A Journey into the Wonderful World of Manufacturing
A Manufacturing Overview
My love for manufacturing started when I was in college. I had originally entered the University of Michigan on a nuclear engineering path, but during my entry-level engineering course, my professor, Pat Hammett, pulled me aside and asked me a series of questions that would effectively define my career path to this day. Those questions led me to switch majors to Industrial and Operations Engineering– a perfect blend of process optimization, manufacturing business and economics, and a number of other course topics that laid the foundation for what would become my passion: the business of manufacturing.
Joining Prime Movers Lab has been a wonderful next step in my “business of manufacturing” journey and is enabling me to learn from many inspiring, creative, and innovative startups. It is also allowing me to share much of what I’ve learned over the past 20 years to help founders and their teams in the wonderful world of manufacturing. To that end, I’m working with my colleagues to develop a number of blogs over the next months that will cover all things manufacturing.
The journey will start with strategic planning: a good manufacturing business needs a vision of what needs to be built, how to build it, whom to engage with and what it will take to execute the heck of that plan. I’ll try to cover some of my favorite tools like Hoshin Kanari, documenting cadence, and use of RACI matrices (use names, not departments but more on that later). Having a game plan (and having iterated on it) is important, but as Mike Tyson once wisely said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” so we will also cover manufacturing operations and how to execute on those plans and pivot when necessary.
That blog will cover the different types of manufacturing — repetitive, discrete, job, and process-based shops, and I’ll detail out how each system works. Also, we’ll cover some of the key operational tools like visual management, communication cadences, and the importance of leadership being present on the floor so that when the plan does start coming apart, the team can quickly adapt and either push through or pivot. As an old boss of mine said, “Never waste a good crisis.” Just don’t let the crisis last too long or it will become the norm and that’s not productive. (And you’ll like piss your customers off).
Additionally, I’ll cover a few of my favorite topics that link heavily to the culture the business should have: safety, quality, and continuous improvement. (I covered CI in a previous blog if you want to read about some of the commonalities it has in Venture Capital.) Safety is of the utmost importance and needs to be built into the culture in two ways: visible and engaged leadership who exhibit the right habits and individual accountability. Everyone should show ownership that they are first and foremost, responsible for their own safety. The same holds for delivering quality products that meet the customers' expectations. I’ll share some of my good and some of my bad experiences so hopefully, you can avoid my mistakes.
Another piece to having a world-class manufacturing business is to have a world-class supply chain. Many of the manufacturing problems I’ve seen, where a business is struggling to achieve customer satisfaction, are driven by poor interactions with the supply chain. This isn’t to say that it’s the supplier's fault; poor statements of work including agreeing to fluctuations in demand or clear quality expectations are often the root cause. If there is an issue with your supply chain, look in the mirror first. (I’ve been guilty of this a few times as a manufacturing leader.) To that end, I’ll cover many of the tools used to set up a robust supply chain including make v buy assessments, good contracting practices, and supplier performance monitoring along with some risk-reduction tools.
In tandem with maintaining a good supply chain, we will also cover some of the tools to operate a successful manufacturing business. Two of the key areas are having a robust sales and operation plan and also having a highly capable logistics and material handling system. From my experience, few things are more demoralizing to folks on the shop floor than not having the right parts at the right time. In my early years, I spent much of my time as an operations manager, running around trying to find out where parts were so that my team could keep building. Side note: building good processes upfront, you can minimize that strife.
When many people hear manufacturing, they often think of the production operations of the manufacturing business, but it is equally as important to understand the business side of manufacturing, so I’ll also cover topics like business development and sales and how a good BD team, who is highly connected to the shop floor, and de-risk and even accelerate a manufacturing business. I’ll also cover the important topics like new product introductions, product engineering, and development and the importance of a robust interface with manufacturing (some of which were covered in my MRL post). I’ve seen a few bright ideas that became extremely expensive ideas because someone forgot to ask the manufacturing team if they could make it.
By the end of these blogs, I hope to have helped anyone interested in starting a manufacturing business to have the foundations for success. I don’t plan on making it into a textbook nor claim that you will be an expert after reading these posts, but I truly pray that it will enable you to have a baseline of information, from which to ask good questions and also provide context for how you may want to build out the team around you. Please feel free to share your thoughts and stories as it will most certainly help Prime Movers Lab’s readers and me. Thanks for taking the time to read this introduction, and I look forward to going on this manufacturing journey with you.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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