Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S5E45 Andy Wells | Touching Lives Through Engineering (Rerun)
This episode is the chicken soup for the soul of engineering. Without a doubt, the most inspirational episode we’ve recorded to date as Andy shares with us how he and his company have helped elevate those in poverty and given their lives purpose and success. Along the way, he shares some very practical info about manufacturing tolerances and growing a manufacturing business, as well.
Main Topics Covered:
- Andy Wells' early life and introduction to engineering
- Developing creativity and early inventions
- Transition to formal education and early career
- Founding Wells Technology and early challenges
- Building customer relationships and marketing strategies
- Manufacturing challenges and design for manufacturability (DFM)
- Social engineering project and giving back
- Balancing quality, price, and delivery
- Personal reflections and final thoughts
About the guest: Andy Wells is the founder and CEO of Wells Technology, a manufacturing company in Minnesota. Andy has degrees in physics and technology as well as decades of practical experience in design, materials, processes, and entrepreneurship. Over the years Wells Tech has grown from serving the aerospace industry to automotive, medical, defense, and food processing, and developed services in distribution, and training for manufacturing technologists.
Links:
Andy Wells - LinkedIn
Wells Technology Website
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
Hi everyone. We've set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository, if you will. We hope it'll be a tool where engineers can learn about and connect with other companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show.
Andy Wells:Number one, you gotta have this deep desire. And number two is you've got to be trustworthy. If you have to do what you say you're going to do, you have to be totally honest, otherwise your suppliers or your customers or your employees or whoever you work with really won't want to work with. You know, 1000
Aaron Moncur:Hello and welcome to the being an engineer Podcast. Today, we're speaking with Andy Wells, who is the owner and CEO of wells, technology manufacturing company in Minnesota, and he has degrees in physics and technology, as well as decades of practical experience in design, materials, processes and entrepreneurship over the years. Wells Tech has grown from serving the aerospace industry to automotive, medical defense, food processing and developed services and distribution and training for manufacturing technologists. Andy, thank you so much for being with us today.
Andy Wells:Oh, you're most welcome. It's an honor to be here. Well,
Aaron Moncur:Andy, what? What made you decide to enter this field of engineering and and manufacturing?
Andy Wells:Well, I was kind of born into it, growing up on a very poverty stricken farm on an Indian reservation, and we had a lot of old machinery there. As my dad started farming, just being a little kid, I hung around with him at first learning how to use tools and then starting to take things apart, you know, the old clocks and stuff like that, that kids could get older sometimes, and it just kind of developed. And as I got a little older, I had the responsibility of running tractors fixing things, so I kind of learned it just that way. But I was also very curious, and I think it kind of irritated my parents a little bit that figs apart, wanted to know how things would work. I still do a lot of that, curious about electronics and chemistry and mechanical things. So because of the curiosity and because of my imaginative creative nature, I came up with a lot of little products, even when I was quite young, that helped our farming operation, sometimes just toys. So because we, like I mentioned, we're living on a pretty tight budget in our family, the toys were more clothing items and not so much, actually toys. When a birthday party or Christmas party came along. So a lot of the toys we had at first were just little blocks of wood, some of the simple things. Gradually, when I had more ability, I started building go karts and motor scooters with bolts and other mechanical things. So I kind of just kind of grew up being sort of a junior, non formal engineer, but it was the beginning steps to what led to my career. Now, that's
Aaron Moncur:wonderful. You mentioned the word creativity, which I hear a lot from, from really good engineers. It's just something that they have innately. Do you think that that creativity is that something that can be developed in a person, or you either have it or you don't.
Andy Wells:Well, I think most people have it, and you see the little children until they're about young teenagers that kind of, I think, from peer pressure and maybe just other interests, they kind of move on to more traditional things. But when they're young, most children are very creative, playing with boxes and so forth. Unfortunately, nowadays, the toy industry has made toys look so realistic, it oftentimes even people don't need creativity as much. But still, you know, just just creative. This is probably in most people, I just found it to be so interesting, I just kept it going. And even to this day, I'm creating things and puzzles. All is trying to keep the mind fresh that way. Yeah, when
Aaron Moncur:you were growing up, especially when you were younger, maybe I don't know, younger than in your teens. Is there anything you can remember inventing or designing that turned out to be a really great tool or very beneficial to your family? And you thought to yourself, I'm actually really good at this, like I could keep doing this for a long, long time. Well, that's
Andy Wells:quite young now, I noticed that, you know, there are certain. Screws that were Phillips hands, and others were slotted head. And so he had to have two screw divers. So I had made a screwdriver that actually using an old rifle cartridge, and took two screw divers apart and built this one that you could slip the end of it. I still have it here in my display Chase one of my early inventions. I was about seven years old at the time, and of course, now you see them all over at hardware stores, at homes, where you pull the shake out and you turn it in for end, put it back in the handle. But that was one of my earliest inventions that probably, if we had known what to do with it, might have become a commercial product back then. But, you know, you learn all that too. Event thing is one thing, but manufacturing and marketing and all that is the other part.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, absolutely. We're going through that right now. Here at my company pipeline, we have just finished developing one, one or two different products of our own, and now we're trying to figure out, okay, how do we sell these things? Now that's a whole other ball game. What let's see, growing up on a farm, you designed, I mean, all sorts of things, right, go karts and homemade rockets and double sided screwdrivers. At some point, you realize that a formal education would would help you take your your capabilities to the next level in terms of turning your concepts into reality. What were a few of the limitations that you encountered designing things back then and then? How did your your college education help you overcome those limitations. Well,
Andy Wells:I was actually in my late, late teens, just turning 20, when I left this fireman found a industrial job at a nearby factory that made snowmobiles called Polaris industries up here in northern Minnesota, and happened to be aware of them, because they also made straw shoppers that went on the back of combines. We had an old combine that had one of those, so I saw the address and the company name it, and we had had a poor crop year. That year wasn't much money, so my dad and I talked over and I said, Well, rather than staying on the farm, I think maybe I'll see if I get an industrial job. And went up to Polaris and I brought along a lot of pictures of all the different different toys, I guess I'll call them like you said, Go Karts and all that stuff, and showed it to the President. They had only 300 employees back then and but the President had been involved in making the very first snowmobile here in America. And he was quite a creative person himself and and he was, you know, really interested, I think, and saw something in me that he really probably felt within himself, also the creativeness. So he was about 35 years old. Here I was 20 years old. So he said, Well, we'll hire you as an apprentice, and you can work in the engineering department and do drawings, and let's see, see what happens. So after a couple of weeks, I asked if I could make a new snowmobile design. I've been making sketches of one that would actually have the motor in the front, because back then, the motors were in the back and they were vague and they were heavy. And so I made a small one of my design that would be fast and fun and lightweight, and he said that they were short on money, so I'd have to, probably couldn't do that, but I offered to pay for all the materials if I could use their shop at night when there was no normal production going on. And so with that in mind, I volunteered to work. And after about three to four months, I had built up the prototype of that first front engine bill for Polaris. And he and of course, all the other employees were interested in when I was testing it, the little ships in the neighborhood really enjoyed it because it was one that fit their size. Me being a smaller person, it was just naturally a little bit out of the smaller size. So they loved it. And the President saw that that had a lot of potential, so he invited me out for lunch with in his home. Actually, I met his wife there, and we sat and had a relaxed noon lunch. And he said, he said I should go back to school. And he said he had wished he had done that when he was younger. And he said that was my chance. And he said, I could always come back and work at choirs, but boy, he said, Go get some science and math. And, you know, try and, you know, Lord the trend of technology and things that will help you in the future. And he just gave me his friendly advice. So I took it to heart. And, you know, a couple days later. Told I was going to do that, so I resigned and started pursuing my college education. And actually, you know, it was very good advice. I'm glad I did it. Of course, I learned a lot noticed with the sciences, the maths, the chemistry, the calculus is all the things you take to be, you know, a graduate diploma engineer or scientist, or whatever you want to call it. And I use, of course, a lot of it. You never know what you're going to use when you're going through all those classes as sort of a shotgun approach. They give you all these things, and then hopefully someone will come in useful. And they did. And the second thing that really helped was when I got into discussion as a consultant with at the corporations, with engineers, they often would, you know, talk about certain things that I would give my opinion. They'd give theirs, and we always did it in a professional way. But sometimes they would say, Well, you know, are you an engineer? How do you know all this? And I tell them, No, I'm not, not a degree to engineer, but I do have a master's degree in physics, and you know, that held a lot of weight because it's a lot of similar classes we had to take. It's just that in the community I lived in, there wasn't a school that offered engineering, and that's one of the handicaps that sometimes you have when you grow up in the poverty area, rural area. You know, it's quite an intimidating thing to go to a big city, and I wanted to stay in a small school, so I went to our local four year university, and by the time I finished my physics degree, they had actually put in a master's program. I got the five year master's program that but I'm thankful they were it was a small school. It was easy to get a lot of help, and we had a lot of fun. I ended up, you know, there too probably taking longer than I should have, because I had to work my way through. I had to have a job too to pay for the school, but eventually got done and thankful I did do that.
Aaron Moncur:What were a few of the things that you learned at university that did end up being really helpful in your
Andy Wells:career. Well, I think a lot of the formulas you know for, like, you know, pressure, temperature, volume, some of those basic things, I don't remember all of them exactly. Of course, you got mass energy and all those things, but, but I know they exist, and all I have to do is get on the internet and look up, you know what I want to know. And there the formula is, so I know how to use it. Once I see it, it's just being aware of all these different things, and sometimes processes and so and beating other people being around other, you know, engineering science type people. It was good to have that kind of camaraderie, to kind of encourage each other. And sometimes, I guess I did get a little bit of trouble too, because ended up building things I probably shouldn't have. You know, I had, I had the I was a student helper too there, so I had access to a lab and and I knew how to use tools, and encouraged them to put in a machine shop. So they got a graph, and they let me buy all the equipment for that machine shop. And so I had free access to build things. One case, one of the chemistry guys was talking about rocket powder. And I said, Well, I can build rockets. I know how to do that. And they kind of challenged me, and said, well, let's build one. So I built the rocket, and he furnished the powder, and I explained how to mix it with the ratios and all of that, and we launched it. Then the course the school didn't like that. It was sort of an unapproved launch off the top of the science building, but it went a cup. Hey, you know, I'm gonna mile or two out and cross a lake and landed and stuck. Fortunately, it was, you know, with nobody got hurt or anything, but they didn't want me Do not again.
Aaron Moncur:That's a great story. Thank you for for sharing that. Well following your your time at university. You went on to work in academia and as an industrial consultant for about 20 years or so, if I found the numbers right then, sometime in the second half of the 80s, I believe you founded wells technology, originally an aerospace manufacturing business. Starting a business can be a scary proposition. I know that from experience, what? What are some things that you did in the beginning of wells tech to reduce reduce risk to you and the company?
Andy Wells:Um. Well, it's a big step going from being an employee to being an entrepreneur. It's in many ways. One is it takes a lot of time. You know, you have to be really devoted. You just got to have a deep, deep desire to do that, to be your own boss, because it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of sacrifice from your family as much as from yourself. They have to realize that you're not going to be there a lot of times for birthday parties and for little family things that they sometimes used to have you around for. You're going to be working often late, maybe traveling, and you're going to have a lot of things on your mind. So my family had to understand that, and they did. My wife was a great supporter all the way through. She believed that I could do it. And when I resigned, I was a university professor, and when I resigned, people said, You're crazy. You got a 10 year job, you know, it's a great job, and it was and I worked four days a week, and I had Friday off new consulting for large preparations, and it was great, but there was something inside, you know, that just felt I needed to have my own business, and I believed I could do it, and I was willing to learn from every experience I had. I didn't know all the answers, but I was willing to try and try and try until I found it. And we did make a lot of mistakes, but we made a lot of things that went right too, and built upon those. And I was fortunate, my 12 year old son was interested also in this, and he began to follow along with what I was doing and help me in many ways. So we had$1,300 when we started, because teachers, you know, don't make a whole lot of money. But I was a teacher because I believed in sharing things with people, sharing knowledge and and experiences and things. So I enjoy teaching, but it was time now to teach my son, and so I would teach him. Involved. We both learned at the same time, and we built up our company from now $1,300 it took, you know, took us a while to find a product. We bought an old milling machine, and I tried different products. I tried a lung shaped ash trident. Right snaps to go on your shoes. You don't have to tie the laces. I still wear them and all kinds of little things. And finally, we came up. I read in the paper that the people in the chicken industry were getting carpal tunnel and having sore hands from using scissors. So went to work designing and building air powered scissors, and then air powered knives. And those things really caught out. They really started selling. And so we borrowed a lot of money to much much as we could to hit patents on those. And I did the first patent myself, because I didn't have money for it. But later on, I showed it to a lawyer, and he said, you know, you really, you really need to get help. He said, patents are so specialized. Instead of spending all your time trying to learn that it's kind of like doing your own income taxes when you're in business, you're better off spending your time creating new products and let us do the patents, he said. And so we worked out that arrangement and and it turned out to be a great product, the scissor. He still saw, we still manufacture them. And you need, eventually, you need something like that when you're an entrepreneur to kind of really get you going. Otherwise you struggle and struggle. And kind of eventually, you know, if you can hang on financially. You know, it just wears you down mentally from all the stress. But after about eight or nine months, we begin selling our products, and we begin having some positive cash flow. That's where, having grown up in a poverty family, both my wife and I did, you know, we knew how to live very frugal, and so we made it through okay. And it's interestingly enough, our life has never really changed. We still live that much way, pretty much, you know, you kind of grow up a certain way and and, you know, I just still, still like that. Don't stay in the most expensive hotels, even if I could afford them. You know, you just kind of get a certain way of life, even when you have success. So I appreciate having been in poverty when I was young, because I really now, you know, I'm thankful for being able to go to a nice restaurant if I want, or to have a nice office, or to travel if you want to, it gives you a real appreciation when you've come from poverty. It's sort of like if you've had a lot of rain, you appreciate the sunshine. Yeah, right, yeah, you know. So, so the business took off, and we kept adding more ideas, and. More things. And the one thing that's really two things maybe that are really critical for an entrepreneur, person wanting to start is, number one, you got to have this deep desire. And number two is you got to be trustworthy. If you have to do what you say you're going to do, you have to be totally honest, otherwise, your suppliers or your customers or your employees or whoever you work with really won't want to work with you. And it takes a while. Marketing is very difficult, so you have to be willing to struggle for a while. And it can take 10 years to get your foot in the door, and sometimes at a big company. And the reason is, there's so many people trying, and oftentimes big companies look at a little company and say, well, we don't want to add more little companies, because now we got more addresses, we got more purchasing challenges. We'd rather have the companies that exist expand their product line. So it takes a while to get your foot in the door, but if you keep trying and keep trying, you know quite often, you can succeed. And it actually works in reverse. When I have employees come here. I had one young fellow come last summer. He was about 17 years old. He was a junior high school and he kept showing up every morning at my place, and he wanted a job, and he didn't have any skills yet, you know, industrial skills or training. So at first I said, well, not right now, we don't need anything. And next stage, show up again and show up again. And finally, I said, Can you run a lawnmower? And he said, Yeah. And I said, Well, I got a lawnmower here. You know, it's a riding lawn mower, and I'll show you a little bit about it if you want to give it a try. Let's see how it goes. He did, he did fantastic. You know, he loved it. Good attitude, and that's where perseverance. You know, whether you're an employee or you're an entrepreneur, you just got to keep trying, keep trying, and in a pleasant, polite and patient way, and eventually, a lot of times, you can succeed.
Aaron Moncur:Wow, so many wonderful nuggets of wisdom here. Andy, I will almost don't even know what what direction to go with all of this, with all this, this amazing advice that you've been giving. One question I have is specifically about a manufacturing company. For for those listening who might be interested in starting their own business in manufacturing, of course, there are a lot of general principles and pieces of advice that could be given about starting a business, but specifically starting a manufacturing business. Any any pearls of wisdom that you can share,
Andy Wells:yep, well, be willing to do sometimes things free. We've done a lot of prototypes, a lot of first models or first samples. We do it. We've done them free. And sometimes, when you get known a little bit better, you can charge an engineering charge, or you can charge of prototype charge. But, you know, we were willing to do it to prove to people that we are capability and we could do things fast. There were many times in my first year when we would my son and I would work all weekend, and we take turns running the machine day and night. He'd work 12 hours and I'd work 12 hours, and we'd get our samples made up. Sometimes we had companies call us Friday afternoon and they'd say they got a certain part that they ran out of. They need six more, and the company that normally makes them is shut down for the weekend. Is there any way we could get them six of those parts? And tell them, yeah, if you can fax me or email me a print, a drawing. I'll make those parts for you this weekend, and I'll put them on an airplane Sunday night, and you'll have it Monday morning. And so we'd have a courier pick it up on the other end and deliver it eight o'clock in the morning to the customer. And we do this many, many times, and sometimes my son or I would drive ourself, you know, four or 500 miles to deliver a part or a box of parts. And we just went extraordinary distances in terms of helping customers to earn a reputation. And even today, when we make, let's say we're making 1000 parts of some item for customer, all around maybe 16 or 20 extra. Just put them in a little inventory and cherry 'em for a year or two. You know, when our machine is set up anyway, and it's running these parts maybe one or two minutes a piece, it doesn't take long to make a few extra ones and put them in the drawer and put them away. Quite often, the company who was making or needing these 1000 parts will discover that they were actually short a few, not that we miscounted, but maybe some got damaged during installation, or maybe some got dropped and lost anyway. They need three or four. Parts more. They call us up and say, by chance, do we have any extras? I'll say, Yeah, we got portfolio here. And they say, oh my goodness, what would it cost us to get those? Said, I'll send them to you tomorrow, no charge. You can have them free. Just remember us the next time you need some. And this has built a lot of good customer relations through the years. So now, when I go to trade shows, and of course, I'm always trying to find new customers, but a lot of the old customers show up, and we shake hands, and they thank us for taking good care of up. And I tell them, we're here when you need us, you know. And if we can do it, and we say, we can do it, you can count on us. We will do it. We just do it. Follow this thing you called integrity, you know your word has to mean something, and if you say something, then you really need to do it so that they begin to believe in you again.
Aaron Moncur:Just so many pearls of wisdom here, incredible advice, hard earned, I'm sure, over all the years. I'm going to take a very short break here and share with the listeners that team pipeline.us is where you can learn more about how we help medical device and other product engineering or manufacturing teams develop turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines to characterize, inspect, assemble, manufacture and perform verification testing on your devices. Today, we're speaking with Andy wells, CEO at Wells technology. So when, when you first started wells technology, Andy, you had this product, these pneumatic shears, and you were also doing job, shop work, basically, is that right? The combination of those two things?
Andy Wells:Yes, yes. That is, we started that way, and it sure were growing and and I sold the patents for those so I could get some money to buy the CNC equipment. That equipment is so expensive we had to have, you know, like 200 $300,000 to buy a machine. At first, the banks wouldn't loan us any money because we only had $1,300 for$1 payment, and we were new, and, you know, they were worried that they we wouldn't make it. Because, truthfully, a lot of businesses don't make it the first five years. I think about half of them fail. So, you know, understandably, they were a little bit concerned. But as we started selling our shares and we started building our reputation, they began to take an interest, but they weren't going to borrow us to 200 300,000 they thought, well, maybe 50,000 so I had to sell some of my patents, and fortunately, I found the buyers for them for our tools, and we got enough money to buy our first CNC machine. And from that, you know, our production just really increased in both quantity and quality. So it it was easy to pull the tolerances aerospace demanded. And there again, they would send us the parts where they were in trouble and couldn't get things quickly. That's when we would get, you know, discovered. And I would go to trade shows, and I think that's really important, because if there's one thing that new entrepreneurs often underestimate, it's probably how much work and expensive marketing is. You have to spend a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of money, and it's hard to really know what's working you know, you can put an ad in a magazine or you can go to a trade show. Well, it's hard to really know if that's paying off. It takes a while kind of figure out what's what your thing is, in terms of the marketing that is successful. We kept on trying all kinds of things, and eventually people would discover us, and then when they got in trouble, you know, somebody didn't come through with the right product quantity or whatever, they call us up, because that's I told them to do that. I said, we're here when you need us. And so they'd call us up, and I say, sure, you know, we'll do this. And I'd give them an estimation of time and cost, and we never took advantage of them, and I still don't if I had to pay overtime, I'd tell them that I'd have, like, I got to keep my employees over the weekend. I'll have to pay them maybe time and a half or double time if it's a holiday. But I said, if you're willing to do that, we can do this for you. And they almost always were, but we never got carried away with extra charges. I don't like people do that to me, and I don't do to other people. In fact, we go the other way. We try to be really good to our suppliers. I know a lot of them are struggling too, so I don't beat them down in cost. You know, I tell but give me a fair price, and I'll buy these tools or these machines or whatever from you. But give me a fair price. Yes, and I said, But I pay you in 10 days. Now, a lot of places we don't get paid in 10 days. We get paid, oftentimes it's 90 days, or even 120 now. So it's a struggle if you're a little company, and that's happening because you got to carry that cash flow, so you have to be able to do that, because that's getting to be the trend. It used to be 30, then it was 60, and now it's getting to be 90 and 120 and these companies that do this call it using other people's money, OPM, but for us little companies, it's kind of a tough when you first start out. So I don't do that to suppliers. I pay them the 10 days. And you know that helps I know the business schools say, oh, no, you shouldn't do that. But helps us, because when we need a favor, for example, if I'm going to one of the bigger cities to pick up metal and I've got a truck down there and I need it right away for emergency and this big company, this big distribution company, may say, Well, we got a 24 hour trailer. We can't just take a phone call and pull metal off our racks and put it on the truck you got coming in. So I tell look, the company has been paying you a 10 days or less for a number of years. So we do what we can to help you. Now I'm asking you to help us. Can you do that? And almost always they'll say, Okay, we'll do it for it. So that's innovation. So if you go out of your way to help other people, they will go out of their way to help you. And I say the same thing about a smile. You give a smile. Walk down the street smiling at people, the smiles come back. It's the same with kindness and goodness and help you. Give it to other people. It comes back to you. You treat people fairly, they'll treat you fairly. You be honest with people. They'll be honest with you. And I work with a lot of people here who sometimes fail in the public systems. Some of them even come out of prison, and people say, Well, how do you dare do that? Or what kind of work do you get? So they get terrific work. They're excellent employees. They're great, and I've set my standards high. I tell them what I expect, but I live by those standards too. For example, we have a policy you can't use your cell phone in the shops unless it's an emergency call. I know some of them got children and so on. And I said, Now, if your wife is stuck in the ditch on her way to work, you know that's okay, she can call you and you can go help her up. Or your kids are sick, you gotta go pick them up. That's okay, but you can't be playing games. You can't be talking with your buddies about deer hunting. I said this work time, you do that other stuff during coffee time, but out the same way, I can't do that either. You know, you got to walk your talk and when you're a business leader, so once a week, I go out there and I talk to her employees. I talk positive. We have a policy here that I try to catch people doing things right, not wrong. Catcher doing things right, and I like to give them a compliment. Doesn't have to be long, just less than a minute. Just tell them I appreciate what they did. And you know, their workstation looks clean or or, you know, they the floor is nice and clean. I really like that around is safe, just little things. You know, people like appreciation, and we all do and you know, just a few words from, from an entrepreneur, from the leader, the manager, supervisor, just a few words really can brighten their day. And so I try to do that, especially in the mornings, when they they come in, you know, they maybe they've had kind of a tired or they've kind of having a tough time eating their bills and so on, but a little word of appreciation really goes a long way to helping them brighten their day. So we do that. So I'm kind of straying off of your question here.
Aaron Moncur:No, this is wonderful. And, yeah, I think I feel like I could just sit and listen to talk all day. This is I don't love the term master class because I feel like it's so cliche and overused, but I can't think of a better word to use right now than just a master class in empathy and business and entrepreneurship and leadership and, you know, all of these things that we all strive for. So I just really appreciate you sharing all of this with me. I do have a more of a technical question about design for manufacturing. With all of the decades of experience that you have in the world of manufacturing, maybe you can shed some light or share some some some strategies here. A lot of engineers, unfortunately, don't necessarily have the opportunity to gain experience in manufacturing. They've never worked on shop floor. They've never run a mill or a lathe or CNC machine and and because of that, they're understandably somewhat ignorant in in DFM principles designed for manufacturability. Kind of the classic example here is putting square internal corners in a part that needs to be machined on a mill, which, of course, is impossible because you can't cut a square. Our internal corner with a round cutter. Are there any, maybe less trivial examples that you can share of mistakes or design choices that engineers make that that complicate manufacturing? Yeah,
Andy Wells:what we see is small fill it, welding filets. You know, sometimes they'll specify a really small radius on a filet Well, the arc welding and even gas welding, it's not always easy to do that. It can't be done, but it drives the cost way up, and so a lot of the stuff that they might ask for can't be done. But my question is, Is it really necessary? Is it really needed? So my advice to engineers, if they don't know the processes, is to be humble. You know, don't let your ego get in the way of some good sense. Be humble. And when you call a supplier or potential supplier, say, hey, look, you know, this is the design we're trying to achieve. Here's our beginning sketches or graphs or beginning prints, engineering prints. If you see something on there as a supplier, would you talk with us about it, where we can save some costs, and where we can do things a little bit, maybe faster, easier, cheaper, better. Talk to us about that. And we come across that quite often. Now we have engineers doing that with us, and we look at things and we say, look, here's a couple of choices. If you could move the tolerance a little bit on this one, we could save you 3% on your costs, things like that. There's just many, many little ways. So be willing to work with the people who are making your parts because they know their business, just as you know your business as an engineer in your area, but you know, be open minded and let them talk with you, ask questions. Because some places, if you can give a little bit on your design, they could probably save you maybe five, maybe even 10% and quite often we see this on tolerances. A new engineer coming out of fresh out of school, will put a real tight tolerances, thinking, this is going to be a great thing. They're going to have an excellent Park. Well, yeah, the park, it'll be excellent, but it'll also be expensive. And maybe it doesn't have to be quite that excellent to perform this function. You don't need a 1,000th of an inch tolerance or a five. You know, a window of five would be fine. There are some products that just don't require close tolerances. Making wheelchairs, for example, most parts on a wheelchair don't require five thousandths of an inch tolerance, your deadening pipe, you know, it could be probably plus or minus 10 or 15,000 you'd be just fine. You're gonna weld it out handle it somewhere, or, you know, or maybe a little break on the wheel somewhere, if you got bearings and shouts, that's a little different, especially if you've got things like valve lifters, where you got, you know, male and female parts. We make those things sure to just a few millionths of an inch tolerance between the male and female. You know, it can be done, but I tell you, it's expensive when you get into that kind of thing. So, so as a new engineer designing something, you know, work with your people who are going to actually produce it, and don't just throw the product over the fence, as we used to say, into the production area, and expect them to come back what you want at a good price, because you'll probably get something back. But it could be less costly if you work with them, and we do that a lot, in the fact that we have several customers who start making prototypes, and I can see where they're going with their design, what they want to achieve. And after one or two efforts, I'll sometimes make a third or fourth prototype ahead of time for them, but I'm very careful with how I present it to them. I'll say, Well, I've seen what the first one looked like and the second one. And logically, this might be something you'd want to consider. Just look at it with an open mind. Throw it away if you don't like it. Let's see if it is something along the lining of your thinking. And so I really want them to have their fingerprints as their project. I don't want to take away any of the, you know, the glory that goes with designing of it. But if I could help with some little idea that takes them a little further, I'm glad to share it in a humble way with them. So, you know, so we not only make parts, but we try to help design part two, and that we're really a team, this whole group of people from the suppliers, the manufacturer, the designers, you know, the assembly people, the sales, marketing people, it's all of us together. And actually we get a lot of good ideas from the marketing people. They tell us what customers say, and often it doesn't end which is marketing? You got the service? Yes, afterwards. And sometimes the lawsuits, you know, the lawsuits you're going to follow if you haven't made your product properly or designed it properly, and then you got to deal with that in court, which is very expensive, and so you have to be kind of really charcoal. And of course, there is that final step of disposing of it. Now, things like solar panels, batteries, they're going to have to deal all of that coming up in the future. So, you know, so your product is going to follow you for a while. So there's a lot to this design thing. I'd
Aaron Moncur:love to go back to the topic of tolerances really quickly, because that's actually a conversation that we had internally here at Pipeline. There was some debate about what level of default tolerance is not going to drive the cost up and and just to build some context around this, let's assume that we're talking about a CNC part. So we're probably milling this thing, and it's maybe six or seven inch long part, or up to, you know, it's not a really, really big part, small to medium sized part. We've used plus or minus 5000 of an inch as our default title block tolerance in our drawings for a long time. And one of our project leads here suggested that, you know, maybe we can go a little tighter than that without increasing cost. What? What would you say is, is kind of like the default tolerance that's not going to increase cost.
Andy Wells:I would say it depends on the level of your machines and your skill of your operators. When we first started out, even 10 years ago, going from a five tolerance, you know, plus or minus, to a plus or minus. Let's say two would probably have increased the cost maybe eight or 10% because it would have been a little bit of a stretch for our machines and and same with our employees. But in the past 10 years, we and of course, a lot of other companies have bought new equipment, much higher precision equipment. People have now got 10 years more experience, so holding a 2000s is just normal daily operation. Now it's easy. And if you said you're going to change from five to a two for us, say, well, wouldn't make any difference to us. We're going to run out of probably one anyway, one plus or minus one, because our machines are capable of it. An operator would have to be really sort of neglecting his his tooling to let it wear so much they would get beyond two or 3000s we use a lot of I call them histograms, where we plot the wear on tools frequently, and we could see when they start to wear need correction, you know, or, or, I won't say sharpening, but replacement, but now, but now. You know, actually, the challenge for us isn't that level, it's more we do. Probably 30 or 40% of our work in 110 1000, with a with a window of one plus or minus 110 1000, we can go down to 10 millionths of an inch plus or minus 10 millions. But you know the cost there is much higher course, but 1/10 probably, if you went from 1000 to 1/10 you'd probably double the price something of that order. Yeah, and there are some parts that require it, you know, if you're getting into really tight valves, like hydraulic valves and so forth. But right away, we talk with our customers, and you know, the client say, What are you trying to do here? What's practical, you know, you know. And they're almost always concerned about price, too. And we tell them, you know, here's what we can do for you. And, and if still prices are concerned, I say, Well, okay, let's talk about quantity. Then can we increase the quantity and keep the price down for you? So we're always trying to work with quality, price delivery. And the fourth thing, of course, is just being friendly, just being easy to work with. Because I don't care what the price and quality delivery are, you got a really miserable person on the other to the phone, you know, as your supplier, you just don't want to work with them if you don't have to. So if you got someone who's really pleasant, nice and understanding, and that goes a long way too, along with all the other things you expect from a supplier.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that makes a huge difference. But by let's see early 2000s 2004 or so wells technology had grown to more than just manufacturing, and you had, you know, enjoyed some measure of pretty good success with your business by then, and decided it was time to give back. And at that time, you started a social engineering project to train some folks, and you alluded to this earlier in our conversation. Who needed call it a second chance in life? Can you tell us a. Little bit about that program and how it's grown over the years. Yeah,
Andy Wells:and it kind of kind of began to evolve as we were growing. We needed the operators, you know, engineering people here, technicians, so forth. They're very hard to find up in this part of our country because we're pretty remote. And I think a lot of the younger people, especially who want to go to trade schools and universities, they tend to go to the bigger cities. So up here in this remote part, we don't have much opportunity to hire those people. What we do have coming to our door is a lot of people who probably like I said, need a second chance. They've dropped out of high school. Our high school failure rate to this community is very high as well, over 50% because we have a lot of people who come up who grow up with poverty families, and sometimes there's a lot of dysfunction. The kids don't get the support they need so they don't, you know, do their homework, they don't even want to attend school, and they struggle, and they come to us later in their life wondering if they could find a job. And, you know, I used to say, no, sorry, especially those that had felonies because they had to check on their application. And like a lot of places, I mean, even all over America, I think you find everything from Fast foods industry and government, people don't want to hire those who've had a felony, and some of these young folks especially get a felony for things that, you know, it really end up ruining their life. You know, maybe got caught with some drugs, or maybe they stole a car or something because they were hanging out, they dropped out of school, didn't know what to do, or did they have the right supervision? Maybe when they were young. I can't say I really blame the young people, because they kind of are what we as adults have led them to be in the environment we put them in. They of course, have their own personal talents and their personal motivation, but a lot of what they are is the result of what we have exposed them to, and so if they haven't had proper training and so forth when they were young and disciplined, they can do things that end up causing them to get a felony that it's I'm not saying that they threaten anybody's life, But they did something that broke the law, and now they got this hanging over their head, and people don't want to hire him, and they came here, and I thought one day when one fellow came in, I said, Well, I'm sorry he was so pleasant. And he shook hands with me, and he said, I've been trying for six months. He said, I just can't find anything. And he shook Anthony, thanked me for talking with him, and he went out the door. And when he went back to his car, I looked out there, you know, and I could see a lady, and I could see two little kids in there, and I thought, how would I feel going back to my family, you know, when I made a mistake and I'm trying to, trying to correct it, but somebody will give me a second chance. So I went outside. He was just got in his car, and I just tapped on the roof a little bit. He opened his window, and I said, will you come back on Monday, and I'd like to take you out in the shop and walk around and see if you think this is the kind of work you'd like to do? Well, of course, he smiled in his his lady, there enough was his wife or girlfriend, but anyway, she was smiling. They were happy. Finally, they had a chance. Well, he did come back, and he spent several years with us, and I found out that, you know, I used to teach some of the best and brightest at the university, but I could teach these folks too. These people are smart. It's just that they had made a mistake. All they needed was a second chance somebody to help them. And so I started teaching them how to do the things we do in the shop, everything from sweeping the floors to running the machines and setting them up with tooling and even getting into the programming by about the third or fourth year of writing the CNC programs. And these folks are very capable of learning that, and they were so loyal, because they appreciated so much that somebody finally had helped. And one time I had a company representative, company copier, and I mentioned to them that, I said, Well, some of these folks, you know, they they've had to have that has little bad experiences in their life, but they're doing this great. And he said, You mean you hire a woman? They've had a thought. I said, Yeah, I do I do mean that. And he says, he kind of looked at me and I said, Well, where would you rather meet them? Would you rather meet them here? You know, when they're in training and they got a job and they got an income and they were appreciated, and they're part. Of the team for production, or would you rather meet them out on the street, but nobody will give them a chance, and they got nothing except steal or sell drugs or do something like that. Where would you rather meet them? And the guy, kind of smart, shook my house, but
Aaron Moncur:it's kind of hard to argue with that logic, isn't it?
Andy Wells:You know, it got us started, and does so far, we've helped 105 and actually we got two more coming out in about two weeks out of our program. Now we live one step further because a lot of the folks had transportation problems. They had lost their driver's license, they didn't have any money for a car, and I had a couple of them who couldn't even read an instruction manual to get driver's license. They were like, 2122 years old. So we decided to take our program right into a poverty area. And so we loaded up about a million dollars worth of equipment, production equipment, and moved it into a poverty area. I went, I worked with the leaders of that area to make sure it would be okay with them. And they found a warehouse that was insulated. It was a newer one, so it was fairly modern. They had the lights in the water and so forth. And we put our equipment in there, and we started advertising Well, we had all kinds of people show up, and I offered to pay him, you know,$15 an hour, minimum wage, to take training, so they had something to live on. And so what so close they could walk to our training center, and we put one of the teachers into one of our best employees who to be a teacher who had come from that area. So he knew the culture, he knew the people, and, you know, they were still comfortable with them. So we ran this program for six months, and it was very successful. And those people, after six months, they came to our main factory, and they began here as apprentices, and we kept moving them up, challenging them, you know, increasing their pay a little bit at a time as they progress. And we got quite a few, I think now our population is around 32 or 33% of our employees came from that type of a background, and they're doing very well. They're very loyal. They're very good. I got one linear I just talked to her maybe an hour or two ago. She's running our most complex machine. It's a brand new one. We paid $400,000 short. Just came in about a month ago, and here she is setting it up and running first parts we run on it. And, you know, she came out of this kind of a background very smart. Just needed someone to help her out. And she's supporting five children with the money that she earns from us. And so now we're going to send her. I told her this afternoon. I said, you know, I was invited to go to a big corporation to get an award. I said, I'm going to have you travel, and I'm going to send you along with our lady, who's a Quality Assurance Manager, because this is this young girl and helping her like she's a, you know, the mother has never flown on an airplane. She did. She looked kind of scared. She said, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get through an airport. And I said, Well, we're going to have someone with you. She'll take care of the rental cars and all that, and so my quality control manager is going to go with her, but when the work comes, they're going to both go up on stage and get it, because we're so proud of her. And this is really, you know when Saul said, Don being an engineer really spot, just making life better for other people? Are we doing? Freaked out in each in our own way?
Aaron Moncur:I love that so much. Before this interview, you had written to me in life, I'm quoting you now in life, I have found engineering is more than just science, applying technology or controlling our environment. Engineering is a way of life for helping people find happiness through development of a better character, visualization of goals, development of strategies, utilization of resources, actions for achievement and feedback for wisdom. And I read that, and I thought to myself, Wow, that's that's such an amazing statement. It aligns very well with with I couldn't have put it that well, but it resonated with me very deeply. So I just am so grateful that you were willing to spend some time and share your stories and experience with us. I think that you've already answered this question in a few different ways, but, but I'm going to ask this specifically, and you can share your take on it. What? What is? Yes, one thing within the context of your role as an engineer, scientist, manufacturing, technologist, whatever you want to call it, what's one thing within the context of that role that brings you joy and one thing that that frustrates you?
Andy Wells:Well, maybe I'll answer them in reverse questions, so we end up on a good note. The frustrating part maybe, is just being patient. You know, sometimes I feel I know the answer, or I want to get a project done, and there are reasons why you chance that. Maybe it's shipping, you can't get your supplies, or maybe it's the weekend you cannot get anybody to work. Or maybe it's a team and others just don't understand that. They want to keep discussing it. There's all kinds of reasons, and you just have to be patient and realize that sometimes, like bacon a cake, it takes a little while you can make the battery put in the oven, but you got to wait a while for it to rise and cook. And same with ideas, you can plant an idea and you can encourage it, but sometimes you got to wait a while for it to incubate and to grow and finally catch on. And you know, that's kind of where our program is. When I first started helping people, some of our regular employees said, Oh, you're wasting our money. You're wasting our time, and why do you do this? And let's just get production out the door. And, and I said, you know, you gotta, you gotta think about other people. You know, some of us have been fortunate, but not, not everybody's had that kind of background, or had been born with that kind of talents. And you know, we're all brothers and sisters, and we need to help each other, and that's that's where you find the real happiness in life. That's the joy is helping somebody have a better day because of something you design, something you build, or something you're doing. They say we're never as tall as when we bend over to help somebody up. And I still think that's a good philosophy, the stay humble. No matter how clever and smart or educated we think we are, we're really just just people. And you know, we got to remember to be humble. Others appreciate that.
Aaron Moncur:Well. Andy, I was so excited to have you on the show because of the lessons that I thought myself and those listening would learn about manufacturing, and I think we certainly received that. But I think I can say without hesitation that this has been the most uplifting episode that I've recorded, and I just feel like I've learned so much more than just manufacturing and engineering. So thank you so much again for being on the show and sharing some of your background and experiences and wisdom with us. I deeply appreciate it.
Andy Wells:Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Aaron Moncur: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. Oh. Like there was.
