Building a Manufacturing Conglomerate Progress Thread

[machinistguy]

View attachment VID_20240122_150346~4.mp4

Video of our first fully automated cell making parts. It runs 8hours unattended making these handles, 48hrs if we got backup tools. Took months to get it up and running but its so worth it now. It's saving us so much on labor for these handles, and we already got a small job lined up for it with three big ones in the pipeline. Days like these I love being in business and give me a glimpse of where this company will be in in 10-20 years.

 

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[Spenny]

View attachment 53753

Video of our first fully automated cell making parts. It runs 8hours unattended making these handles, 48hrs if we got backup tools. Took months to get it up and running but its so worth it now. It's saving us so much on labor for these handles, and we already got a small job lined up for it with three big ones in the pipeline. Days like these I love being in business and give me a glimpse of where this company will be in in 10-20 years.

This is what you'd call a money printer. Well done!

 

[machinistguy]

Just got humbled a few hours ago!

I change my vision for the company on a monthly basis because my ego wants to be doing cooler stuff like aerospace or oil&gas parts, only to get an expensive reminder that going after boring industries that nobody will ever care about or hear about makes is the way to go, and that I should stick to the boring niche I'm already in and continue building my economies of scale.

Anyway, I thought I'd gotten big enough that I could start swinging my weight around and competing in the cooler markets, until I went to a trade convention for the general industry a few hours ago and holy smokes! There were so many companies doing the "cool" stuff and I couldn't figure out what their competitive advantage was that brought them their profits. Also, they were all orders of magnitude bigger than me. One guy said they were a small company; only 1,200 employees with over 100 machines! Lol I'm nowhere near that and would never want to compete with that.

Funny how my inability to separate my emotions from my decision making is one of the biggest problems my business has. Good thing I can't fire myself.

 

[Oso]

One guy said they were a small company; only 1,200 employees with over 100 machines!

Tf? Now I want a tour of what's considered the "large companies," lol.

Kudos on all of your success. Keep it up!

Cheers.

 

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[machinistguy]

We moved into a new space a couple weeks ago. New owners at our old place wanted to demise our old space. It took a few all nighters and weekends to get everything back up and running quickly. We moved to a bigger space that we can grow into.


Hired a new programmer (recent grad), a role I was doing. He was supposed to free up some of my time and help grow the business. We even took on a very time intensive project that he was supposed to handle. It was a complete disaster. He knew his stuff, but couldn't handle the stress and would spiral with expensive mistakes. I was also impatient with how fast I expected him to learn. Ended up firing him, but now I'm doing his job and it's sucking up too much of my time. I'm hoping to launch one more project before I can comfortably afford a more experienced programmer.

I've honestly been struggling with the mental aspect of business, partially health stuff I'm actively taking care of and partially because of a lack of purpose. I know it's affecting my business decision making but c'est la vie.

Oh and I'm planning to buy a robotic arm sometime next month to automate some of the manual labor (mostly packaging). I'll post a video, should be pretty cool!

 

[RightyTighty]

Damn, this post evoked some long-repressed PTSD. So often in a small business you feel like you’re knitting Jello and it seems like the only way forward progress can be made is by butting your head against it. The good news is you are obviously doing a lot of things right. Glad to hear you are addressing health issues. You are the one person who can’t be replaced.

As for your purpose, I’ll submit these goals for consideration: (1) Train an employee to the level that you could be absent for two weeks. Not that you‘ll ever stay away that long, but knowing you have that cushion will bring you lots of peace of mind. (2) Grow to the point you are large enough to hire that special unicorn - someone with good experience and that fire-breathing sense of agency that you have. Train them to the point that you are no longer needed on a daily basis. (3) Continue to grow to that point where you can sell the business for more money than you can hold in your scarred and greasy hands.

It looks to me like you are on the path.