard to scale that up to where it makes sense at all Right, I mean just to give you some perspective, you know a decade ago. I visited a a shop called 24 7 Taylor steel in the um in uh in Europe Yeah, this is Tim by the way and I uh and uh When uh it it was you know, they call it the webshop model in Europe Where and and there it's it's a very localized so um and there there's so many they have their own trucks and everything is closer together in OEM They they actually have a drip feed system to OEMs There where they may may deliver about you know five or six parts a dozen parts every day, but it's the Know the geographies different everything's closer together. I mean, so it makes more sense and and and and the supply chains look a little different But uh but then when I saw Ash cut and a few of the other competitors out there that are just coming you know, I covered We've covered send cut send previously as well, which has a similar business model and You know, I just said well, that's it's the this kind of model coming to the states And it'd be and when I started covering it because I thought man this model could be symbiotic with the contract model that I see everywhere in she metal Uh as well as OEMs it could be a it could be kind of a reshaping of the supply chain between supply between uh between service centers between Contract fab shops and between prototype shops Like proto labs like like sim cuts and and like Ash cut So is it and it's a very interesting model and then we have the same uh Then we have models like zometry in there as well the brokerage model So we have all these different models that are just kind of entering the business We have kind of this uh gumbo that's happening that so that's uh beginning to taste pretty good I think especially when it's gonna especially when folks really start working together and going all right Let's see how we can really use the capacity that we've got and so that if we've got an idle machine It should be running Ideally, I mean and keep the parts flowing so we shall see so and another reason this is another reason why I want to get this panel together Because and Cody it was great when you when you mentioned this as far as how about automated programming how the thought was just so Second nature to you why not it's 2024 automated programming and so you went and upgraded and that's and you saw obviously it makes sense This is what what we need to go Where at 20 years ago when I was covering this business I never heard that and never even I know it was all about how many How many inches per minute how many strokes per minute how fast can this machine run It's a totally different kind of mentality with this next generation of shop managers coming up through the ranks and going Hey, there's a new way to run and it's not batch processing or it is a forward batch processing But but it's also about flow to get it through the entire business. So so guys. Thank you so much What we'll be tackling future topics and future panel discussions on next gen metal fab I want to thank thank you to the last three kill of all males fab Cody Lee of everyday technologies and killed chamberlin of osc and we'll see you next time The next gen metal fab podcast is a production of fabricators and manufacturers association and part of the FMA podcast network The show is hosted by Tim Heston and Caleb chamberlin the podcast is produced and edited by Garrett slager and Dana Wiker additional production support by Dan Davis and Andy Flando, Mike Owens, Billy Koltha, Elizabeth Gavin and me Sarah spring. Thank you for listening Now for something completely different