Minding Your Business; 417; Ron Burke, New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership

When it comes to economic development and growth in the job market, manufacturing is a major player in New Mexico, but it's a tough time to own and run a factory. But there's a group out there that is working to turn good businesses into great businesses. We talk with New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership this time on Mind Your Business. Hello and thanks for tuning in to NYB, I'm Charles Comer. How does a company survive in the

manufacturing business? New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership says they've got the answers and joining us now is Director for New Mexico, MEP Ron Burke. Ron, thanks so much. I'm going to meet you. Now what, I couldn't help but notice your office phone is an Albuquerque. Are you based here? Are you based up in Albuquerque? Where are you from? The central office is located in Albuquerque. We have two people here in Las Cruces. We have one in Roswell to cover the eastern and southern parts of the state, and the Albuquerque office handles everything north of Sakura. Fantastic. So, is that where you live? I live in Albuquerque. So, I appreciate you coming down. My place? Yes, we taped today. Came from Phoenix. You've come from Albuquerque and here we're going to tape another show. Someone who's like Boston, maybe California. So, or Salem, actually, Massachusetts. But let's find out a little bit about you. Where you from? Where you grew up? Where you went to school? And what's your professional background? And it's pretty deep and

very interesting. I was born in Grand Junction, Colorado, and I moved westward to California grew up in the Bay Area. Went to San Jose State. It was a math major physics and chemistry minor, and then I switched majors to philosophy and psychology. We went in the Air Force and learned Chinese, got out of the Air Force, and then it had been in manufacturing ever since. Just an interesting little tie between us. My father had a psychology degree, was a 22-year career soldier. And you know what? The Army leaned on that psychology. He was always getting odd assignments. I bet you did too. They go, how did you tie all this in? But I bet being able to deduce and understanding the concepts of logic and also the workings of the human right? What? That sounds like actually a pretty good combination. So, let's talk about what New Mexico manufacturing extension partnership is. What is it? It's really a three-way partnership

between the federal government, state government, and manufacturers. It was created by federal legislation. And again, it's supposed to be a three-way partnership where the federal government provides us a little bit of money. The state provides us a little bit of money. And then we're able to provide consulting services to manufacturers at specifically small and medium-sized manufacturers at very reasonable costs. Now, how are you funded? Again, through the federal government, through Sandia National Labs and Los Alamos National Labs. Okay, so that's where some additional, because I was like that little state check and then that little fed check, that doesn't sound like enough to do what you folks do. So, you do have like Los Alamos National Labs, which is an entity in and of itself, but funded and filled by the government. Yes, we actually contract with them to provide community outreach. It's called the New Mexico Small Business Assistance. And we

help provide services to manufacturers and small businesses on their behalf. How do you end up working for New Mexico MEP? Well, as many people change jobs, I got caught in a major layoff back in 2001 and saw the add for project manager for the New Mexico MEP. I looked like what I've been doing and so I went for an interview and was hired. What were you doing? At the time, were you working in manufacturing? I worked in manufacturing since I got out of the Air Force, so that's since 1974, 1971, excuse me. What kind of stuff were you overseeing being made? Primarily in semi-conductors in the Bay Area. So, very close to Silicon Valley, all of that, so right in the middle of it. So, you were probably pretty deep in the PC rush and all of that kind of stuff being in that area because that certainly is the birthplace of the PC and

Apple computers and then just go up to Seattle and that's Microsoft and all of that kind of stuff. Now, what's the mission and where are the values of the organization? We've touched on that a little bit, but in that more standard form, the mission of. Well, the mission of New Mexico MEP is to identify and help small medium size businesses that are ready to grow their business. We're there to help them expand and grow and kind of take things to the next level. Now, what do you value as an organization? Well, besides the normal stuff, we have a deep and abiding belief that manufacturing is crucial to the well-being and to the health of the nation. And as I said, and right now, every time I bring up Yahoo, we're seeing

20,000 laid off, 10,000 laid off, most of these people are manufacturers. Nissan just let go of a bunch of people. GMs, cutting corners everywhere it can and tens of thousands of jobs lost. So, tough time to be in the industry? It is. It is a little bit, but there are still very successful manufacturers out there. And we're going to talk about some methods that they may use. I apologize. I'm bad to jump in before someone's done. No, no, that's fine. So, what does or how actually does wrong word there? Does New Mexico MEP go about achieving its mission? We've talked about mission, values, funding. Now we're talking about implementation. What do you guys actually do out there? Well, we do consulting to help the manufacturers. Our approach is to teach and then do. I'm sure that you've been to seminars

or to classes where you get really excited about it. You go to the class and you get just absolutely excited about it and you don't know how to bring it back to the workplace and apply it. So, our approach is to teach what we call lean manufacturing. That's kind of our core business. If you don't mind, I'm going to a little bit of the history of lean manufacturing. Yeah, jump right in. Lean manufacturing is actually something that we gave to the Japanese at the end of World War II. See, and the Japanese are largely credited with inventing it, but like a lot of things, Americans invented it, sent it over to Japan, and then we start studying their version of how they did it. So, what we're at World War II, we've introduced it to the Japanese. Now, after World War II, we introduced it to the Japanese. They embraced it, they codified it,

and a lot of what we taught the Japanese, then we forgot. And then about 1969, early 70s, we started seeing these small automobiles. We go, what are those little things? And then in 1974, we had the last oil embargo by OPEC. So, these smaller automobiles became very, very popular. And by 1980, the big three were getting a little bit concerned. So, they started sending people to Japan to learn what the Japanese were doing. And they brought back some of the techniques. They called them all sorts of different things. Genko, Konri, and all of that kind of stuff, right? And just in time, but it was never really embraced by the big three until much, much later. And the quality of American automobiles has gone up tremendously. But still, the Japanese,

I'll tell you that the one thing that the Japanese are now concerned about is the Koreans. Really, yeah, they're very concerned because the Koreans are taking lean manufacturing to the next level. But what the manufacturing distinction partnership is attempting to do is to bring back these techniques to American manufacturing, to make American manufacturers successful. Now, you definitely wanted a chunk of time to talk about methodology implementation. That kind of thing, and we'll get that into that in a second. And not to talk too much about myself, because it shows actually about you, but I worked for Microsoft when they ran a little factory over on Del Rey. And the system they used was actually credited to the Japanese, where they streamline production to a point where they never stockpiled anything.

Right. They didn't warehouse anything. They would get an order, make it really fast, and ship it in about the time it would take for an order to come in. The paperwork to process that kind of stuff. We may actually touch on that kind of concept, but you're the expert here, so I'm going to shut up. What's the methodology? How do you actually implement this, and obviously something subjective, business for business, manufacturer per manufacturer, but in more general terms? We have a definition that we use for what we refer to as lean manufacturing. And that definition is that we want to systematically identify and eliminate waste. Now, waste has a special meaning in lean manufacturing. But we want to systematically identify and eliminate waste. We want to manufacture, we want to create flow as we manufacture, and we want to manufacture at the pull of the customer.

And what you just described is that very thing, that when the order came in, you built it immediately in a ship. Now, define waste then. What's some common examples? And we don't have to name names. But what is some of the examples first, go ahead and define it. And then like I said, some examples that you found out there with companies you worked with. The eight common wastes and only eight of them are merely symptoms. So we look for the symptoms. And then we use those symptoms to help us identify what the real root cause of the problems are. And the symptoms are defects, overproduction, which is work in process. Too much work on the factory floor. Waiting, we see people waiting for things. They're waiting for paperwork, if they're waiting for materials, if they're waiting for tools. That's another form of waste. Extra processing, things that the customer really has an ask for. It's just extra work that we're adding to the product.

Transportation, moving things from one side of the factory to the other. See, inventory. Too much finish goods inventory. Because if we build too much, it may not be what the customer wants. We'd rather build things as the customer needs them. Movement is the movement of actually at the work station, at where you're building things. If you're reaching up above or reaching behind, we want to make things that are safe and ergonomic. And one of the really sad things is that many businesses, the biggest waste is they don't use the intelligence of their employees. The employees have great ideas. The employees have, they do the work every single day. They have to deal with all of the problems. And they think of ways to make it easier. But being in a traditional manufacturer, the boss is right.

Now, let's talk a case in point. Again, don't name names. But give me an example of somewhere you walked in. And what was some of the waste that you saw, that your organization identified? And what did you do to correct that? Well, a prime example. It's one of the earlier companies that I worked with, with MEP, which has been about six years now. I got the president and the vice president, the two owners, to come with me and to measure how far their people had to walk. And how far materials traveled to do one job, one actually one step. Now, they made oil and gas field equipment. And for this one operation, people had to travel almost 13 miles of walking to get all the parts, the tools, the information, the materials, everything.

13 miles to do one part of the operation. Well, as we made them walk this distance, they started identifying where they could move things to what we call point of use. Let's put the tools and the equipment. Let's organize it. Let's use visual management so that that it's very clear what's expected. Things are color-coded. And they have reduced their entire throughput of the factory from about 42 weeks to less than two months. So 42 weeks, down to about eight weeks. That's a huge savings. Yeah. And so have there been other companies that you found? I mean, that seems unbelievable. That's an extreme example. And so was that here? Was that maybe in South Eastern of Mexico? Well, it sounds like South Eastern of Mexico. No, it actually was up in the Farmington area. Oh, okay.

Because there's some oil and gas up that corner too. I've actually had Bob Gallagher from New Mexico oil and gas. And I was surprised because I actually lived in South Eastern of Mexico, saw him. How much of that? Well, there and you start thinking that's the only place that's going on in the state. Now, what are some of the benefits aside from identifying waste? What are some of the benefits companies have found with partnering with you guys? Well, besides one of the things that we try to get people to do is shorten their cash to cash flow. So there's a lot of focus on let's get things built quickly just as in your factory. And explain that a little bit. Cash to cash flow? What does that mean exactly? Cash means I spent cash to buy inventory to I sold the product and I collected. Okay. If you keep things tied up in inventory, that's cash that a company can't use. And for small to medium-sized businesses, cash flow is extremely important.

Now, one of the other benefits that a lot of the companies are starting to see, it's something that one of our experts here who lives in Las Cruces does is what we call lean leadership and lean team building, lean culture. Because an organization that doesn't run traditionally has to be managed different. People have to work in teams. And she is the expert in the field. And she lives right here in Las Cruces. Now, do you ever have to combat that with a company when people start talking lean? Do you have to deal with some emotion? Have you ever seen any resistance from company owners? Maybe the industrial engineers of a company, that kind of stuff? Well, I've seen two types of two reactions. Where already lean is one. And the second one is, oh, that means I can lay off workers.

It doesn't necessarily, does it? Oh, no. In fact, what we want companies to do, there's kind of an interaction between the company and the people. The people are an important part of the company. As we try to increase the skills, and we frequently refer to that as workforce development, but it's to increase the skills, the way people do their work, to give them ownership of their work. And that's changing what's going on on the factory floor involves the people. If the people aren't involved in it, it doesn't stick. If the industrial engineers or the bosses come down and say, this is the way we're going to do it, it doesn't stick, involvement of the people, improving their work skills, improving how they think, and allowing, in fact, we have a thing we call lean enterprise certification. And that's training people on lean individually, the employee owns that certification. And it's provided through the Shingo prize and

society manufacturing engineers. And we're just one of the groups that helps deliver that. And those employees, that ownership, that really makes it stick for a company. So when you guys have rolled in and done some consulting, the acts is not necessarily falling. Oh, no. In fact, we don't want it to. What we'd rather do is help the company identify, also identify the top line growth in terms of you now have capacity. We know that lean creates more capacity for a company. So we want to be able to help the company. And again, this is something else we help them with. We provide for them is what are some new markets you could go after? How do you do export? Can you expand regionally? What are the things you have to do to do that expansion? Because we know that lean will create capacity. It will create cost savings. It will return money to the bottom line. But where a lot of companies want some help is also, how do I grow my business? And what about if there's someone watching who has a great idea and

a little bit of venture capital? What do you say to those folks? Starting with a brand new product, that's a very, very difficult thing. We want them to understand that this is a long, long road. You mostly deal with established businesses. That is where somebody has something that's proven. We will help them with new ideas, but we really want them to understand that there are other organizations out there that can do that better than we can. There's one in Albuquerque called Technology Venture Corporation, TBC. And the university here provides some wonderful technical services for new products. And so we recommend that they go to those places first. And once they've got something that's established, then we love to work with them. Go to an incubator first, like Arrowhead Center. Yes, absolutely. Workforce to Development Center. And those kind of things. And when you really get your feet on the ground, then come talk to New Mexico, MEP.

So, let's talk about that support from the state legislature. You said you get some money in this environment. What kind of support have you been getting? Well, Senator Mary Jane Garcia, who is one of the local senators here in Las Cruces, is carrying our bill. Now, we're not sure whether it's going to go through. It's going to be a very, very tight session. I sat through a legislative finance committee with and testified before Senator Papin. She's very, very supportive as is Senator Garcia of manufacturing and small businesses. But Senator John Arthur Smith and the Senate Finance Committee, where our bill currently is, they've got some tough, tough decisions to make. And having sat through several of the committee meetings, I respect very much the tough decisions they've got to make. And we'll see how it comes out.

Now, let's talk about how to contact you guys. Because what kind of businesses are you talking about? And if there's someone out there going, hey, I fit into that category. How do they contact you? Because I actually skipped over that question. It actually kind of makes a good close. We tend to work with small to medium-sized manufacturers, but anybody that needs some help, please contact us. We have a website, www.NewMexicoMEP, spell out NewMexicoMEP.org, or our phone number in Albuquerque is 505-262-0921. And you guys actually come right up on Google. So if you plug it into a search engine, you should be able to find you. And Ron Burke, I thank you so much for coming out. And I appreciate all your input. I hope maybe some information from today will help some

folks out there. So do I. Thanks again. Well, it's time again for our weekly piece here on Mining Your Business that showcases some of the hardworking entrepreneurs and business people in our area. We call it the NYB, Local Business Features. Toa Rock started in basically October of 2006. Group of investors got together and decided that we could do something with this piece of land up here. And it's privately owned. We started the company in the vision of selling a lot of landscape materials to local people in our area to make sure that they get a good price. Because usually people don't buy stuff. Basically in this town, it's locally. So we have a locally owned and operated quarry. We want to give people here an argument. A bigger discount on a break. So everything's affordable for them. And we've worked

with people of all different age records, all income levels. We like to do that. We like to help people. We have our softwares in the browns. We actually have a granite pit. We have rye light mountain and we have a limestone mountain there. We also have marble. We have like seven different kinds of elements out here that we can choose from. We have over 60 different products. We have a lot of moss rock. We have the rye light boulders. Limestone boulders. Basically all the stuff that's in people's yards. We can deliver all the way to Colorado to Phoenix, Lubbock, San Antonio. We work with different contractors in town trucking-wise. We like to spread our money around. We donate to our local high schools. We donate to our radio stations in town. We donate to our softwares teams or mixed martial arts. Tab and tab for humanity. The mountain that we are did a material out of. That mountain was already scalded before. But has nothing to do with the Oregon Mountains, what's forever. It's on the way on the base of the

foot hill. And it's something that's going to take 15 generations of people to even make a level on when it's level. Nobody will leave you. Know that it was ever gone. Nobody even knows basically that we're up here. We follow all the rules and regulations that are put on just by the stadium, Mexico, and federal guidelines. That's important to us because we like who this is where we eat. We are hometown people and we want to take care of our hometown. We like what we're seeing this year. That just about does it for this week. If you have a question or comment about the show, you can call the minor business hotline at 646-735-0 or email me at Charles Comer at Yahoo.com. For information on upcoming shows and an archive of parents' shows, you log on to www.carewgtv.org. Again, I'd like to thank my guest Ron Burke from New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership for coming on the show. And thank you so much for watching. I'm Charles Comer. Here's hoping you have a great one.

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We could see the distance, the present, with the the secret service and so forth jogging. Everything about it was ordinary, extremely ordinary.

President had a good jog, the plan for the day was going to be education, he was going to go to a classroom, and then we were heading back to Washington. Obviously it didn't all end that way. The presidential motorcade heads for a local school, the morning intelligence briefing over, the threat level considered low. Before the day ends, George W. Bush will have embarked on a remarkable odyssey, unlike any previous president. For hours, the country will effectively be run from a blast-proof bunker, and America will be reeling from the most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor. At this remote military outpost known as Huntress Control, they

are as usual scanning the skies, looking for signs of attack from the air. It so happens that on this morning, they're conducting a major war game called Digital and Guardian, when they receive a call. It was the first thing in the morning. We were in the middle of an exercise, and Boston's going to give us a call. It said, hey, we have a hijack, a possible hijack. One of our lines might be hijacked, but since we were in the middle of an exercise, he didn't say real world or exercise, so I had to ask him, is this real world or is this exercise? And he said, no, no, it's real. We have a no-shit hijack. This is real world. I'll call it first air force, let me know. We've got potential incident.

The words came up that we had a possible hijack. I directed the staff to drive Otis to battle stations. I was just standing up by the op-stask, and I was told I had a phone call, I asked who it was, and they said it was a tower calling, and something about a hijacking. It was American flight 11, 767 out of Boston, going to California. At the time, we ran in and get out, I'm suited up. The two pilots, known as Duffen-Nasty, scramble. They are two of only four fighter pilots on alert, covering the Northeastern United States. For years, the threat of attack from the air had been considered so small that on this day, the United States mainland is being defended by just 14 planes dispersed at seven bases.

We went out, we happened to get, and we were ready to go standby for a scramble water if we were going to get one. Neither pilot at this time has any reason to believe that this is other than a routine exercise. It's just peacetime.