Ep37 - Ric Ptak - Lets Talk about the Foreman

Dominic Rubino: Hi, everybody, and welcome to Cabinet Maker Profit System Podcast. Hey,

today we've got an interesting switch-up, a change-up. We're going to change

things around.

Dominic Rubino: We talk a lot on this podcast from the business owner's perspective, which is

exactly what we should be doing, right, because there's nobody out there

except, I think, this podcast and maybe a couple of other ones in construction

that talk to us about how to make our business run and grow better but not

from the technical side. We don't need to know how to use a CNC better. We're

running a business here.

Dominic Rubino: Anyways, I was talking to Ric Ptak. Now, Ric Ptak is the president of an AWMAC

chapter. AWMAC is the Architectural Woodworking Manufacturers Association

of Canada. It's the same as AWI. They follow, generally, the same standards

book. Ric is the president of the Northern Alberta Chapter. He and I were talking

about all of the topics that I've had on the podcast, and Ric brought up the fact

that we haven't talked about the shop floor, so today, on this podcast, coming

up next, Ric and I are going to be talking about what about the foreman? I think

it's a great topic because that foreman is the person who ... well, they translate

what you want and need done in the office onto the floor.

Dominic Rubino: You guys, we've all started on the floor. We've all been there. Sometimes it's a

baby-sitting job. Sometimes it's a management [inaudible 00:01:25] job. It's a

team-building job. You've got to always be on the lookout. You don't know what

people are going to be asking and where they're trying to maybe cut corners or,

actually, in some cases, trying to do too much work on a project when, really,

the finishing standard or quality could be brought back in line and it ... We're

not making pianos sometimes. I apologize to those of you who are making

pianos, but you know what I mean. There's always a different quality standard

for every different project, and the foreman has a lot of responsibility in that.

Dominic Rubino: If you're an owner who finds yourself interacting with the floor what you think is

too much and, because you're interacting with the floor too much it's pulling

you away from office operations, it's pulling you away from focusing on new

sales, new deals, profitability, all the things in operations, doing the right kind of

purchases, if you find yourself in that situation, I think this podcast episode is

going to be one you find very interesting.

Dominic Rubino: Let me add ... and you're going to hear from Ric here. Ric is a very logical guy. He

tells great story, but he also tells it just like it is. Love this industry for that. All of

you guys are the same. You tell it like it is. Ric is with FP Innovations, which is ...

He's an industry advisor to the millwork industry, and FP Innovations is really

well-known for what they do as well, but Ric's been a plant manager and he's

been a foreman as well, so we're going to hear it from somebody who

understands the perspective of the foreman. I'll bet you we get a lot out of this.

All right. That's enough from me. Let's get to Ric. Talk to you on the other side.

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Dominic Rubino: Good morning, Ric.

Ric Ptak: Good morning, Dom.

Dominic Rubino: How are you?

Ric Ptak: I'm great. How are you?

Dominic Rubino: I'm good, thank you. It seems like you and I have had a couple of preparatory

calls getting ready for today's interview. I'm glad to have you with us.

Ric Ptak: Yeah. I'm raring to go. I'm excited about doing the podcast today.

Dominic Rubino: Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you. Ric, welcome to Cabinet Maker Profit System

Podcast. As our listeners and viewers will soon find out, you're very familiar with

the cabinet-making industry.

Ric Ptak: Yes, I am. I'm actually a cabinet maker by trade, started getting my trade back in

the early '80s with a company in Edmonton, Canada called Madsen's Custom

Cabinets and went on then to become the foreman for that company. Left that

company and did a couple of stints with some other companies as a foreman

and then became an engineer doing a lot of programming and cutting lists,

project management as well and then, later on, worked for a large company

called Sunac. I was the plant manager there, and we had about 80 people.

Primarily, we did high-end retail store fixtures in the US, stores like Louis

Vuitton, Christian Dior, Harry Winston, and those kind of stores, worked in,

primarily, the larger cities in the States, New York, and Bal Harbour, and Rodeo

Drive, so ... and even a store in Hawaii.

Dominic Rubino: Fun.

Ric Ptak: We did also the Louis Vuitton in Mexico City. Yeah, a lot of experience there

with the millwork industry, cabinet-making industry, understand all the issues

right from the general contractor, architects and designers, as well as the whole

production side of things and then the installation, and even familiar with the

billing cycles and the issues with AR and all those-

Dominic Rubino: All the fun stuff.

Ric Ptak: All the fun stuff, so the full gamut, I've got that under my belt experience-wide,

yes.

Dominic Rubino: Wow.

Ric Ptak: Then I moved out of industry in about 2010 and got hired on by a company

called FP Innovations. They're not-

Dominic Rubino: That's where you are now, yeah.

Ric Ptak: That's where I am [inaudible 00:06:12], yeah, FP Innovations. They're a not-for-

profit forest research institute. We've got labs in Canada and a lot of people that

work also abroad in the US now. We're opening up some centers there and

helping a lot of the US-based industry. We do everything from the seedling tree

right to finished wood product, so seedling tree, forestry, sawmills, pulp and

paper, and the finished wood products, and fiber acquisition, and all the-

Dominic Rubino: Gee.

Ric Ptak: [inaudible 00:06:45] bio industry. Anything to do with wood, we're into that.

We've got the research knowledge base behind that.

Dominic Rubino: That is insanely interesting, so truly cradle ... I don't want to say cradle to grave,

but from seedling to reinvention to finished wood products and then to dealing,

I suppose, even with recycled pulp and fiber.

Ric Ptak: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Anything to do with wood, or wood cells, or wood fibers, or

anything to do with the trees, we have our tentacles into it, and we're

interested, and we've got a lot of research behind that and a lot of bright people

working for the organization.

Dominic Rubino: You're also involved with AWMAC a lot.

Ric Ptak: Yes, I am.

Dominic Rubino: Architectural Woodworking Manufacturers Association.

Ric Ptak: Yes.

Dominic Rubino: That's why I have you as a guest today because we're going to talk about the

foreman, this position that really is a quarterback, in many ways, for the

efficiency, and the effectiveness, and the quality control that we have in our

shops. We're bringing the contracts to life through that foreman.

Ric Ptak: Yeah, so a lot of my work with AWMAC who also ... AWMAC is also linked

together with AWI in the States, so we work very closely there. We actually have

developed, for many years now, a standards manual on how to properly build

millwork, and so that's the North American Architectural Woodwork Standards.

My job now with FP Innovations and AWMAC takes me to many different

woodworking shops. A lot of times, I'm asked by the company to come in there

and take a look, do a diagnostic, talk to the people, let us know what you see,

outside set of eyes, what do you see?

Dominic Rubino: Perspective, yeah.

Ric Ptak: Yeah, a different perspective, right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah.

Ric Ptak: Because sometimes if a company ... they've got their blinders on. They're

working hard. They're working to get that job out the door. There's tight

timelines. The budgets are tight. They've got their blinders on. They don't see

beyond what they actually are working on at that particular moment so, a lot of

times, I will come in and do a diagnostic when I'm asked. It usually takes me two

or three days to kind of look and see what's happening, and study, and just

watch.

Ric Ptak: What I've seen, it's sort of a trend that I've seen 80 or 90% of the time, the

foreman who, in my experience and in my understanding of the position, should

be on the floor 80% of the time doing things like making sure that the

production is flowing, making sure that the quality is being met, making sure

that the safety standards are being upheld, and generally keeping costs down so

things like rework isn't happening, 80% of the time, the foreman's time should

be spent on the floor, but what I'm finding is that very little of their time is being

spent on the floor.

Ric Ptak: It's more 80% of the time is in their office in front of their computer doing work-

related things like answering emails, and maybe even some project

management work, and talking to the installers, and talking to the customers,

but that's not really, in my mind, what the position is. The should position

should be them being on the floor and looking after those four key vital areas,

which I already outlined: production, quality, safety, and keeping costs down. I

would challenge [crosstalk 00:10:17]-

Dominic Rubino: Let me just run those [crosstalk 00:10:17]-

Ric Ptak: Yeah, go ahead.

Dominic Rubino: Sorry, so I want to ... Because people might be taking notes while they're

listening to this and might be driving, so I'm just ... Let's repeat those again. The

foreman should be on the floor looking after production.

Ric Ptak: Production, the quality, the safety and, in general, just making sure that the

costs are being kept down. What I mean by that is things like making sure that

the amount of rework is minimal, making sure that we're not incurring overtime

costs. We all know that overtime costs creep into some of these jobs, but the

problem is the company didn't price the job with overtime in it. If you're

incurring overtime, what does that mean? It's cutting into your profit margins,

right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. Then the other thing is just general efficiencies. The amount of time that

you've got a high-priced, skilled tradesman going and picking stuff off the

shelves, that's low-value work for that person. You could have a laborer picking

panels and pieces and bringing it to that higher-skilled tradesman, keeping

those hourly rates in line. Not to get into lean manufacturing, but every step is

worth a dollar.

Ric Ptak: That's right. That's right. That's all covered under production, right? If the

foreman is out walking the floor, they're looking after production and, really,

there's a lot of things under production. It's things like making sure that the

equipment is being maintained, proper maintenance so we have total

productive maintenance. That means talking to the operator, making sure

they're following the maintenance procedures, making sure the machine is

running, there's no machine downtime because, if we have machine downtime,

that affects production, right? The quality, so that the rework levels aren't

there, that the quality is being maintained. In order to maintain quality, a lot of

times, what the foreman is responsible for doing is making sure that the training

is happening so that the people are properly trained and are actually doing what

they're supposed to do, that the safety is being maintained.

Ric Ptak: Safety, for me, has two components. Yes, safety primarily is keeping the people

safe so they are not going to be getting hurt or injured, but in ... The secondary

part of that, for me, is making sure there's no property losses, so there's no

equipment damage, there's no building damage, things like that. Even though a

dolly may fall over with product on it, and nobody was in the area so nobody got

hurt, hey, that's great, but we still have property loss. We still have rework. We

have to rework that product, right? That's a component that needs to fall

primarily under the foreman's job to look after, right, and then just keeping the

costs down so that the workflow is efficient and effective. You can't do that

from your office.

Dominic Rubino: No.

Ric Ptak: If you're in your office and answering emails, maybe that's what upper

management is asking you to do, but maybe upper management then ... I

challenge them to look at that and say, "Do we actually need another position

to effectively answer those emails?" if that's what you need to do, but don't use

the foreman to do that because the foreman's job is to be on the floor 80% of

the time.

Dominic Rubino: Production management, yeah. Well, those questions that come to purchasing

and quite often, then, would fall to the estimator. In a lot of companies, they'll

say the estimator is also in charge of purchasing and making sure those

conversations happen. I think a big part of this, as well, is communication. The

foreman has to communicate with the office, wherever that is, nextdoor, or

upstairs, or next building over, but there has to be really good communication

between the foreman and the office and the foreman and the floor. That's why I

say it's the quarterback.

Ric Ptak: Exactly. That communication has to be in the form of a face-to-face

communication between the workers and the foreman and relaying any issues

with engineering or project management. The foreman's kind of the go-

between, and he's actually understanding what needs to happen, and he can go

back on a face-to-face and, if it can't be face-to-face, pick up the phone.

Ric Ptak: I've worked with a lot of companies where they spent a lot of time on emailing,

then a question comes from either the project manager or from the site

supervisor or site person, and you get into this email war or email answering

back and forth and a lot of times ... You know what? Pick up the phone.

Dominic Rubino: Just talk to a human.

Ric Ptak: I mean you could solve that issue in two or three minutes and move on, but we

think we're communicating effectively by using the email, and we're really not.

For me, I even limit what I do today. I limit my emails. I'm very selective on what

I answer and, a lot of times, I'll get a request from somebody, and I'm going to

tell ... I tell myself right away this is going to take a long time for me to answer

email. I pick up the phone and I talk to them, and we can solve this thing in a

minute or two.

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. It's true. There is this new transition. There's communication that could

be done on texting. Then there's communication that could be done by email.

Then, finally, you've just got to look at it and go, "I could solve this so much

faster by picking up the phone." Yeah, just pick up the phone. It's a magical tool.

It gets you right into the other person's ear, into their brain. You got that line-to-

line communication right away, no interruptions.

Ric Ptak: That's right. That's right. It has to be taken in context, of course. Sometimes it's

better to do it email-wise. You're a long distance away, I get that, and you can't

find the person. You play telephone tag. I get that. Well, if you're doing that,

then set up an appointment via email, "Hey, I'll call you tomorrow morning at

8:00 a.m. Be available for my phone call." Boom. Now you've got an

appointment. You can pick up the phone, and you can discuss whatever the

issue is and get those things sorted out, right? But really you know-

Dominic Rubino: When you do your [crosstalk 00:16:25]-

Ric Ptak: Yeah, go ahead.

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. Sorry, Ric. I was going to say, just on this communication track here,

thinking about this foreman really sitting in the middle between the office and

the floor, what do you like to see or what are the good news stories you have of

a foreman running meeting with the floor? How often are they doing that?

What's the focus of those meetings? Or could you come back to me and say,

"No, meetings don't work. We don't do that. We just go to work every day,

show up, punch the clock"? What works best for communicating?

Ric Ptak: Well, what I've seen work the best for communicating is when companies do

the five-minute huddle, the daily huddle. A lot of times, the foreman is involved

in that, and so they meet for five minutes a day. It's the same time every day.

Everyone is required to be there. If it's by department, that's fine. If you have a

larger organization, you may have four or five different huddles happening. You

might have a project management engineering huddle. You might have one in

panel processing and you have one in assembly and so on. It depends on the

size of the organization, but you have a five-minute huddle and, in those five

minutes, there's an agenda, and you actually talk about those four things we

already talked about: production, quality, safety, and keeping the costs down.

Ric Ptak: It's five minutes. You talk about what happened in the past 24 hours. Did we hit

our production targets? Usually, companies have KPIs or key performance

indicators so they know where they're at. If they didn't hit their production, you

talk about why. What are some of the issues? What do we need to crack for

today so that we can hit our targets for today? Then you talk about any quality

issues that came up in those last 24 hours, any safety issues.

Ric Ptak: You also then engage the people to maybe come forth with some ideas to make

some improvements so that you don't have these things happening again and

again, again. You come to the root cause of what caused some of these issues,

and then you make some corrections moving forward. People are familiar with

lean manufacturing or continuous improvement. Those are some of those things

that those people who are practicing that actually employ, right?

Ric Ptak: Anyway, this five-minute-a-day meeting, it sets the stage. It gets out of the way

any issues. It gets you to the root causes of what caused you grief in the last 24

hours, and then you can implement some improvements moving forward so you

don't run into these over and over again.

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. We've had a podcast episode here with a gentleman named Ankit Sharma

from Kitply. I had the opportunity to actually be in his office during his huddle,

his five-minute daily-

PART 1 OF 3 ENDS [00:19:04]

Dominic Rubino: ... opportunity to actually be in his office during his huddle, his five-minute daily

huddle. And it was run really well, so I asked him to be a guest on our podcast. I

think it was posted May the 3rd. So what I'll do is, in the show notes for today, is

we will post this based on Ric's endorsement of doing a huddle, a link back to

Ankit's podcast as well. So if anybody needs to see what a huddle looks like,

Ankit walks you through it. And it's a pretty powerful tool. I've seen companies

that use it, and those that don't. That kind of communication and accountability

really impacts a company in the right way.

Ric Ptak: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Some of the other things that I can

sort of share with you from my experience, a lot of these places I'll go do the

diagnostic at, and there'll be this us versus them culture. You've got engineering

and project management, and then you've got production floor. And invariably I

always talk to one and they always blame the other department for the issue.

And I say, "Guys, you're one company. There's not two separate companies

here. Engineering, project management, and production have to work together.

So take away this barrier. Take away this us versus them culture. You're a team,

so you have to work together."

Ric Ptak: How do you do that? You already mentioned about the communication that has

to happen, and that has to be a no-blame environment. Yes, we did something

wrong, so let's fix it so that it doesn't happen tomorrow or next week again,

right? You're only going to get that if the foreman is walking the floor, if he's got

good communication with all his operators and his people on the bench, and

then he can take those concerns back to the other departments if that's where

sort of the problem is generated. He say, "Let's work together so that we can

help each other," right?

Ric Ptak: Everybody has to clean up their own backyard. Production has a lot of things

that they can do better when I come do these diagnostics, and so can project

management and engineering. But at the end of the day you still have to work

together, right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. I think that's the key, is that business itself is a just constant reinvention.

We should always be looking for making things better, and you really nailed it

when you said, "It's not about blame. It's just a situation." It has nothing to do

with the person. Fix the situation. If the person happens to be the challenge,

because of their attitude, or their approach, or being late for work, or some

other challenges, then that's something you can deal with. But that's very

different than, we're not getting the right paint color. It's probably because we

don't have the right system; we're not following the recipe or the process.

Ric Ptak: I think you just hit the nail on the head, Dom. It's about process. First, you have

to make sure that you have the correct process. If your process isn't correct or

isn't clearly understood by everyone who's using it, you are invariably going to

have issues or problems crop up. So first of all, make sure your process is sound.

Once the process is sound, then train everybody to follow that process, and

then just hold them accountable.

Ric Ptak: And who's the person, again, who's going to do that? It's going to fall on the

foreman's job. Now the foreman may have a couple of lead hands. Well, then

he's going to lean on them to make sure, and then the lead hands are going to

report back to him, if the organization has a large number of people on the

floor. But still, there's a system in place for the foreman to make sure that

everybody's being held accountable to follow the correct process.

Dominic Rubino: This foreman person, I'm going to say this foreman guy ... It's easy for a lot of us

to think that your highest skilled technical guy should become the foreman. Is

that always the case?

Ric Ptak: It's not always the case, and in a lot of times that doesn't really work. And I tell

you, it happened to me. I was considered one of the higher-skilled bench

people, so of course, "Yeah. Ric, you wanna be the foreman?" "Yeah, sure. I

want to be the foreman. I'm young, ambitious, I can get another job title, maybe

a raise, that's all good stuff." But nobody taught me any people skills, how to

handle people at all.

Dominic Rubino: That's where I was going on that. That's the people-

Ric Ptak: So now you have to deal with people issues and people problems, and

everybody's different. So again, the foreman needs these skills. How are they

going to get them? They don't get them in cabinet making school. Normally

when you're an apprentice, you learn how to do the technical part really well,

but nobody teaches the people skills. So I do, or FPInnovations also offers that ...

Training Within Industry's one of the tools. We're not the only people that can

do that. You can look for these courses; there are other providers that'll offer

them.

Ric Ptak: But what they do is that they give the foreman and supervisors the necessary

tools to then handle things like people problems. That's called Job Relations

training if we talk about TWI, or Training Within Industry. But another J-course is

Job Instruction training, how to properly train people. And then there's Job

Methods training, how to make the best use of materials, manpowers, and

machines that you currently have available, right? So you're using them

effectively and efficiently.

Ric Ptak: So there's all kinds of courses available out there if you want to give your

foreman the best tools in his toolbox to be the foreman, be the supervisor,

right?

Dominic Rubino: We've got listeners right now, or viewers, perhaps, if they're watching this on

YouTube, who are owners of shops, right? So the people that listen to this show

are cabinetmakers, architectural mill workers, furniture makers, and they're the

owners of these shops, and they're thinking about this foreman position. You're

coming back, you're an industry expert, from a really high-level perspective,

who's also gone into many, many shops. And you're saying, "We should be

investing in our people, investing in that foreman," and giving him ... or her, I'll

just say ... but in giving him training on people skills more than technical ...

We're going to assume a certain level of technical proficiency here, but it's really

about people skills.

Ric Ptak: I think that's the key, because the technical skills all probably already exist, and

it's the people skills a lot of times that are lacking. My people skills came from

trial and error, school of hard knocks. You did something that didn't work out,

you lost a good employee because you didn't handle it properly, and then you

say, "Well, now I know what not to do next time," but in the meantime you

can't turn back the hands of time, so what I'm suggesting is-

Dominic Rubino: No, and people are so different.

Ric Ptak: Yeah. What I'm suggesting is, go out and look for the tools that are going to

make your supervisor a really strong supervisor, the people skills. They need

that, right? And it's people skills; it's talking face-to-face. It's understanding

what the frustrations are for the operators, and then working with them to

solve those things or make it easier for them to do their job.

Dominic Rubino: So if I'm an owner of a company, and I'm thinking of getting a foreman,

regardless ... We're either growing to the point where we need a foreman, or

maybe our foreman has moved on, and so now we're looking at our roster of

people. Who do you think on our floor would be giving us the indicators that

they'd be a good next foreman? What would you be looking for in a foreman's

skills, if they were already in the company?

Ric Ptak: Well, what I typically look for is people who ask a lot of questions, people who

say, "Well, what about if we did it like this?" These natural leaders, or people

with these leadership abilities. They generally surface to the top, and upper

management, owners just have to listen to figure out who might be these

people who are the next potential supervisors or the leaders of the company.

Because let's face it, eventually these young, eager people who have these

questions, who are questioning, "Isn't there a better way to do things," maybe

their ideas are kind of out in left field, but at least they're thinking about it. At

least they want to get some input back.

Ric Ptak: These are going to be the next owners of companies looking 20, 30, 40 years

down the road. These are going to be the owners of these companies, so why

not nurture that out of them, and give them the opportunity and the necessary

skills, and see if they can grow those skills and become one of your leaders on

your shop floor, right? I mean, a supervisor really gets results through people.

That's what happens, right?

Ric Ptak: So if you have a good supervisor, you get results. That means your production is

high; that means you get the job out on time with minimal issues, meaning the

quality's high. Very little safety concerns; we don't have a lot of people getting

hurt and then missing time, time off work and your WACD rates go up. The

schedule gets whacked out of kilter, because now I'm missing the guy on the

CNC, so now my production isn't running. And in general, the costs are down.

Ric Ptak: So this is what we mean when we say, "Look, the foreman is an important

position, so give it the importance it deserves. Give your foreman the necessary

tools in their toolbox so that they can do their job effectively." And then, that

will mean the profit margins will be where you're expecting them to be.

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. It just occurred to me ... and perhaps to you and I, because we go into a

lot of shops and we see this ... but I think it's worth repeating. That foreman

needs to be in their shop floor meetings, we call them toolbox meetings or

huddle, whatever it is. But they also need to be in the office meetings. You

mentioned us versus them? That foreman is the person who carries the

information back and forth. So if there's office meetings, even where you're

talking about finance and operations and purchasing, there are probably certain

meetings that are appropriate for the foreman to be in, so he's got an ear in

both camps.

Dominic Rubino: He knows how to advise the leaders, and say, "Hey, we might have a problem,"

or, "We might have an opportunity." But he also has a way to tell the guys on

the floor, "Hey, listen. There's a big job coming, so we gotta pump this one out,

because we're going to get hit by a huge wave pretty soon." He needs to be in

between both of those things.

Ric Ptak: That's right. You hit the nail on the head again, Dom. Job relations teaches that.

Job relations is a two-way relationship. It's between the ownership and upper

management to the foreman, and it's from the foreman back to them. But then

the foreman also walks that middle of the line, where he's got to balance the

upper management and ownership with the production floor. So the

communication goes all across every point there. It means, yeah, if you have

good communications usually it's going to happen everywhere. It has to be open

and honest; it has to be a no-blame environment. We understand we had an

issue yesterday; let's just fix it. What do we need to do to get it fixed? What do

we have to change?

Ric Ptak: And understanding that, going to the next level. A lot of companies, what they'll

do is, they'll blame each other. They'll blame the economy; they'll blame the

environment; they'll blame the suppliers; they'll blame the general contractors.

But guess what? There's a lot of stuff they can work on in their own camp to fix

and make better. A lot of times, all that is, is better communication skills, right?

Communication skills is one of those tools that certainly affect ... If you have a

supervisor or foreman and you feel they could benefit from that, then find some

effective courses for them to engage with and engage in, and then practice that.

Hold them accountable to start using some of those skills.

Ric Ptak: It takes time; it's not going to change overnight. But if there's a concerted effort,

and if management is behind it, and they support it, things will change. Slowly,

they'll get better.

Dominic Rubino: It has to be constant, an understanding that it's constant and never-ending

improvement. When we talk about, from a business coaching perspective ...

Which I think is very similar to what you do there, Ric, at FPInnovations, is kind

of a business coaching thing ... is people who are below the line, they place

blame, they make excuses, they're negative, they're in denial, and they're in

scarcity. What happens is, let's say the foreman has that personality style of

being a blamer, well what he's doing is actually allowing other people to be

blamers, too. Because now your journeyman can blame his apprentice; the

apprentice can blame the receiver; the receiver can blame the guy who dropped

off the materials in the truck. And now you've just got a culture of blame in the

company.

Dominic Rubino: I should add that if the owner has a behavioral style where they blame

everybody, that just filters all the way through the company. This might only be

funny to business coaches, but we do have a joke about that, which is that

whenever I'm placing blame and I'm pointing at you, there's three fingers

pointing back at me.

Ric Ptak: Yeah. Sometimes people don't understand that, but you're right. Culture plays a

big part of it. What is your culture? Understanding the culture of your

organization. And if your organization does have that sort of blaming culture,

then yeah, that's going to take a bit of effort to turn that around and change

that around, and it's going to have to be done with a strategic ... And probably a

coach would be the right way to address that, so you have a strategic plan of

how you're going to change culture over time.

Ric Ptak: Again, not everybody's going to buy into it. If you can shift 75 to 80% of the

people in your organization over in a year and a half to two or three years ...

That's kind of what I'm seeing in my estimation and in my experience level.

That's how long it takes to change culture. If you can get 75 or 80% of them,

you've done your job, because the other 20%, you're probably not going to be

able to shift them. They're probably going to have to exit over time, through

attrition or retirement. But then at least the new people you're hiring, now

you've developed this new culture. At least with the people you're bringing in,

you're adapting that new culture, so now you're going to get the culture you're

looking for over time.

Dominic Rubino: You might have a really good perspective on this, Ric. And this wasn't part of the

foreman conversation, but this culture question is really important, so this is

where this next phase of this interview is going to go. I used to think culture was

nothing but pink fluffy clouds. Rainbows and unicorn poop. "Ah, it means

nothing." And what I've learned over time is that, actually, culture is everything,

because when I have the right people on my team with the right culture, we can

actually do anything. But if I have the wrong people on my team, everything is

impossible.

Dominic Rubino: And so let me ask you, have you, when you've gone out to visit different sites,

different shops ... and it sounds like you've seen a whole different spectrum of

them. Have you seen two shops where one's got a top culture like a blame

culture, and one's got a real winning culture, and how they operate differently?

Ric Ptak: Oh, yeah. You see that quite often. And it's always interesting, because it

doesn't take long to figure out what the culture of an organization is as an

outside set of eyes, for me at least, anyway. Culture is very interesting, because

culture is exactly what is happening on the shop floor. It's not what you think is

happening. It's not what the owners think happens in project management or

on the shop floor. It's actually, you walk down and you actually see what's

happening, and that's the culture, right? So there's no denying when you come

in, an outside set of eyes are watching an operation on the floor, watching an

operator, or watching a process, or watching cabinets or doors being processed,

it doesn't take long to figure out what's going on there.

Ric Ptak: A lot of times you'll see things like ... Here's some of the things that I would

suggest that if a foreman isn't doing currently, that's actually their job. Walked

into companies where, at the coffee time for instance, where all the equipment

is turned off, that the compressor is still on, and I hear lots of air leaks on the air

line. So what is that saying? Well, meaning that there's an opportunity there to

repair the leaks in the air lines, and then it's less strain on the compressor. So

things like that. Are you in tune to understanding that we have a lot of air line

leaks, and let's get them fixed.

Ric Ptak: If they say, "Well, we're not too worried about it. We have enough pressure on

the compressor, so we don't have a problem with the air line leaks," then you

understand what the culture is. The culture, to me, is saying that, "We're not

too concerned about equipment repairs," right? "We're only going to react to

anything that breaks down, but we're not going to be proactive in fixing

equipment if we see there's some issues. We're going to wait for it to break

down, and then we'll react to it."

Ric Ptak: Well, if that's your culture, that's fine. But I'm going to tell you that you're going

to cause yourself a lot of grief, because equipment doesn't break down when

you're not busy. Equipment breaks down [inaudible 00:36:39] that most

important job, the most important client, the least amount of time to get it

finished in, and then that important piece of equipment breaks down.

Ric Ptak: So again, understanding what culture is, it's just taking a step back and looking

at it with a different set of eyes. I'll see things like people edging on the edge

banders. The edge bander operator is very efficient. He's piling up lots of things

in the edge bander, lots of products getting edged. I'll walk over, I'll feel it, and

there'll be a slight, a little bit more to do on it. Maybe they have to file it now, or

something.

Ric Ptak: So I'll ask somebody. If the foreman's around, I'll ask the foreman, and say,

"What's going on here?" He says, "Oh, yeah. Well, we've got a buddy there on

the bench. All this product is just going to go over there and he's going to file it."

I say, "Well, why would you do that when you have an edge bander that can

actually do that function for you? Just spend another half an hour setting up the

edge bander, or 20 minutes, and you won't have to do the filing."

Ric Ptak: That's the kind of thing I'm talking about where we're saying, keeping costs

down. Because if you're actually taking all that product that was just edged, and

you're sending it off to a bench to get further processed, that's costing you

money. It's affecting your bottom line. I'm sorry, but that's how you have to look

at it, right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah.

Ric Ptak: So those are types of things that, if a foreman is in tune, and a supervisor's in

tune, he's going to look at that stuff that comes off the edge bander the first 10

or-

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Ric Ptak: He's going to look at that stuff that comes off the edgebander the first 10 or 15

pieces, and he's going to say to the edgebander operator, "Hey, buddy! I want

you to set this edgebander better than this. Because I don't want to have to file

this stuff over at the next station. So spend another 20 minutes, and then we'll

save 4 hours of filing."

Ric Ptak: Because, sure enough, you can produce a lot badly or quality that doesn't hit

the mark of the product and then have to, you know, process it further. That's

going to take way more time than if I just take an extra half an hour on the

edgebander, so it's that kind of understanding that really the foreman has to

have to be able to address these issues, right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah.

Ric Ptak: And you're only going to do that by walking the floor. You're not going to know

that that product isn't edged to the right quality by sitting in your office

answering emails. I'm not suggesting that the foreman isn't busy doing

something. And it may even be something that upper management has told him

to do, but I challenge the organization and say, "I don't think that's the best use

of the foreman's time." [crosstalk 00:39:06].

Dominic Rubino: [crosstalk 00:39:07] yeah, yeah. It comes out in so many places. People don't

want to ... they don't want to wreck the board, and so they leave an onionskin

on the CNC, and then it has to get processed further. And it's just such an

obvious question, but it's also part of the culture of the company. "We always

do it that way." So I think this goes back to your statement before that, if you're

looking for a new foreman, whether it's off your existing floor or somebody who

you may be hiring from the outside, it's somebody who's willing to ask the

questions when everybody else is just going along with the flow.

Ric Ptak: Exactly. Somebody who's wanting to challenge the status quo. And the

companies that are in tune with continuous improvement, that are always

wanting to push the envelope, they're always going to be questioning how we

do things, and you know, "I want to do it better a couple of months from now

than we're doing it today, so what do we need to do to make those changes? Do

we need better training for people? Should we spend more time with standard

operating procedures? Do I have to shut down that piece of equipment and

order that premium head, a sharper premium head for the edgebander?" Things

like that. So it's being in tune with what's required. Being proactive is really

what it means. And that doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. You have to

train for that and instill that in your leaders, right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah.

Ric Ptak: Some of the other things I've seen, you know, walking through shops were, you

know, a lot of kitchen cabinet shops will have a finishing line or a separate

whole room where there's an automatic finishing line [inaudible 00:40:48]. And

then I see sanding happening in that room. Well, that's supposed to be a dust-

free environment. So if culture is now that we're actually sanding in that room,

we're actually incurring dust in there, and so we have the potential for a poorer

quality product, rework, things like that, so this is something where, if the

foreman is walking the floor, he can say, "Hey, why are you sanding in here?

Sanding happens outside. We've got some sanding, a booth, or we've got a draw

down table outside this [inaudible 00:41:20]. Make sure the sanding [inaudible

00:41:22] out there. It happens out there." So it's things like that where the

foreman or the supervisor, when they're on the floor, they can maintain the

processes. They can maintain the quality. They can hold people accountable.

And when they see people need additional training or retraining, then they can

focus their efforts on that, so they can bring the quality up and make sure that

the processes are being maintained.

Dominic Rubino: Lovely. That's good. So this conversation about, let's talk about the foreman,

actually has a lot of depth to it. This is a very important position. And I know

that most, I think many of our listeners have foremen, many of them are also

thinking about moving into that state where they need a foreman and they

need to start separating roles and have some role clarity and responsibility.

Where I see some of the challenge is where the foreman is also doing the

estimating and a little bit of project managing. And that works for a little while,

while a company is trying to grow into that proverbial next level, but at some

point, you've got to have a foreman that's a foreman, an estimator that's an

estimator, and separate those two roles so your company can grow. Because

you just talked about so many efficiencies on the floor that lead straight to

profits, lost profits or gained profits, just by having the floor running properly.

Yeah.

Ric Ptak: Well, Dom, you know, that's funny. You take me back to when I first got into

cabinet making, and you know, back in the early 80s, there was no engineering

department. We didn't have project managers. That all happened on the shop

floor, you know, sort of the senior cabinet makers would probably be the

person that goes out to the job site and gets the measurements. Then they'd

build the unit. They would manage or coordinate with the job site or the general

contractor when we're going to go in and do the installation. They would

probably go do the installation.

Ric Ptak: So these other departments we've created to increase our volume of work and

to make things more efficient, because now we have CNC rotors and CNC

edgebanders and all these wonderful pieces of technology and equipment, but

really the work still happens in the woodworking shop, on the shop floor, and

that's really where the money is made. That's what creates the product. That's

what finishes the product. And so that's where the effort needs to be. The big

part of that effort needs to be on that production floor still. Because that's the

thing that makes the money for the organization, right? Those other

departments are the support to that. I'm not suggesting they're not important.

But the important big hub is the production floor. Because that's where the

work actually happens.

Dominic Rubino: That's what we do. We make stuff.

Ric Ptak: Yeah. Exactly.

Dominic Rubino: So Ric, if somebody's listening to this, and they want to get in touch with you or

find out more, or maybe you said something that really resonated, how would

somebody reach you?

Ric Ptak: Well, I'll give my email address, and I'll give my cell phone number, and I invite

people to ... if they have questions, if they have comments, if they disagree with

me and say, "Ric, you're out to lunch," I want to hear about that, too. Because

I'm always learning. I've got over 35 years' experience in the millwork and

cabinetmaking trade. But every day I still learn. Somebody who's 20 or 21 years

old can still teach me something. And I'm open to that. So yeah, I'm open to ... if

somebody has a question about what's diagnostic, TWI, I'll give you more

information. So here's my telephone number. It's 780-717-8186, and I'll repeat

that. 780-717-8186. And my email address is ric.ptak@fpinnovations.ca. And FP

Innovations is spelled F P I N N O V A T I O N S.

Dominic Rubino: Excellent. Well, for those of you listening, if you happen to be driving right now,

when this episode goes live, there will be show notes that you can see on the

website. In those show notes will be links to Ric's phone number, Ric's email

address, the other podcast that I talked about where Ric brought up the huddle,

which is an excellent management and communication tool. We've done a

podcast on that. We'll probably do more in the future, but I'll like to that one for

you, where we had Ankit Sharma from Kitply talking about his huddle process.

Ric, this has been great. I think you've uncovered a lot of things, and actually,

probably in a lot of cases, people are feeling pretty good, saying, "Okay. I think

we're on track. We're doing that." But I think, for me, one of the biggest

takeaways I've got on this whole foreman conversation is probably about the

culture, the right attitude.

Ric Ptak: Yeah, and I think, you know, if companies saying that they're doing a lot of these

things, that's great. I applaud them. I would then throw the challenge out to say,

you know, never stop. Because continuous improvement, you have to always

improve. And if you stop continuous improvement or you think you've done as

much as you can, problem with that, of course, is your competition probably is

not, so if you're at the top of your game right now and then you turn off the

faucet. Maybe [inaudible 00:46:58] won't be at the top of your game anymore.

So you have to continuously challenge yourself to say, "It's great! Let's pat

ourselves on the back because of all the improvements and all the things we're

doing well already. Great. What else can we do? Let's look ... let's uncover

something else that we can do better at." So it's a never-ending challenge to

yourself and the organization to always challenge itself to improve, right?

Dominic Rubino: Yeah. Well, thank you, Ric. I appreciate you taking the time away from your day

and your role there at AWMAC as well to come and join us for this. I'm sure our

listeners and our viewers got a lot. Thanks, Ric. I hope to talk to you again soon.

Ric Ptak: Okay, I appreciate that, and thanks, Dom, for having me on, and thanks

everyone for listening.

Dominic Rubino: Bye bye.

Ric Ptak: Bye bye.

Dominic Rubino: My arm's killing me from taking so many notes, and I feel bad because I

interrupted Ric a bunch of times, but I wanted him to repeat what he was

saying, so that those of you who are driving or walking the dog or whatever

you're doing would have a chance just to hear him say it, break it down, or if

you're at your desk and you can take notes, you got a chance to write those

down.

Dominic Rubino: Man, he was bang on. I mean, you know, saying that, you know, what he's

observed is that the foreman should be on the floor 80% of the time. But in

reality, what do we see? And you know, we see this as well, and it's, how do you

say it? It's what our employees want. They want to be in the office. They want

to be doing project management. They want to be talking to the clients. But

really, the foreman's job is actually to run the crew, you know?

Dominic Rubino: And if you're in a place right now in your company where you're struggling to

get to that, you know, what everybody calls the next level, then it's going to

take a different way of looking at things, a different way of thinking about

things. And what that comes down to is accountability and communications,

right? It always comes down to that. We use a system here for strategic

planning. And that might sound boring, strategic planning, but the reason we do

strategic planning is so that a business owner like yourself can get what they

want out of the business. They can, you know, have the lifestyle they want.

Drive to a nicer cottage in a better truck with a bigger boat behind it. But you

can't get there by doing what you're doing now without going nuts.

Dominic Rubino: And the reason that we run business, as we do, is so that we can leverage our

time, right? I mean it comes down to that's what we want to do is we want to

leverage our time and our resources and our brains by hiring other people to

help us do the jobs that we've gone and gathered up, right? So the foreman

becomes a really important part of that because the foreman is that bridge. It's

that person that keeps you in the office or keeps you out of the field while the

shop is still running. So I liked what he said there. The foreman's responsible for

four things: Production, quality, safety, keeping costs down.

Dominic Rubino: Just think about how much our world has changed just in the last little while.

Now those of you who live in California, Colorado, or parts of Canada, you know

that safety has recently come up again because of the new pot laws, new

marijuana laws, cannabis laws, and the questions we're getting from the guys

on the floor and how that's going to affect their work. In reality, it's the same as

any prescription drug or alcohol. You're not allowed to drink at lunch, so why

would you be allowed to smoke pot or take an edible? It's the same thing.

Safety has to be our first concern.

Dominic Rubino: But if the foreman's not on the floor watching what's going on, if he's not there,

or she, isn't there ... with a keen eye on what's going on, looking after

production, looking after safety, looking after quality, then eventually that's

going to bubble to the top, and it's going to affect things like rework, mistakes,

not catching mistakes. Because we make mistakes in the office, too, right?

Dominic Rubino: So I really liked this episode. I really, really liked it, and I hope you found a lot of

value in it. For those of you who have been listening to this for a while, do me a

favor and forward the episode off to somebody else. I mean, it's completely self

serving that I ask you that. I want more people like us to be listening to this

podcast. Because it's a shame that more people didn't hear from Ric today on

how the foreman works.

Dominic Rubino: Some of you listening to this might be thinking, "How do I talk to my foreman

about this?" Well, send this episode to your foreman and ask him or her to have

a listen to it, and you can talk about it at your next meeting with them and see

what ideas they have, how they felt about what Ric said, about some of my

questions, etc., but now it's a super easy way to have a safe conversation with

them that's completely respectful about two other guys having a conversation.

You're just observers, right? So we've given you a tool here, a way to open up

that convo with your shop foreman. And that's how you need to be looking at

this podcast. That's why I ask you forward the episode to other people you think

might be interested, maybe your business partner, maybe your financial

partner, maybe one of your suppliers or your vendors. Get people

understanding our industry, and our industry will do better and better all the

way along, and so will you.

Dominic Rubino: So, listen, I really appreciate you listening or watching the videos and the audios

that go along with this. We're putting a lot of work into it because I believe that

what we do is very important. You've heard me say this before: The kind of work

that we do out there is the last thing people see before they go to bed, and it's

the first thing they see when they wake up. We are with them and in their lives

the whole time. And we maybe just think about it from a production viewpoint.

"Oh, I made the cabinets," or, you know, "We're moving wood through." No.

We're going into people's homes. We're going into people's offices.

Dominic Rubino: And all of you out there do a really great thing. You're employing people in your

city and your town and your country. You're giving them jobs so their kids can

go and play sports and do music and go to school. All of those things are really

important. And it starts with you and your business.

Dominic Rubino: And so this podcast is here to feed your mind. So if you've got a chance, please

take a second and forward this episode off to somebody else. Now if you can't

do that, that's okay, but take a second and go to iTunes or Google Play or

something else and leave a review or just give it a thumbs up. Hey, if you think it

sucks, give it a thumbs down. Tell people. Let people know. But don't just sit

there silently because that's really not adding value to the community like I'm

trying to do here. So I'm just going to ask you to take one little action here

today, and that's do something, somewhere, to increase what our industry is

doing wherever you are in the world.

Dominic Rubino: All right. I hope you enjoyed Mr. Ric Ptak. Really great perspectives and insight

from him. I like the way he tells stories. He's calm. He's confident. He knows

what he's talking about. He's been there, he's done that, and I love to have

guests like that on the show. Everybody out there have a great day. I really

appreciate having you as a listener, and I look forward to meeting you one day

face to face or on the phone. Talk to you later.

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PART 3 OF 3 ENDS [00:54:26]