S5E4 Mark Ross | Medical Device Engineering Leaders 5

We discuss Mark's career journey and lessons learned from over two decades in leadership roles. He shares insights on problem-solving, industry trends, keys to success, and advice for career progression.

Main Topics

• Problem-solving skills and tools like DMAIC
• Trends like outsourcing challenges and regulatory burdens
• Keys to success, such as collaboration and extra responsibilities
• Career advice focusing on strong job fits

About the guest: Mark Ross has been leading operations and manufacturing teams for 20 years. His recent roles include manufacturing manager at Medtronic and director of manufacturing at Endologix, where he led, coached, problem-solved, and performed continuous improvement activities in hi-tech medical devices.

Links:
Mark Ross - LinkedIn

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Transcript

Aaron Moncur: 0:02

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Mark Ross: 0:52

But really, for me, it was always looking for opportunities. And when when a door would open, say, Hey Mark, on top of your, you know, 50 hours a week of work. We also need this to get done. And I'd say great, let me let me figure out how to get that done and help me show me how to do that.

Aaron Moncur: 1:22

Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of The being an engineer Podcast. Today we have the pleasure to speak with Mark Ross, who has been leading operations and manufacturing teams for 20 years. His recent roles include manufacturing manager at Medtronic and director of manufacturing at Inter logics where he lead coached, problem solved and performed continuous improvement activities in high tech medical devices. Mark, thank you so much for being with us on the show today.

Mark Ross: 1:50

Well, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Aaron Moncur: 1:53

So Mark, if I've done my research correctly, you are not an engineer yourself. But you've been working closely with engineers for about 20 years now. Is that that accurate? Correct? Right? And how how did you get into this space?

Mark Ross: 2:07

You know, I fell into this space, I was actually doing sales and marketing for a number of years, and the high tech sector up in Silicon Valley. And then after the.crash.com crash, we really wanted to move to San Diego to raise the kids here. So we came down here started well, actually, I purchased a business, which was crashing and burning. And I had a neighbor who said, Hey, you should come work with me over at Abbott. And so while I was still running my business, began working at Abbott as a first line supervisor. And then that was 2006, maybe, and then just continued to grow and experience and go from production line to production line and take on new opportunities. And now I'm was director I was just laid off about two weeks ago, which gives me enough time to come do fun podcasts and things like that. But hopefully looking for that VP slash senior director role here in the near future.

Aaron Moncur: 3:08

Terrific. Well, I'm sorry to hear that you were laid off. I can empathize with you. I've been laid off myself. And it was painful. But I guess one door has to close before another kid opens. Right?

Mark Ross: 3:22

It's funny you say that? I feel that's absolutely true. I was really happy to enter logics. And of course, I had some stock options over vesting every month, so I had no desire to leave. And so it really took something like a layoff in order to get me motivated. Okay, let's open my eyes and see what's open up there. So

Aaron Moncur: 3:38

yeah, yeah. Well, you have been a leader in the medical device industry for for some time now. And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are thinking to themselves, gosh, I would love to be in that position someday myself. What do you think were some of the habits or activities or ambitions or mindsets that you had that allowed you to climb the ladder into those leadership roles?

Mark Ross: 4:06

You know, there's, there's two aspects of it. I think, in my mind, one is just taking opportunities. And I've heard people say, Hey, that's not my job. Just been here. That's, that's not what I should be doing right now. But really, for me, it was always looking for opportunities. And when when the door would open, say, Hey, Mark, on top of your, you know, 50 hours a week of work, we also need this to get done. And I'd say great, let me let me figure out how to get that done. And help me show me how to do that. And so there was a lot of that taken our responsibility that was not within my my charter or even my wheelhouse. I may not have known how to do it. But I said, Yeah, I'll jump in and work with the team and figure out how to get that done. And so, the more and more I've done that the more breadth of experiences I've had. And so I feel like when I jump into a new opportunity, it accelerates the process for me, learning understood ending and making improvements.

Aaron Moncur: 5:02

That's huge. As a business owner myself, I can tell you how extraordinarily valuable and how deeply appreciative I am of team members who have that attitude, right? Yeah, they might have hit their 40 hours a week, but something else needs to get done. And they're willing to jump in and figure it out and just do it. That's, that's huge. Yeah. As you have grown into positions of more and more responsibility, and authority and leadership, have you ever felt imposter syndrome? Or has it always been like, Oh, I'm good, I got this no problem.

Mark Ross: 5:40

I don't know if I feel like the imposter syndrome. But there's days when I reflect and I think, you know, I may have been in meetings all day, or I had a couple of meetings, and I wasn't number crunching, I wasn't developing a supply plan or schedule or are doing the hard work. I just had a couple words of wisdom here and there and encourage somebody to do this. Or I had a piece of advice for someone, and maybe that was significant for that day, but really wasn't because I was maybe working harder. But just on that day, I don't know that I don't work hard. But there's some days you're pounded out, you've got to get some things done. And you, you get it done. And then other days where it's just, it's a light load. But maybe those few little things, you do have a big impact on the business. So yeah, that's great.

Aaron Moncur: 6:29

What kind of trends have you been seeing in the medical device manufacturing area, this could be new processes, old processes that aren't being used anymore different materials costs, just anything that comes to mind when it comes to new patterns, that that you've seen emergence emerging in the medical device manufacturing space, that

Mark Ross: 6:51

one is just the continued outsourcing offshoring that we've been seeing for probably eternity. But the other one, everyone's probably aware of is the material availability issue. And some of those extrusion manufacturers, you'll work with extrusion, or maybe it's metal shops, just their capacity is backed up, and they're not expanding fast enough to keep up with the market. I know, you talked about the soft landing of the economy, if you follow the economy at all, and it looks like we've hit a soft landing, I think a lot of us me for sure, we're expecting to see, you know, the market was taken off going gangbusters. Typically, that always ends in a crash where, you know, the Fed raises interest rates too quick, too hard. And then everything comes crashing down. And then there's a reverse of the economy. And now there's too much capacity for not enough volume. But it's been interesting to see this, I think other people are also saying, Hey, I'm not going to expand, because I think the market is going to turn and the market hasn't turned. So you've got kind of a limited amount of capacity, trying to meet all the needs of the businesses that are continuing to grow at a really quick pace.

Aaron Moncur: 8:00

You mentioned outsourcing to offshore facilities for some of this contract manufacturing. And you had also mentioned how there's too much capacity, not enough volume. Do you think that's specific to some of the offshore providers? Or were you seeing that even with domestic providers as well, not enough capacity to I've

Mark Ross: 8:27

been seen it more with domestic have not enough capacity to meet the needs. And I know a lot of the vendors out there who are subcontractors are kind of buying up other companies or consolidating operations. And in the medical device where you've got validations that need to be done. They just don't have enough capacity to one, build what you need to do and to do the proper validations that a medical device company needs to have performed in order to validate the process. So it's just been really tough from getting what you need done in a timely manner to meet your company's growth.

Aaron Moncur: 9:06

Yeah, because not any contract manufacturer out there can do the work that medical device companies need you need to, you know, 1345, certifications, things like that FDA compliance, quality systems, story, all that fun stuff. Yeah.

Mark Ross: 9:20

And we've even seen some of the suppliers where as an endo logics, they've been doing consolidation, transferring from one location to another, struggling with capacity, then trying to move it to maybe Mexico or offshore, and then everything just just taken longer than it should have. And it's just a tough way to try to manage your business when you're counting on those folks. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 9:44

What are some of the traits, the habits or behaviors that you've seen in the most successful engineers? And then if it's a different answer, also, those behaviors and traits that you've seen in the most successful engineering teams, so

Mark Ross: 9:59

I think Problem Solving would be one of the top ones. So when I said talking about problem solving, there's a whole aspect like, I liked the DMAIC process to find, measure, analyze, improve control. And it's, it's a process that you could use for something quick and easy. Or you could do a very detailed one. I see a lot of people go on with, oh, I just do a five why's and whatever my best guess is on when I feel like I'm done. That's the best solution I can come up with. And I really like to see people take the time to dive in, measure data, analyze the data, get some other folks in the room, have a mentor who can look at what you're doing and say, Nope, I know you spent a lot of time with that. But I think you're still missing some things, you do go back and spend some more time like the Toyota Production System process, they're very strong into the A threes into backs. And I think having that type of tenacity to dive into the real problems and find the root cause. And then really think of a couple different strategies of how you mediate that, and not rushing to the quick and easiest one, but taking the time to digest it and wait to get a good answer. I think that's, that's really important. And I think another one that I think is important is doing what you say you're going to do and doing it on time. And I think that's tough for engineers, I think they say, well, it should probably take me a month to get this done. And then it takes three months, four months. So there's some aspect of realizing that if you are you're supposed to get something done in a month, try to get it done in two weeks. Because you know, you got to front load that project, you know, there's gonna be problems and things are out of your control that you can't manage that are going to distract your project. So if you're given a month to do something, front loaded, and try to get it done in two weeks, and then hopefully, it'll hit that one month bar, or that one month mark. But that's, that's an important trade and something I see. Not a lot of folks have that. But you when you find somebody who has that ability to get things done on time, it makes a huge difference to the organization. However, in a couple med device where, you know, Kappas and CMRS are just climbing, and they're not, they're not being managed to just continue to get postponed, well, I've got so much work to do, I can't finish any of my projects. And it's not the projects often. And sometimes the projects are unmanageable. And sometimes I think it's the people managing the product to say I've got all these projects to do, I need to get some of these knocked out. And sometimes the day doesn't end at 40 hours right or the week doesn't end at 40 hours. Sometimes it takes a little effort to get on top of things to get get your schedule under control. So

Aaron Moncur: 12:35

I want to go back to your comment about finishing on time. We, I resonate strongly with that. We do we have a cow, a volunteer program called CAD club at pipeline where we open the doors at our office once a week. And we have students from the community, middle school and high school students come in and we teach them CAD and engineering. And there's a lot more behind that. But we have what we call our tenants, the CAD club tenants and there are 10 of them. And each week we talk about one of them. And one of them is early is on time. And we've we've kind of hammered this one pretty hard. You know, if you want to fish finish something on time, be early, because something is going to come up that you're not expecting. And if you plan to finish on the due date, you're probably going to be late. So early is on time.

Mark Ross: 13:30

That is perfect. I'd love to hear the other 10 tenants, I should read them

Aaron Moncur: 13:34

off here. Let's see, I can remember a couple of them off the top of my head we've got the difference between good and great is attention to detail. We've got persistence beats brilliance, we've got prevent surprises, and another four or five, six there, but those are the ones that I remember off the top of my head. It's funny, the early is on time tenant, we we have a jar of bearing balls in the office. And during calcula we encourage these kids to recognize when other students in the class are living these tenants. And when they do, they take one of these berry balls and they drop it into another jar. And each one represents $1. And at the end of the course we add them all up and we do a pizza party with the money in there or something like that. So they've really latched on to this early is on time and now almost every single student gets to CAD club early. And as soon as Cat club started, they say hey, early is our dive we put some some varying balls in there. So very beginning class whales have like 10 bearing balls, they go into this turn. Everyone loves it.

Mark Ross: 14:41

That's great. That's great. That's a great way to help them. visualize and understand to live out that hole that you want to be on time. You got to be early. Absolutely.

Aaron Moncur: 14:50

Yep. What are some of the most valuable technical skills that you want to see in your, your manufacturing engineers?

Mark Ross: 14:58

I'm going to probably leave The technical skills specifics to the technical folks. But I would say what relates well to the technical aspect of doing an engineers job is spending time with the folks who know the process. And that's the folks if you're in r&d, if you're in sustaining manufacturing, the folks making your product 40 hours a week, they know the product really, really well. And I know you might think, well, they don't have degrees. Sure, but there's a lot of great brains out there. And so when I, when I go into an environment, I'm like, Hey, there's one of me, and there's, you know, 50 brains on the floor. And so I want you guys to understand, you guys have brains, and we need them to help us make this better. Like, I'm gonna have some really great ideas. But really, you guys don't understand this better than I do. And your inputs, what's going to transform us into cost savings and things like that. So a lot of times, I see engineers coming up with solutions in their cube. And I'm like, well, great watch, take it up the guys on the floor. And they'll sometimes it's great. And sometimes the people in floor like now is not gonna work. You don't, you, you engineer you don't understand. And so if you are open to listen to the folks on the floor, sometimes they won't tell you to their face. Sometimes they won't tell the engineer their face, you have to go out there and build trust, that you're going to take their opinions, you're gonna listen to them, you're gonna incorporate their ideas. If you don't have that trust, they're not going to tell you that they're laughing behind your back. So spend some time out there, get them involved in you might have the answer, but sometimes they will, too. So

Aaron Moncur: 16:35

I'm curious, have you encountered resistance ever from the engineers in regards to going and visiting with the operators? You mentioned? You know, they're just like, they don't have degrees? And maybe hopefully not, but maybe there's some pride there. And engineers like, oh, I don't need to go talk with the operators. I I know what to do. Has that been an issue, or that's not something that you run into very often,

Mark Ross: 16:56

I'd say it doesn't play out that way that often specifically like that, like, that's an exaggerated case. But I was at Abbott, and I identified a situation I was a super senior supervisor, something along that and manufacturing. And we had the sustaining engineers were also the project engineers. And so the good way to get promoted was to work on these cool projects of doing things. And so the production line might be struggling, they might have a low yield, high scrap issue, equipment may not be working. But the engineers are focused on these other projects that are fun, and, you know, using their brains and come up with these great ideas, it's gonna go on a resume, and they'll get voted. And so and then quality engineers to similarly they had their own quality processing they were doing in their office and didn't have enough time to be out in the floor. So we put together a program where the the engineer quality engineer production lead the manufacturing tech, and I think there's someone else on the team, each week had to present up to the directors and managers of manufacturing for our endo endovascular group. And so what started off as a they're not helping us, and hey, I don't have time for them. You know, the directors were really good about saying, No, you guys were one team, you guys need to figure out the problems and come with solutions. So every work that every week, they would come to present on safety, quality, manufacturing yields. And that really helped align that group and going from everyone's going their own direction day, we all need to be together, swing present from the directors were on the same page. Because it it comes out pretty quickly if if production is not getting support, or production is not supporting the engineers. It was it was becoming very evident very quickly. So putting that together, helped make that group really gel together, work together and make sure they're all solving the same problems.

Aaron Moncur: 19:02

Yeah, that's great. Well, let me take a very short break and share with the listeners that our company pipeline and design and engineering develops new and innovative manufacturing processes for complex products, then implements them into manual fixtures or fully automated machines to dramatically reduce production costs and improve production yields for OEMs. Will you be attending the medical design and manufacturing and dnm tradeshow this February in Anaheim? If so, we'd love to meet you face to face, stop by our booth number 1992 And say hi, we'll have hands on demos of our EZ r&d product line for you to experience as well. That's booth 1992 February 6 through eighth for the MD and M trade show at the Anaheim Convention Center. Today we have the privilege of speaking with you Mark Ross, or what have been a few of your biggest challenges as an engineering leader,

Mark Ross: 20:07

I would say one of my challenges has been, you know, he talked about your your strengths become your weaknesses. So my ability to get things done quickly and efficiently and on time has been a challenge for me when I'm working with people or teams who don't have that level of commitment. And so times where I was trying to push others or a team to match my pace, and did not go well. Sometimes there were situations where, you know, the whole organization needed a quick turnaround. And so they needed me to be that person who could be the bad guy and say, No, we got to get this done. But there's been other times to where I just I pushed harder than the organization could comfortably accept. And there's times when I should have probably slowed down and considered, you know, not only the desire of the organization as a whole, but the individual needs, understanding their capacity and their competing priorities and try to be a little bit more compassionate, and try to maybe, maybe my project needs to slow down to meet the speed of the organization. So there's times when organization says, Hey, we need to get this done. And I'm able to get support to the teams and it's very good for the organization. So at end of this is about a year ago, at Inter logics, we are, we are coming out of budget time, and we needed to cut some costs. So I got together with any of these Q A's and said, Hey, here's the deal. There's a couple ways cut costs. One is we lose people, the other one is we come together and figure out how to cut manufacturing costs. And so in a 10 week process, we did some lean training and some domestic training. And we were able to as a team, figure a way to cut, I think it was 15% of operational costs out of the budget within a 10 week period. But everyone was on board for that everyone's supportive, and it went very smoothly. There's been other times where maybe it wasn't as urgent, I think, at Medtronic. Medtronic is actually an urgent one, there were some urgent things that needed to get done, because they were potentially at risk of losing the site. But there was a lot of resistance from other folks who didn't, that really wasn't a big deal for them. And so I did a lot of pushing and shoving to get some things done. And we had some great achievements. But some people got run over. And, you know, I wish I could have maybe been a little bit more compassionate. And that slowed down a little bit to, you know, accommodate the needs and feelings of folks are out there. So I've learned some lessons. And you know, this last work of endo logics, there were times where I'm like, Hey, there's a big cost saving here. And cost saving is really important the company right now, I'm like, here's an opportunity. But here's the requirements we're going to need from the other departments, which are already over stressed with, with their, with their current commitments. And so I took it up to the CFO and said, Hey, here's what we've got, there's an opportunity, but we'd have to put even more weight on these folks overburdened, and the response is, yo, we need to just lay off, that is a great project. But they don't have the capacity to help us get there this time. So we have to shelve that and so on. Being able to just have those discussions and and get a feel for where's the organization, what is the need versus the other teams and then not just pushing my own agenda, but trying to get everybody in sync at the same time to see what we can and can't accomplish. That's

Aaron Moncur: 23:53

a fine balance to strike. I think we had a situation recently a pipeline where we had a great opportunity for a pretty good sized project. And but it was going to be a really aggressive schedule. Maybe the most aggressive schedule we've ever had on our projects were two machines that we needed to deliver in about a 10 week period. And they were both automated machines, lots of complexity in them. 10 weeks is not a lot of time for for something like this. So I wanted to do it. Of course, I always want to do it. But I'm also not the boots on the ground anymore, right? I'm not doing much of the actual engineering work these days. So instead of just saying, Yeah, we're doing this, I approached the team and I said, Hey, we've got this opportunity. It's a good opportunity for us, but it's going to mean some overtime. A lot of you are going to have to put in some you know, it's got to be more than 40 hours a week for like 10 weeks. Are you guys up for that? Is that something as a team we can commit to doing? And we had to really candid and and helpful discussions. And in the end, we decided, yeah, yeah, we can sign up for this. So we did. And I didn't have to push anyone, they were so great, you know, people, they were already invested, they had enrolled themselves. So I didn't have to enroll anyone, and everyone just did what they needed to do to make it happen. And it was a smashing success in the end. So you can't always do it so clearly, right. But being able to give people a chance to enroll themselves, I found it's been very useful in those situations.

Mark Ross: 25:37

Well, that is fantastic. What a great example of what a good team you have that you can say, this is gonna be a tough one, what do you think, you know, and then yeah, you guys have those tough conversations, but they were willing to get behind you and help get that done. That's awesome. They're

Aaron Moncur: 25:50

an amazing group of engineers, I'll just throw a shout out to them right now, we absolutely would not be where we are as a company without all the truly, genuinely amazing, talented, thoughtful, skilled engineers that that we have on the team. So I really appreciate all of them. But this interview is about you, not the united team. So back to you, Mark, what, what are some of the biggest challenges that you you see facing medical device companies these days, while

Mark Ross: 26:26

you know, probably more of a macro level, opportunity for improvement, or macro level, drag us see on the medical device industry is the the regulatory bodies, and this is nothing new. But it gets probably harder and harder each year, it seems like where the regulatory bodies are there in order to maintain and make sure that the companies that are allowed to distribute products within their company, are making safe products that meet the customer's needs. And so then it gets down to a lot of hey, have you validated this, can you prove that out. But sometimes during those audits, the regulatory individuals are very nitpicky about things that really don't matter. And the amount of costs that they drive into the business for us to track and manage things that are really not critical. drive up the cost of manufacture. We see a lot of criticism in the market from a cost of pharmaceuticals, cost of medical devices are sky high and increasing. And sure there's good margins in there, because there's a lot of investment and it, you know, it takes a lot of money to invent a new drug, and a lot of drugs fail. But we also could be doing a better job as a regulatory industry at making sure the product is safe, without trying to build an extra cost. That's not adding value. No,

Aaron Moncur: 27:57

I've heard that a lot lately from medical device leaders. Yeah,

Mark Ross: 28:01

now the there was one challenge the and I'm gonna get this wrong, the accelerated new device for critical devices. So that has really sped up the process for if you've got a new device, it's not like anything else in the market that has sped up that process to get that reviewed, and get that out in the market. So I will say there was a lot of a lot of movement for the positive when that came out. Terrific. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 28:30

What is? What's it? What's a tool that doesn't exist right now, but if it existed, what allow your teams to be 10 times more productive than they are, you know, 100 times more productive than they are? And this tool does not need to exist within the realm of known physics. Feel free to go crazy with this. And yeah, what? What do you think that tool would be?

Mark Ross: 28:55

I am drawing a complete blank. I don't know what that would be. Yeah, you know, it's funny, I don't know if you're familiar with the StrengthsFinder. Are you familiar that that probably falls under that futuristic strength that I'm not sure that I have it? I like to be in the creative but yet practical and how am I solving a problem that meets reality type things so yeah, it's funny Earlier you asked about what what is it that helped me to be successful in my career and I would say part of that is it we're there's different people in the world which, you know, you kind of sometimes think, okay, we're all born and we have the same characteristics, but not really I think there is some more of that innate you're, you're born with some skills and abilities, you can grow some skills and abilities and some things you you can't grow futuristic is probably one of the things I don't have. But for me, I think some of the if we use that as kind of a graph So what different skill sets are out there like the strategic, The Winning Others Over trying to think of what some of the other ones were that I have. But those types of skill sets that I've had, it put me in a position. So when I get into those opportunities of using my analytical and achiever strengths, it plays well into like a senior manager role, being able to look at a strategic endeavor The Winning Others Over and trying to get people to work together and being the type of person that people enjoy working with the connectedness of looking at all the different systems and how they play well together. So I'd say, I've got some kind of god given traits that help me do well in this, but there's maybe other skill sets I'm lacking where I would be not a good engineer to cube all day, or I would not be a good, someone who needs to use that futuristic sense on a regular basis. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 30:55

You mentioned StrengthsFinder. Is that a tool that you've used to manage your teams?

Mark Ross: 31:01

Yes, sometimes I've had my team go through it, and then it helps accelerate that process of like, oh, okay, now I understand why Mark's always go go go and get this done. And, and where he's coming from, it helps me understand, hey, this person would be really good at that, that data analysis where you're just gonna sit in front of your laptop, your computer for a week straight, we need that project done. And this guy likes that. So let's help him do that type of work. And I think as the whole team sees that, they can also see a, how can I use other people's strengths and not feel insecure that I'm not able to do that as well as they can? But just understand, we're all different. So how do we use each other's strengths in order to help maximize our ability to get things done or improve the environment? Yeah, I like it, if you have you used it in the past and how so? It's

Aaron Moncur: 31:51

been a while. Yeah, I took it. And I had my team take it, but it's probably been eight years or something. Yeah, I found it interesting. But I'm not sure that I was able to apply it in a very productive way. It could have just been that I didn't spend enough time with it. But I'm always curious to hear about how others have used it and what successes they have had.

Mark Ross: 32:15

I think if you're in a team, where you all know each other pretty well already, there's probably less value. I think it's more valuable in a kickstart where your leg as a leader coming in. And usually when I come in, it's often because things needed to be changed. And they needed kind of a change agent. So they're bringing in so things are going to change. So let's figure out who we are and how we work. And I think that will help accelerate us our ability to change with less heartburn in the process. That's

Aaron Moncur: 32:46

a really important insight. I liked that a lot. I agree with you there. Yeah. Okay, great. Thinking back to some of these companies that you have worked with in the past. If you had no limitations on time, money, resources in general, what's one thing that you could have done for your company that would have had the most significant impact on on achieving their business goals?

Mark Ross: 33:13

That is a real tough question. You know, I think, and this is probably more applicable to manufacturing where you've got, you know, 50, to a couple 100 people working on a production floor versus maybe an engineering specific organization. But maybe it's tied in, and that is that I talked about the problem solving and to make processes and the ability to just utilize lean concepts. I'm gonna give a shout out to Medtronic, the Medtronic operating system, which is like these nine subsystems of these different areas of lean that you want to incorporate within your business. When I first saw it, I said nine subsystem, I said, somebody who's just trying to get their keep their job, you know, keep coming up with more of the substance. But the more I learned about it, the more I started using it, and it's everything from, oh, gosh, making sure you've got the right inventory, making sure your your yields are good, making sure you've got people that are not waiting for product and you're managing through. And I'm really butchering the nine subsystems right now. But those nine subsystems the more I got into it, the more key I saw they, they do interrelate. So well, and you can, we would have the self test we ask questions of yourself about is high, medium, or low? On the how does this business work in these, and each of the nine subsystems, had their own couple of questions and seeing that system work where you've got a real lean system, everything from where the product coming from, to how it's getting shipped out, that having that type of system is huge and allowing you to just maximize every opportunity, save costs, make sure you're meeting customer needs. Make sure you got the right amount of inventory, making sure you've got people who are maximizing every minute and also keeping them engaged in the process. says. So I'd say systems like that putting in implement implementing systems like that is really key to maximize your manufacturing effort.

Aaron Moncur: 35:10

You've mentioned DMAIC a few times, can you talk to us a little bit about what dimeric is and how you've been able to implement it, use it in, in practice? This? Yeah,

Mark Ross: 35:21

I took like a three day course on it. So let me summarize that in, you know, two minutes, right. So really, it's, it's just about problem solving. And it's just a tool that you use, where you go through five stages, and you fluctuate, you jump around between the stages a little bit, but you try to follow the flow, where you first define the problem you're trying to solve. And I think that's really key within the demand. And I think there's some good books around there about a 3d matrix and how to do them. But really defining the problem you're trying to solve. There's been so many times where I walk in organizations, and people are talking about this high level problem, a yield problem, but they haven't defined exactly what they're trying to solve. So one person's mind, it might be machine interaction, one person's mind, it might be people or actions or one person's wine, it might be something else. But so define an executive which trying to solve, and then putting some parameters around it like problem we're trying to solve is we're trying to improve the yield from 78% to 85%, over the next eight weeks, without negatively impacting costs, morale, safety, yield. And so you kind of measure that out. And sometimes you will spend an hour with a team just trying to figure out that question of what you're trying to solve. Because there may be a lot of things going on in that area that need to be solved, and you need to narrow down and just pick one. We don't want to be loosey goosey and say, there's five different things, how do we solve them all like, okay, there's five things going on here that may be impacting us, there's just pick one, we'll do make that solve it, then we move on to the next one, and solve it rather than having. Because what you have is a lot of people coming at things from different angles, you've got a lot of arguments on what we should be doing. So taking the time to define the problem really well sets the team up for success, then you're going to measure, so you're measuring all the different aspects that could be contributing to the problem or the solution. And sometimes it takes a long time to measure that stuff. But taking the time to actually measure out that information and record it, put it on a board so everybody can see it helps, then you're going to analyze, so you're going to be brainstorming, you're gonna come up with new ideas, you're gonna realize you need to go back and measure some other things you hadn't thought of before. And then some folks have done this, it's going to get lost in the details, but you're trying to solve for of the different things that you're analyzing, what are the things that are most likely to make an improvement here. So you may have 12, different great ideas, but which of those 12 are really gonna have the highest level of impact? And then what can you do within your timespan? Budget, things like that. And then you actually start doing the improvements. And you may start with one, you may start off with three, but you're improving it, you're continuing to measure to see if you make an improvement or not. And then there's your control, how are you going to measure to make sure you've actually seen an improvement? And how do you continue to control that or measure that to make sure you don't go back out of control, again, like you may have implemented some things that helped. But if you're not continuing to monitor it, you may get lazy and go back and forget to continue doing those things. So those five processes, it's just a problem solving tool. Sometimes the five why's is great. But a lot of times it just doesn't cut it when you want to look for a robust solution that's really going to help you make improvements that you can track and measure and continue to monitor going forward. That's great.

Aaron Moncur: 39:00

Thank you crash course on domestic. Who needs the three day course we got Mark Ross here and Joe for all right, how do you see the future of medical device manufacturing in the US changing over the next, say, three to five years?

Mark Ross: 39:17

You know, I think it's continuing to, you know, everyone's continuing to look into cut costs, always. And so how do you do that you can get a design engineering firm to come up with new machinery to help you reduce cost of labor, right, which has maybe a six month payback. And so if you're looking long term, you're like, Hey, how can I take this manual process and automate it? And I don't think we do enough of that. There's opportunity for us to continue to do more of that I believe. But then I continuing also to outsource and offshore, where if I've got if maybe labor is a third of my cost of product. Can I take it somewhere else and cut down that cost? Some labor, well, one of the catches that we often don't give enough justice to is, okay, I'm gonna open a facility in Costa Rica or Mexico. But now you also need all the leadership to also manage that. And you're going to have site directors and quality managers and injury managers all down at that site. And so you got a lower cost of product. But unless you're going to also offshore, all the engineering and leadership to that location, you're going to want to dip into that cost, cost sector. So I see us continuing to strive for reduced costs, improved margins and profitability. But we need to be careful that we're really taking the look at all the costs incorporated when we do something like that. And i i for 1am not a big fan of working with an organization that's on the other side of the continent with a timezone is flip flops. Because it's really hard to have detailed discussions, and you send something to them at night, they get back to you in the day, you have an immediate seven o'clock at night, it's there five in the morning, things like that, right? It just it, it makes a challenge. It's much easier to stay in your timezone from a collaboratives perspective, and

Aaron Moncur: 41:17

your language, I mean, language barriers, that definitely puts up some additional roadblocks.

Mark Ross: 41:23

It certainly does. Yes. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 41:26

Well, Mark, is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you think would be useful for the listeners to hear?

Mark Ross: 41:35

You know, what there is, I've found I've, I've had to been on the side of laying off people many times, and it's never fun. And you always you're heartbreaks for the folks who are gone unless they're open for the retirement package. But most of the time, it's not a happy day for folks. So now being on this side, you know, I've probably spent about two weeks since I was laid off. And I've probably applied for, I don't know, 1520 jobs online. I've also been on the recruiting side, both for manager from actually being a recruiter in my past. And it's so tempting being on the job Hunter side right now to want to apply for a job that you're pretty good fit for, right? You got most of the stuff. I just had a job that was for to be from a friend today, VP, manufacturing, Hey, that sounds like a great job. I'm a great fit, except it's an hour and a half commute. And I'm really good with an hour commute. But an hour and a half just seems really obnoxious to me. And so I'm tempted to apply, but I just got to peel back. So you know what, this is not an ideal fit, I don't even need to apply. Especially you look at LinkedIn or indeed Okay, 100 people have applied for this job. If you're meeting 80% of those requirements, don't maybe don't waste your time, right, just wait for the ones that are really a good solid fit. And apply to those I've, I'm sure I've applied to over 100 positions. And I've been looking back over the last three or four career moves. They were never from a job I applied for. It was wider, a recruiter who found me or a friend who found me. So I think of all the time I can invest in strolling through the indeed, strolling through the LinkedIn is finding all the opportunities that now it's much easier to apply. But sometimes you have to sign up and log in and do all that. And I think of all the time I can invest in that. But my advice to folks is, if you find yourself looking for a job, always, I realized I'll probably be looking for a couple of months, but I'd love to start sooner rather than later. So I've got this financial incentive to apply to anything that may or may not, you know, be anywhere close to my my acumen. But if other folks are in that same position, you find yourself hey, and medical device is very ups and downs, the right especially you moving stuff offshore, we don't need as many engineers on site, we're gonna have to make some tough choices. If you find yourself in this position, don't panic. Look for those opportunities that are a great fit. And you know, within the locale you'd be willing to live with the pay range, you'd be willing to accept, and just apply to those and make yourself available. But I'd say Don't, don't just go out shotgunning it and blasting your resume all over the place, you're just spinning the wheels, go to the beach, you know, go to the park, watch some TV to do something that you enjoy.

Aaron Moncur: 44:35

Love it. You know, unfortunately, we've seen quite a lot of these layoffs over the past, I'd say six to nine months. I've seen a trend of this with a lot of our customers, especially in the medical device space. So this is very timely and thoughtful advice for engineers who are listening to this right now. Thank you for sharing that. Well, Mark, I think we'll we'll wrap it up here. Thank you so much, again for being on the show with me today. And how can people get in touch with you?

Mark Ross: 45:07

LinkedIn is a great way. But there's a couple million mark Ross's, we have red three and Abbott when I worked there, so I could look up Mark Ross, or worked at Abbott or Medtronic or connected to Aaron. And I would love to connect with people. I did have a couple of thoughts on that, though. If you've got a question or want advice, or have a specific question, please feel free to reach out. If you have a product you think might interest me, let me know what it is. And I'll let you know if it is or is not something within my need. But but don't reach out to me and say you want to be my best friend, when you just need to try to sell me something. I get so many others, like maybe we could just be friends and hang out like, I've got a lot of friends. I'm sure that's great. Why don't you just tell me what you're selling. And then I can let you know that I don't need it. And we can move on and still be connected. And then people out there, pinging me. I'm like, No, really, I know, I don't need your service. I'm really good. And I have to unconnect with them. Just because it's a little too much. So feel free to reach out with me if you've got a great product or service. I'd love to hear about it. Don't be don't have your feelings hurt when I don't need it. But maybe someday I will. So very,

Aaron Moncur: 46:15

very clear instructions. I love that. It drives me crazy when I get these requests for people who are like, Oh, I LinkedIn the suggested that I connect with you. And I'm so impressed with everything you've done in your career, and your business is so amazing. And I love your leadership and you don't know me. Come on. You're peddling something. Just tell me what it is. And let's get through this, you know? Exactly. All right. Well, Mark, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate you guys sharing some of your experiences and insight in the industry, and very excited for all the listeners to get to benefit from that as well.

Mark Ross: 46:52

Thanks so much and I love being out here.

Aaron Moncur: 46:57

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines and with product design, visit us at Team pipeline.us Thanks for listening