ALFONSO ARAMBURO'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST":

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):

Business Beatitude the Book

Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES...The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

MD&M West, industrial innovation, manufacturing, automation, packaging, plastics, design, technology solutions, process mapping, workforce development, operational challenges, supply chain, efficiency, regulatory environment, cultural change.

00:00

Hey, this episode of Industrial Talk is proudly brought to you by MD&M West and the incredible news and brews team. MD&M West delivered big medtech automation, packaging, plastics and design all came together under one roof, the innovation, the energy, the conversation, it was everything that makes this industry extraordinary. I was on the floor, capturing the stories, the breakthroughs and the leaders who are shaping the future. Thanks for tuning in and celebrating the people driving industrial innovation. Industrial Talk powered by MD&M West and the news and brews team.

00:47

Welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's

01:05

02:18

All right. You know, it's actually funny, because whenever people see Master of Ops is kind of it has some sort of a pool, right?

02:27

Yeah? But look at your card. Look at what. Look at where it's at. It's right next to the A but it's almost gone. It looks like a smudge. Oh, because I have old eyes,

02:38

probably too much going on there. Gotta pay the that designer better, I guess that was me, yeah, yeah.

02:46

You know, as well as I do the shop is I remember vividly the when I started doing podcasting, and I said, Well, let me do some graphics.

03:01

You look at it, and you go,

03:05

not really feeling it right now, yeah, I don't know it doesn't look right. And of course, you go down the road too, as you're saying, I like different colors. And then you match the colors. And then you realize those colors don't feel right either. So you just, yeah, struggling

03:23

with all tell me about it. I am actually thinking about, as soon as I run to those cards, hopefully, after these event, probably on the next one, you'll get a, not a mash up card. So there we go

03:36

to find those logo right there that's that's gonna be from you see him, little time, liver right there. If you're out on the video, you can see that I was goofing around with his card. So you have all the Information that you need. All right, so let's, let's level set. Are you having a good conference?

03:55

So far, I'm having a wonderful conference. Fact, let me tell you, so far, it's been, I believe, one of the best experiences that I've had, great conversations. Had a couple parties yesterday, after the V event, which is awesome beer garden. We shared a couple views together. It was like a beer garden. Really nice. Also, definitely good time. Yeah, so

04:22

you're you're walking the halls, you're wandering around, you're finding some outstanding and incredible technology. Yes, you need to. So again, my conversation is stemming from his business card. I'm gleaning, gleaning insights from his business card, and it says here, functional COO and instructor, not just anything, take us through master of ops. What is that? What is that? Talk to

04:55

us about it. Yeah, so the master of ops. It truly started maybe giving. Some background about it. About me is I been in manufacturing for, I'd say, about 17 years or so, right? It's started as a manufacturing engineer in Mexico, then went over to Germany. I heard the gentleman before me. He also was for Germany.

05:21

So I was and apparently all the high tech stuff gets manufactured in, yeah, Germany, yeah, Germany again.

05:28

And that's why I went to Deutschland, right? Yeah, because I wanted to see what was so so sexy about German manufacturing, German R&D And so that's what we did. I mean, a while back, we would do a bunch of automation in a bunch of electronics and control panels for some companies, some big name manufacturers. And so my journey took me from from doing all of that, managing projects, managing people, managing resources, until realizing, hey, every single company has the same problem or same problems. And so I'm realized from from people to technology to doesn't matter, it's the same problems over and over. And so I would go in there to and a couple companies that I worked for, I did a couple of turnarounds, and so you have all these historic EBITDA growth levels. And so I was wondering, Well, why is it so wrong for all these companies to see the issue, right? I mean, at risk of sounding kind of almost as if it's intuitive, yeah, because it's not. And so last year I decided, I decided to really start digging into, okay, how it is that I can actually add more value to others? And so I went into all these, these yoga or Jogi journey, right? What is, what I truly want? And so I realized that the way that I could provide that value is by truly offering. Not only, I mean, I it's the lack of training or the lack of knowledge and technical skills, from it could be from leadership to it's even the most technical task. So currently, what I do is that I provide that technical, let's say training to get people up to par on as some people call it, workforce development, right? So that's one thing. And of course, as we're digging into those gaps in in training and skill set, then we realize, okay, well, maybe we can dig into some process mapping, or something that we can do to get to the bottom zone problems and enhance the consulting side of that and the fractional clo There

07:43

you go. So you're wandering around. This is a fertile ground for your solutions and services. Yes, sir. This this event. Yes, sir. What do you what? We're gonna digress. I got you again, his card right there. Again, roasted by Scott reach out there it is do that, even if the companies are dealing with the same sort of problems, what are they don't what are the challenges? I mean, come on, you know, it's pretty fast paced out here. Yeah, people are demanding, you know, some solutions, something going on. But what do you see trending in the world of manufacturing?

08:28

So maybe, maybe I can walk you through once you can actual case that I'm currently working on. So something very typical in manufacturing is that you are, your sell, your business development department is just going out there, just hunting, right? So they're going planting those seeds. And the reality is, you never know when you actually are going to get those projects right. It could be tomorrow, it could be a month from now. It could be a year from now. And what every single company has in common is the the typically operations is not ready for it, right? Typically they don't prepare. We don't prepare as ops guys. I mean, I consider myself an ops guy, until you got the problem right in front of you. So one of the things I would say that is the number one problem is,

09:19

as we found, so are you getting ahead of your skis? It's like, okay, here's my, here's my BD people, there's my, my sales people. They're going out there selling, selling stuff. But then, you know, the the nuts and bolts, the the operation folks are saying, sounds good, but we're not even close to being there.

09:37

Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, it's, a mindset. Thing of about operations, guys is I will work on whatever is in front of us. And yes, you could have executive level individuals that will be working, preparing for it, but that's in a perfect world the majority of the companies, especially where you're talking to lower middle market companies. Companies, meaning below 100 mil. Usually it doesn't work like that. I mean, we have a finding a lot of companies still working, having paper trail, that are doing aerospace, that have ISOs, and for them to adapt onto new technologies and new things are coming up. As far as new regulations, it takes a lot of time. It's a burden at that point, right? Which not only you're talking not only about efficiency, about throughput, but you're talking about even NPS, meaning Net Promoter Score, meaning satisfying the customer on time, delivery and some other KPIs that at the end of the day also affect your your bottom line, your EBITDA, your growth, right?

10:41

Yeah, what do you do? How do you, how do you, how do you help those companies? I mean, I again, it's, it's one of those problems, challenge, conundrum, that's, that's, that's the amount of words I could dilemma, no dilemma, there you go. There you go. Ha, man, that's four that we could use.

11:03

Is the market demands speed, yeah,

11:08

being nimble. And many of the companies I just it's, it's hard. There's, again, from an from a looking at it from an operational perspective, to be able to do that, that's not, that's not easy. And then when you start to overlay the regulatory environment and what that looks like it, how do you help a company through that journey and maybe move the goal, move it a little bit forward? I don't know.

11:33

Yeah, sure. So in short, is order to cash. I think for any company that's the most important part of the business is, okay, when are you getting that order and how soon are you getting that liquidity right? That that's that's important. So what I do is, and again, it could be, I could go from Sprint, meaning from a, okay, we want to improve this line until we really don't know. And then reality is, a lot of companies don't really know what the problem is, like, what to fix, like you tell me what to fix. That's that's why I'm kind of calling you and counting on you, right? So on the order to catch it's just really streamlining or mapping every single step of the way that is making all of those delays in your company for you to react that fast. And even though it's very natural and very typical for somebody to look at the operations guys, to look at manufacturing, at the production, like the guys with the CNC machines or or whatever the machinery, the reality is a lot of time, typically, and for the most part, in most of the companies I've seen is prior to that production happens where the biggest delays are right, from application engineers to the design engineering to the project manager for the planning, from procurement to all of that. So the entire supply chain of a company, that's where really is. And again, I know the question is, how do you help them? Yeah, right. Well, it's really going through those gaps, yeah. And mapping the process, okay, what is the problem? How do we bridge that?

13:12

See, here's the funny thing.

13:15

In a past life, I was with Price Waterhouse, and that's all I did, process map, and you get it on a piece of paper, you know how difficult that is for people? Oh, yeah, I it's something that's natural that I was doing. I do. I scribbled something over here. It's always blocks and arrows and goes here. And I believe, I believe, that if companies just do that, there will be remarkable improvements, because you get everybody in that conference room and you start talking about, hey, let's start here. Do we all agree that it starts here? And everybody shakes their heads, yes, it does. Okay, good. We have consensus on that. Then we go to here, do we agree that that happens? And then you get 50% of the people, you know that doesn't happen. And then otherwise, yes, it does. And then right there, you just realize you're having a real conversation about, how do we solve that challenge right there? And then you you lay it all out, and then all of a sudden, you do extract and remove the inefficiencies, you know, come up with the gaps. And then, then, then, once you do that, you take that and then ensure that your your systems, your technology layer, complies with that. You know that there's, you remove all the inefficiencies,

14:39

correct, correct. And it's, it's funny that sometimes I'm even thinking, gosh, they're doing all the work, right? Yeah, because they already have the answers. But the thing is actually mapping that and guiding them through that's, that's really where they true added value is, it's simple.

14:59

You. It's,

15:01

it's not easy, though, but I was just getting ready to say it's not an easy process. And you know what the human condition, the human condition gets to the point where, oh, I agree in this conference room, and I don't do that. You know it happens with data conversion. Everybody wants to. Everybody wants data, and they want it to can be converted, because we're putting in this new technology solution, and now I want to convert all the historical data. Now, long that takes two days, two days before everybody just says, I'm not interested anymore. Yeah, it's always a human equation. Oh, yeah, yeah.

15:35

In fact, I actually wrote a book about how all the the issues and problems that encompass a company, a change, right? A cultural change. And that's one of the things with a lot of times you have people telling you yes, like nodding in a conference room, yes, and then you turn around, you go to your normal day, and then guess what? People just go back to whatever is that they were, that they used to they whether they like it or not, whether they're actually they were positive on that reaction. That doesn't matter. People will do whatever is that they it's more comfortable to them, right? It's just

16:15

human nature. It do you have to deal

16:20

with the the attitude? Of, yeah, we're going through this again. We're trying to senior management is making us do this. And it just, they've just sort of, they're sarcastic and like, whatever. And I go back to my office, cube, work location, Bloom, and that's it. I do the same thing because we don't, we don't make the changes that

16:45

happens a lot with long timers. So, yeah, oh, yeah. So especially people who've been in the company for a while, and then I have a lot of a lot of those J curves, as people call it, yeah. That's when you will see all of the people not reluctant to change. Just not believe with this belief.

17:05

Yeah, right, because, because, over the years, it's never followed through. It's still dealing with the same agony and pain, and nobody talks to me about it. I have the answer. If somebody would just sort of talk to me about it, I would say this is the solution.

17:19

So, yeah, I don't know, yeah. So just couple weeks ago, we were talking to these company and the one of the managers, one of the leaders, he would say, Well, I just really don't know what's going on, because I'm thinking, we need to change everybody, right? Because nobody wants to listen. I mean, do I have the answers. It was like, Ha, that's a problem. You have the answers. Yeah, right, yeah. So whenever we try to push something right onto somebody, I mean, it's just the reluctancy for that change, it's like, well, if I have the answer, why am I going to take the answer from another person who is not doing this every single day, right? So going back to your question, absolutely, when you haven't happened to deal with change, it's not about you making things, instructing, giving the you give direction, but ultimately, the people that are actually on the machine or doing the job, they're the ones with the answers. And it's

18:18

about listening, right? You know, I've been in business for many years, and you know this conversation that we're having right now, you know we were having back there for many years ago, the same conversation it, it's, it's as if companies, I can't say flourish, I'm not going To say flourish, but as if companies just just enjoy wallowing in inefficiencies, and they just complain about it and don't do anything about it, and it's the people equation. With anything is always a challenge. It's the tech. Technology is the technology got it? No, it's, it's the technology. It's always the human equation, yeah.

19:00

And also that's why there is some, I mean, well, there are many reasons why. But certainly, as you're automating processes and systems, there is an element of also a human equation about adherence, right? And adherence is, it's that concept about maybe you could, you will be implementing one of the ERP systems that are already including digital, digital twins, right? So some AI and which, which is great, but then you're noticing that certain in people that are responsible for inputting for the variables are inputting the data is not, is not this is not getting that data so you're not getting a good output. You could have an amazing system, but without the right variables in place, then, gosh, people pencil whipping data, there we go already.

19:52

You know, putting dirty data in and thinking that you're going to get the right answer going out. It's that's just never ends. See, I. I really I can appreciate what you do, and I would imagine it, do you

20:07

with this in your head? Do you get frustrated?

20:12

I feel blessed that there's so many people in companies that they're not doing really going about fixing this, because, thanks, it's fertile ground. Correct, correct, because, thanks to that, I see the opportunity in almost every company, and the most difficult thing for me to do is actually seeing the problem, but the company and the leader not seeing it. Yeah, that's the most frustrating.

20:42

Yeah, Alfonso. How do people get a hold of you saying, I want to know more about Alfonso.

20:51

You can find me on LinkedIn. Alfonso aramburo, and that's where, I mean, obviously, an email will work. But I think LinkedIn, it's, it's definitely it is. You're pretty active out there. Yeah, yeah. I am. I am posting about almost three times the lead, three times a week. And yeah, I appreciate you. Comment, link and subscribe. I just kidding.

21:15

El Franco, thank you very much for being on Industrial Talk. You need to connect with this Gent. All his contact Information will be out on Industrial Talk. You will not be disappointed. We are kindred spirits. Just map out your process. Just just try one. Just Just take one, one thing, and just map it out and clean it up and make it more efficient. You will benefit from it, and it's not that painful. Or contact Alfonso and he'll do the same thing for you. There we go again. We're broadcasting from MD&M West here in Anaheim, California. Part of the news and brews crew brought to you by those wonderful people at Informa so check them out. Won't be disappointed. The whole thing is not a disappointment. You need to be a part of this manufacturing juggernaut. Come to MD&M and put this on your calendar for next year. So you will, I mean, you get to beat me, that's what you Yeah, there you go.

22:12

Meet me. That alone. It's amazing. That's right there.

22:15

That's it. Meet me. We're

22:18

gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

22:21

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

22:31

All right. That was MD&M West, part of the news and brews crew broadcasting on site, on the floor, right there, around all of the incredible manufacturers that were there. Hey, I mean, I'm telling you, it was big, it was impressive, and it had solutions. Definitely, to solve your problems, you need to put that one on your calendar for next year. Big time. Do not hesitate. It's easy peasy. Go out to Industrial Talk. You'll have all the links there. You know that's good Alfonso sharing some sage manufacturing insights. He's got a mad stat card out there. I'm I'm looking at his LinkedIn stat card, and yeah, he knows what he's doing. As you can tell by the conversation, he knew. He definitely knows what he's doing. Reach out to him again. His contact Information is out on Industrial Talk, so you know, make it happen. All right. Industrial Talk is here for you. We want you to succeed. We have a platform for you to tell your story that is key to your success, you need to do it. You need to get past yourself and say, feel good. Talking about myself. Just get past yourself. Talk about yourself. Talk about the solutions, talk about the challenges that you face and how you solve them. People want to hear from you. So that's what Industrial Talk is all about. The other part of Industrial Talk is to inspire the next generation. I think that that's really key, the next generation of industrial leaders. And again, they don't know anything about you, but you got to inspire them. You got to tell that story Industrial Talk. Please join Industrial Talk. Go out to industrial. Talk.com click Connect. Talk to me. Let's have a let's have a conversation. All right. Be bold, be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with Alfonso, and you will be changing the world again. Put MD&M West on your calendar for next year. You will not be disappointed.