Your frontline team can only perform as well as the processes they're handed.

So why are so many leaders still blaming the wrong people instead of listening to the ones closest to the problem?

In this weeks’ episode Chris sits down with Jason Woodard, a 35-year manufacturing veteran, CEO of Geislinger Corporation, and author of Manufacturing Leadership That Works.

Jason gets pretty candid about what he's seen over the course of his career. We're talking a plant manager leaving nasty notes on dry-erase boards for exhausted frontline workers, and Jason himself rolling up his sleeves and coming in on a holiday weekend when the rest of the leadership team had plans.

Getting into the valuable stuff, Jason talks about what it takes to build trust with your team, holding the right people accountable, and why leading yourself should come before leading anyone else.

In this episode, find out:

• Why blame culture in manufacturing is almost always directed at the wrong people
• What Jason witnessed early in his career that shaped everything about how he leads today
• What Jason's time as a journeyman maintenance mechanic on the night shift taught him about leadership that no management role ever could
• What Geislinger Corporation actually makes and why it matters to critical infrastructure in the US
• Why the higher you climb, the less you actually know about what's happening on your floor
• How to build genuine trust with frontline workers without it feeling forced
• What to do when an employee raises a problem you can't immediately fix
• Why being great at the job you have today is the only path to the job you want tomorrow

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

• “The higher I grow in my career, the more I realize that what I'm hearing as a leader is a little bit of the truth. And it's not because you're being lied to, it's just that it's being filtered up to you.” - Jason Woodard, Author and Geislinger CEO
• I think most people understand that every single thing they want to be changed or fixed isn't going to be. But if they feel like they were at least heard and listened to, I think that's the most important part.” - Jason Woodard, Author and Geislinger CEO
• ”Rarely does politics come up, rarely does any of the divisive stuff come up. We're just showing up every day to solve problems together. In a good culture, the collaboration, no matter the background of the people, is there. - Jason Woodard, Author and Geislinger CEO

Links & mentions:

• Geislinger Corporation develops and produces torsional vibration dampers, torsional elastic high damping couplings, composite couplings, composite shaftlines, and torsional vibration monitoring systems for engines and wind turbines
• Manufacturing Leadership That Works: Proven Principles for Building Engaged Teams, Improving Performance, and Driving Results by Jason Woodard
• Handmap Brewing, Battle Creek-based brewery, perfectly named for the state of Michigan

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

What if the biggest efficiency problem in your factory isn't your machines, it's the dead time you waste before you even get to one.

Workers queuing at ADP and ERP terminals every morning. A wing rib scrapped at the cost of $18,000 because the wrong work instruction was on screen. A program gone forever when the machinist who maintained it quietly for a decade retired to Poland. David witnessed all of these problems within his manufacturing acquisitions despite them having advanced tech for the time period.

Chris sits down with David Caputo, Co-Founder of Harmoni, to get into how his intelligent factory orchestration system connects machines, people, and data for true control across the shop floor.

Harmoni fills the gap in the renowned ISA-95 stack that most manufacturers never knew they were missing, supplementing human-intensive operations that make up 99% of the market.

Harmoni operates within three buckets with the aim of wasting less time and making less mistakes. The system is designed to cover all bases without interfering with the essential human input needed to fulfil complex tasks. David talks to Chris about the labor automation, process control, and observability that Harmoni brings to the factory floor.

In this episode, find out:

• What factory orchestration is and why David sees it as a distinct category from existing tools
• How David's experience acquiring and running four aerospace and defense manufacturers drove the creation of Harmoni
• Why Harmoni's three pillars (labor automation, process control, and observability) address the ISA-95 gap that leaves most human-intensive factories underserved
• How the no-titles, pods-based structure at Harmoni works and why David recommends it for companies under around 200 employees
• What the Harmoni AI Lieutenant (HAL) does on the shop floor versus in the office, and why shop floor AI requires both context and a delivery mechanism to be useful
• Where David sees the 297,000 US manufacturers under 500 employees needing to compete in a world of autonomous factories and vertically integrated supply chains
• Why David advises manufacturers to ask one question before any software investment: how will this tool change what happens on my shop floor

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

• "What Harmoni's built is a new category of technology. We call this factory orchestration, and there's a very simple goal: waste less time and make fewer mistakes." - David Caputo
• “Simply having indicator lights to say whether a machine's running is not telling you the full picture. A machine could be running but running very inefficiently. We're giving you the information you need and allowing you to manage your factory in real time.” - David Caputo
• “Somehow you have to produce more with less, all in the face of autonomous competition and vertically integrated supply chains. Pretty tough position for the 300,000 manufacturers in this country.” - David Caputo

Links & mentions:

• Harmoni.io, bringing together data from operators, machines, and your shop floor software, all in real-time, to help managers make decisions and spot trends quickly
• Greenwich Street Tavern, a different tavern experience that takes a traditional American pub fare menu to the next level located in Tribeca in NYC

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.