How a Former Navy SEAL Bought a Wisconsin Machine Shop and Built It Around Upskilling
Manufacturing Happy Hour
Bill Berrien acquired Pindel Global Precision, a precision machining company in New Berlin, Wisconsin, in 2012. In this interview with host Chris, Berrien covers two things. The first is how he searched for, evaluated, and reshaped a manufacturing business. The second is why he thinks upskilling is the key to getting the most out of people in the industry. Throughout, he holds that a person's potential shouldn't be capped by their early education or first jobs, and that American manufacturers can compete through automation and skill rather than low cost.
A Two-Year Search Run Out of a Milwaukee Bar
The conversation opens with a question about where the two would talk over a drink. Berrien names Buckley's, a bar and restaurant on Cass Street just north of Northwestern Mutual in Milwaukee. He says it played a real role in his acquisition. During a dedicated two-year search that ended with Pindel, he estimates he met with about 150 people. Whenever he controlled where they ate, he chose Buckley's.
He says he has a bias toward restaurants where the owner is on the premises, and Buckley's goes further: owner Mike Buckley and his family live above it. His standard order, after 21 years in Wisconsin, is a brandy old fashioned. He also recommends the truffle-fried artichoke hearts and the Friday fish fry. The bar setting frames the rest of the interview, and the two close by planning a future fish fry there.
The Contrarian Belief: Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill
Chris asks what Berrien believes about upskilling that most of the industry sees differently. Berrien answers that society tends to limit a person's potential based on their education so far and their early roles in life. He sees upskilling as a way to release that potential. A person with a strong attitude can be given skills that take them in a direction their first 18 to 22 years of education might not have supported.
At Pindel, he says, this becomes an explicit philosophy: build a strong upskilling program so the company can "hire for attitude, train for skill." Much of the second half of the interview explains how that works in practice.
From the SEAL Teams to an Ambition to Own a Business
Chris notes that Berrien may be the first Navy SEAL on the show and asks how he would describe what SEALs do. Berrien describes special operations forces as highly vetted, highly trained people who are comfortable working in groups with advanced technology. They are also willing to apply that technology in unconventional ways to achieve outsized objectives. He stresses that selection is a meritocracy: nobody is predestined to make it through. He also describes a culture of "earning your Trident every day," the Trident being the insignia of a SEAL. Earning it once isn't enough to be set for life.
Asked how that experience carried into manufacturing, Berrien points to leadership. In the teams he came to love directing a group's efforts toward a common goal. His own style, he says, is to keep ego to a minimum and raise up individual team members. He expects more of them and gives them the tools to deliver it. That led to the idea that running a business, ideally one he had a large ownership stake in, would be a lot of fun.
He names two obstacles between that ambition and actually owning a company. The first is acquiring the skills to run a business well once the deal happens. The second is acquiring the capital to make the deal happen. He describes about a 20-year journey from his time in the SEAL teams, through industry roles, to the acquisition.
What "Outsized Expectations" Mean in Manufacturing
Chris picks up Berrien's phrase about outsized objectives and asks what it looks like in a factory. Berrien gives two answers.
- High revenue per employee. He wants to create a lot of value and output with the team the company has, and grow that in a scaled way.
- Broader impact beyond the plant. He wants to be involved in the community, the school system, the business community, and regional initiatives.
He calls manufacturing a terrific platform for both goals, especially because manufacturing is core to the region and its history. Chris sums this up as making an impact beyond the four walls of Pindel Global Precision, and Berrien agrees.
The Acquisition Criteria
Before his search, Berrien had been a Six Sigma Black Belt at GE, using data to drive continuous improvement in manufacturing and other processes. He saw that skill set as a natural fit for manufacturing, and it shaped a key criterion. He wanted a company with high unit volume, so that an improvement made on one unit could cascade across many units. He preferred making many similar, common parts over fewer, bigger, discrete products. He also limited his search to companies within about an hour's drive of Milwaukee and of a certain size.
What attracted him to Pindel starts with the customer base. He focused on quality of earnings. He asked how predictable and consistent the business would be under new management. He also asked how much of its value depended on the prior owner, and whether that value would continue once the owner stepped back. Beyond that he looked for repeatable processes, a strong team, and a path where he as the new owner could add value.
The Growth Thesis: Making Parts Complete
Chris asks what growth potential Berrien saw. Berrien explains that he came in during the company's 65th year; it celebrated its 75th anniversary the year before the interview. For those first 65 years, a core technology had been multi-spindle screw machines. He describes these as a World War II–era, cam-operated technology. Pindel's machines had been updated to 1980s and 1990s vintage but had no electronic controls. He says they can still produce sophisticated parts at high volume. With eight spindles, you cut the cycle time per part to roughly an eighth.
The founder and his son, Berrien says, had followed a philosophy of using the multi-spindles to "blank off" parts. Those blanks then went to less capable CNC or manual operations to add features the multi-spindles couldn't produce. That made many of these multi-operation parts. The first operation might be highly automated mechanically. After that came a lot of human handling and repeated setups, with the risk of quality problems cascading through batches.
His vision was to invest in technology that could make these parts complete in a single operation. Instead of having people repeatedly set up and run secondary operations, Pindel would train those same people to run more advanced equipment that produced finished parts. Each person could then create more value and, in turn, capture more of it.
Berrien frames this as an important shift in competitive strategy. Low-cost countries, he says, have traditionally used the same multi-operation approach, throwing large numbers of low-cost workers at the work, and "were eating our lunch for a while." He argues that advances in automation and CNC technology now let American workers create far more value at "really great American wages." In his view this isn't a low-cost play but a high-automation play, one he hopes will capture a growing share of the world's manufacturing output. Chris restates the idea: automate the less automated downstream steps, train people, and become more competitive on complex parts. Berrien confirms it.
Extending Automation Along the Digital Thread
Asked what else he saw that could change, Berrien says the same thinking applies to everything around the machining itself. That includes how parts are quoted, how CNCs and multi-spindles are programmed, and how quality documents and PPAPs are prepared. The opportunity, he says, is to use technology to help existing staff get more parts into the machines faster, to "cinch that digital thread" running through manufacturing. His example: a programmer who once took a certain amount of time to program a machine might, with newer technology, do it in a tenth of the time. That lets them do roughly ten times the work in the same period.
A Seller Who Stayed On
Chris asks what Berrien found once he was on the shop floor that he hadn't seen before the purchase. Berrien first credits the seller, Mark Pindel. In most deals, he says, the seller loses interest once the money hits the bank account, even with a transition agreement. Mark Pindel instead stayed on full-time for two years and part-time for another three. Berrien describes him as selflessly interested in Berrien's success, the business, and the employees, which he calls really unusual.
Chris asks whether Berrien sensed this before buying. Berrien says the two were introduced exactly one year before the deal closed. Talks moved quickly at first. Then a family medical issue came up, and Berrien shelved the acquisition for four or five months. He stayed in touch with Mark Pindel throughout, and during that time he came to see a person who cared about the business succeeding. After the deal, Mark Pindel helped him think through the changes he was considering. That included challenges the former owner may have lived with for 30 years that Berrien approached differently.
An Inherited Customer Mix, and Learning to Say No
Berrien says "evolution explains everything" about what he found. Mark Pindel had personally handled all sales and quoting and much of customer service, with no team supporting him. In that situation, Berrien argues, an owner doesn't have the time or latitude to seek out only the best-fit parts and customers, or to say no. The natural bias is toward a smaller set of customers and a larger share of their machining work, whether or not that work suits the company's technology. Berrien adds a competitive reason. Declining any RFQ could let a competitor win even a poor-fit part, build a relationship with the customer, and come up the "soft underbelly" as a threat.
The result, as Berrien describes it, was fewer customers with Pindel handling a very large share of their machining spend. Some of those parts weren't a good fit for Pindel's machines. They tied up people and processes and, he says, were frankly a hindrance to growth.
He calls a key "aha moment" the question of "what do you want to be when you grow up." Through strategy discussions over several years, the company settled on its niche based on its equipment, people, and systems: complex parts at medium volume. Complexity means demanding materials, tolerances, and features; if a part is too simple, Pindel doesn't want it. Medium volume now has specific definitions:
- CNC machines: ideally 1,000 to 200,000 pieces.
- Multi-spindle machines: 100,000 to 3 million pieces.
Pindel is willing to say it doesn't do low volume well, such as prototypes and 100- or 200-piece runs. It also doesn't do high-volume automotive work. Operations at either extreme, Berrien says, are built with equipment, processes, and people to serve those markets, and Pindel didn't want to contort itself to compete there. The company had little high-volume automotive work. But a couple of years after the acquisition, its portfolio held a lot of low-volume, low-value-added, simple parts.
Over time, he says, the company "developed the courage" to tell customers that those parts weren't a fit and that other shops were better configured for them. It separated itself from that work by being honest with customers or by raising prices. Berrien calls this a very valuable decision point. Once the focus was clear, the company could "put all your chips on the table" in that direction. This streamlined operations and clarified what people should be trained to do and what equipment to buy.
Planning for What You Don't Expect
Chris sums up the acquisition advice so far: the seller's integrity and willingness to stay, what the company does well, and where a buyer can make an impact. He asks what else prospective buyers should consider. Berrien says that even with the best model, a buyer needs a plan, or at least the capacity, to handle the unexpected.
His example: around 2016, four years after he bought Pindel, the bottom fell out of the oil market. He hadn't realized how much the company was exposed to high oil prices. Pindel didn't sell directly into energy, but the downturn still had a really challenging impact on the business.
He also says he often tells people that in year 11 the company is where his plan had it in year five or six, so managing expectations matters. He acquired the company without partners, which he calls a blessing for control. He acknowledges partners have pros and cons, including having others to weigh in. As a result he has had to find ways to "virtually recreate that dynamic."
An Upskilling System Modeled on the NCO Corps
Turning to upskilling, Berrien draws on almost nine years in the military. He came to see the U.S. military's non-commissioned officer corps as one of its most important strengths. These are the petty officers, chiefs, and sergeants who lead troops directly. He contrasts that with countries that lack a strong NCO corps and mentions Russia's challenges. Pindel, he says, has taken pages from the military's playbook for training NCOs.
The company has several tracks with multiple levels of development:
- six levels for machinists,
- four levels for quality,
- four levels for industrial maintenance.
Each level combines online classes through Tooling U (Pindel has an unlimited subscription), shop-floor qualifications, and NIMS credentials, which he describes as a nationally recognized credentialing system.
Behind this is Berrien's belief that everyone wants a profession, and that professions shouldn't be limited to lawyers, doctors, and accountants. A profession should be enduring, transferable, valuable, and lucrative. An accountant who moves to another firm or state doesn't lose their value, and he wants advanced manufacturing workers to have the same. The program is built so that employees' skills aren't specific to Pindel, and the recognition they earn follows them if they leave.
In a tight labor market, he says, this lets Pindel hire for attitude and train for skill. The company always has a "We're hiring" sign out, and hires experienced people when it can find them. That is hard these days, so Pindel looks for people with the right attitude, both current employees who show capacity to do more and new hires. Sometimes, he says, talent identifies itself. The company then provides training in-house, through vendors, or through "creatively structured" outside programs. Berrien reports that people who move into these roles, from outside jobs or from other roles inside Pindel, have seen wage gains of anywhere from 20% to more than 80%.
From the Janitorial Team to CNC Equipment
Chris recalls a story Berrien told over lunch before the interview. Berrien confirms it. A member of an outside janitorial service team caught the attention of Pindel's in-house staff with their hustle. The team suggested bringing that person on board, and the person now works on CNC equipment. Berrien says it has worked out very well. Once someone embraces the technology, lets the business invest in them, and invests in themselves, he argues there's no limit to where it can lead, because "the market rewards the skill level."
A Regional Model: Clearinghouse and Coordination Center
Asked about the future of upskilling in the industry, Berrien starts from the fact that many training opportunities already exist. A CNC Swiss-type machine OEM might offer courses, or a group might offer software training. His first proposal is for regional upskilling efforts to act as a clearinghouse. That would give companies and individuals visibility into what already exists and point them to it, for example by listing ten courses relevant to a machinist curriculum and where they're offered.
Where training doesn't exist, he proposes what he calls a coordination center. Industry would identify the skills it needs and arrange for them to be taught. That might mean working with a technical college on a repeatable program of shorter, modular courses scheduled around industry-friendly hours. His example: employees attend about four hours a day, three or four days a week, then return to work and add value. Modules might run about eight weeks each, followed by module two and module three.
He contrasts this with how technical colleges often operate. In his view, they focus on filling seats with full-time students. Those students often rely on FAFSA and student loans, pay up front, and hope a job is waiting at the end, and class schedules make it hard to work while studying. Berrien believes the model of the future is industry-directed and industry-paid. He sees room for a public contribution toward part of the cost. His reasoning is that each additional skilled person adds to the "industrial commons," which benefits more than one company. He also wants the training to be certificate-based and stackable.
Chris notes that certificates have been a recurring theme on the podcast. He ties them back to Berrien's point about professions: credentials tell an employer what they're getting when someone moves from one company to another.
RPA Interns and a "Chief AI Officer"
For Pindel's own next steps, Berrien says the company will keep investing in technology and training people to use it fully. His message to the team is "more value created, more value captured." When the company helps people create more value, that should come back to them as wages, bonuses, and other opportunities. He says Pindel is focusing more and more on the digital thread.
His example is interns who taught themselves robotic process automation (RPA), which automates software processes; Pindel uses UiPath. Many reports are refreshed daily from the company's SQL database, pushed into Excel files, stored, and distributed by email. That used to take the earliest-arriving staff about an hour and a half to two hours each morning. The interns learned the software and automated the process, so it now runs at 3 a.m. The morning team, he says, is incredibly thankful to skip the low-value work and get straight to using the data to make decisions and communicate.
Chris asks how other leaders can get more from interns. Berrien says it's up to the employer to set "meaty goals" rather than have interns file paper. He advises expecting a lot, expecting critical thinking, staying open to their input because they see the world through fresh eyes, and giving them room to learn.
He adds that ChatGPT has opened another frontier. The previous summer, an intern (whose name appears in the transcript as Leis Strobel) did RPA work and was also given the title Chief AI Officer. The mandate was to follow the technology, report back, and look for places it could fit at Pindel. Berrien mentions that Pindel uses a meeting tool, whose name he couldn't recall, that joins meetings, transcribes the conversation, and distills takeaways and follow-up items. Chris says it's the second time that week the tool has come up.
Berrien also describes using ChatGPT for professional development. When Pindel gets a new micrometer, someone can type in the model name and ask for a learning plan with practical examples. About 15 seconds later, he says, the result is roughly two pages covering the device's key features plus five to ten exercises a trainee can complete to show they know how to use it. He sees a lot of potential there.
Trade Associations and Work Still in Progress
Given an open floor at the end, Berrien encourages manufacturers to join industry groups. He credits his membership in the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA) with a lot of wins and insights. He values that such groups share ideas even though their members are competitors. He expects them to play a growing role in defining learning pathways for the industry.
His reasoning comes from GE. When he was there, GE was then the biggest company in the world and had the resources to upskill its own people, with Crotonville, courses, and DVDs. For a small or medium-sized manufacturer, Berrien says, upskilling is incredibly expensive. Pindel makes the effort, but he doesn't expect every company to build its own program, find the resources, and choose the tools. Trade associations and employer groups, he argues, can gain economies of scale by working out in advance which skill sets and resources are needed.
Berrien is working on an initiative with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), within its workforce development area. The goal is to explore how to add structure to upskilling on a regional basis, including mapping training pathways and available resources. The initiative is still in progress. Berrien and Chris agree to save the update for a January or February fish fry over old fashioneds at Buckley's, perhaps with others joining the conversation.
Bill, we're here at Pindel's headquarters today out here in New Berlin, Wisconsin, but if we were having this conversation over a beverage somewhere in the greater Milwaukee area, where would that be? Tell us about this spot.
So Chris, manufacturing happy hour, my favorite spot for a happy hour is Buckley's Bar and Restaurant on Cass Street, just north of Northwestern Mutual. Been there since about 2007, and it actually played a key role in my acquisition hunt.
Really? It did. So I was on a two-year dedicated search that ultimately led to Pindel, and I probably met with, I don't know, 150 people during the search. If I controlled the meal, we would meet at Buckley's. So I got to know the whole team. I love the culture. I have a personal bias for restaurants that have been owner on the premises, and Buckley's takes it to the next level: it's actually owner in residence. So Mike Buckley and his family live just above the restaurant. So awesome, highly recommend. The bar and the server crew are excellent.
What is the go-to drink or the go-to dish there, if you had to pick?
Yeah, so, being living in Wisconsin for 21 years, wherever I go I go with the brandy old fashioned. They make an excellent one across the spectrum: sweet, sour, and pressed. Love that, as well as the really innovative cocktail selection. Another, the blanket, I'm a big fan of. And then they've got this great, great appetizer, truffle fried artichokes, artichoke hearts, and then on Friday the fish fry. So really, yep, great, great spot.
I love a good fish fry, sucker for a good fish fry. Obviously you've got to have a brandy old fashioned at the beginning of your fish fry to make it proper. So well, let's say that's the setting then: we're at Buckley's having a fish fry, got a brandy old fashioned. So this is a question a lot of investors ask companies that they're looking to invest in, right, but this is also I think a very good bar type of question as well over beverages. So what is something you believe about upskilling that almost everyone else in the industry might see differently?
You know, Chris, I think there's a bias in society for determining or limiting someone's potential based on their education to date and maybe their early roles in life. And I think one of the real opportunities for upskilling is to release that potential, to be able to apply to someone that has great attitude a skill set that moves them in a direction that perhaps their initial education in the first 18, 22 years of life might not have supported. So yeah, we here very much have a philosophy, based on having a strong upskilling program, of hire for attitude, train for skill.
And I know you have, let's say, some progressive takes on upskilling, things you're doing, things you're implementing here. We're going to get to those a little later in the interview, but first I want to get to know your background a little bit, because you're not the first person I've had on this show with a Navy background. In fact, I know you know some of them, like Jason T Ray, for example.
Fan of Jason, yeah.
I'm trying to think, you might be the first Navy SEAL that's been on the show. So again, let's go back to Buckley's. How do you describe what a Navy SEAL does, or what differentiates a Navy SEAL, when you're having a beverage with someone? I think a lot of people have an idea, but let's have that bar conversation.
Yeah, so I mean the Navy SEAL, as is across the nation's Special Operations Forces, is a highly vetted, highly trained individual that is very comfortable working in groups with advanced technology, but willing to apply it in unconventional ways to achieve sort of outsized objectives. I think the vetting is pretty classic; you've seen that on the Discovery Channel at all? And no, and you certainly appreciate that it's very much a meritocracy, so no one's sort of predestined going in to get through it, and there's a nice opportunity in that.
But it is very focused on achieving high expectations and sort of accomplishing the mission, again perhaps in unconventional ways. But yeah, and it's a culture, it's a culture of earning your Trident every day, we say, which is, the Trident is sort of the official signifier of being a SEAL, and it's not just earn it and you're good to go forever. No, it's a culture of earning it every day.
And I always think of, at least one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Navy SEALs and Navy SEAL training is being able to make decisions under, let's say, a plethora of unfavorable conditions, whether it's sleep deprivation, whether it's the pressure of the immediate spot and having to pull it off with your teammates. Those are some of the things that at least come to mind for myself as an individual without a military background. So first of all, thank you for your service and everything you've done. I have to ask then, how did your Navy SEAL experience, training, all of that, lend itself to your career in manufacturing then?
You know, well, I'd say going back to my time in the teams, I really embraced and loved the leadership side of life, both channeling a group's efforts towards a common goal, but also my personal leadership style is one of trying to keep ego to a minimum, and as part of that, showcasing and trying to elevate the individual members of the team, expecting more of them but giving them the tools to accomplish more. So those factors, it's always struck me that it would be a lot of fun to be running a business, and then ideally be running a business that you have a pretty high ownership share in. And so that was the journey back then.
And then the two challenges when you have that ambition to acquire a company are number one, acquiring the skills to be able to do it well when it eventually happens, and then number two is acquiring the capital to be able to make it happen. So you can't just jump from simply having that ambition to the end state. It was sort of a 20-year journey between actual SEAL Team time and then industry time after that, probably about a 20-year journey.
And I want to ask you about the acquisition of this company here in a bit, but first I have to ask you a question that came up based on the way you described being a SEAL, is that you're on a team that's expected to achieve outsized expectations. What does achieving outsized expectations look like in manufacturing?
Number one, it is expecting a high revenue dollar per employee, so trying to create a lot of value, a lot of output for the team that you have, and trying to grow that in that sort of scaled fashion. And I think trying to have a broader impact on your ecosystem, on your community, on your school system, but then also on the business community and being involved there, as well as being involved in the region's initiatives of various types. So I think manufacturing is a terrific platform for those ambitions, and nicely, manufacturing is core to this region and its history.
So it's about getting out and making an impact beyond the four walls of Pindel Global Precision for you.
For me it is, yes.
Yes, and I'm interested to talk about this company because you mentioned you acquired it. This was back in 2012, so you've had it for a little over a decade now. What did you see in the business that got the wheels turning to say, hey, this is a business that I want to acquire and take the next step in my career here?
Great, well, so great question, Chris. When I went on the acquisition hunt, I had a few criteria. Prior to going on the hunt, I had been a Six Sigma Black Belt at GE, which was about how do you use data to apply continuous improvement to manufacturing processes and other processes, and that Six Sigma was a great skill set lending itself towards manufacturing. So one of my key criteria was not only did I want to acquire a manufacturing company, but I wanted to acquire one that had higher unit volume, so that improvements made on one of those units could get cascaded across a much higher volume.
As opposed to making...
Interesting.
...fewer, bigger discrete things, I wanted to make many more common, unit-similar things. And so I was only looking in the Milwaukee area, within an hour drive, and certain size and dynamics. But what I really liked about Pindel was number one, the customer base. I think that's critical: what are the quality of earnings, what is the predictability and consistency of that acquisition going to be under new management, how much value was being contributed by the prior owner, and when that owner stops working as actively in the company, will that value continue? So quality of earnings, repeatable processes, great team, and a little bit of a path where I as the new owner can add some value.
Yeah, that last one I'm interested to understand a bit more about, because I think getting a feel for the financials, the customers, how the business is cash flowing, all that makes sense. I mean, it's business, right? You can get a lot of that from the financial statements. Where I'm always interested, when someone's talking about buying a company, is how do you look at the market and how do you look at what that company is doing to say, if I ran this company we could start doing X, Y, and Z, or maybe we just start doing X really, really, really well, and that either opens up a new market or increases our margin. There are a lot of different ways you could go about it. So tell me what you saw as the potential for growth.
Great, so great question. When I came in, I came in year 65 of the company. We just last year celebrated our 75th anniversary. So for the first 65 years, one of the main technologies of the company had been multi-spindle screw machines. So World War II-invented technology, cam-operated machines. Everything we had had been updated to vintage '80s and '90s, but there weren't electronic controls on it. But you could get an amazing amount of sophisticated parts at volume. When you have an eight spindle, you're basically cutting to an eighth the cycle time it takes to make a part.
But for the first 65 years, the founder and his son had a philosophy of let's blank off parts in the multi-spindle and let's bring them over to then lower-capable CNC operations or manual operations to add additional features that couldn't be done just by the design on the multi-spindles. So in essence you're talking about multi-operation parts, and after the first operation, which might be pretty mechanically automated, after that there's a lot of human touching, setups, potential for quality issues cascading through the batches.
Okay.
All of that. And so my vision was, let's take this grand business of multi-operational, multi-op parts, and let's invest in the technology to do these parts complete. And instead of having the team members resetting up and running those multiple operations, let's train those team members to run otherwise more advanced technology that is making those parts complete, and allowing each person to in essence create more value and in turn capture more value.
Yeah, so it's sort of, I think, an important transformation there, because low-cost countries have traditionally followed that same approach of multi-operation, let's just throw people at it, and they're throwing low-cost people at it, and they were eating our lunch for a while. But with the advances in automation technology, CNCs, all of that, there's actually the awesome opportunity for Americans to be creating a tremendous amount more value at really great American wages. So it's not a low-cost play, it's actually a high-automation play, that we're just going to capture hopefully an increasing share of the manufacturing output of the world.
So if I heard you right, you saw that the first part of the manufacturing process was automated, but then when you got into the next steps, that's where there was more human intervention. It wasn't as automated, potential for quality control issues, all of the things that come with that. And you're like, I can start automating this, training people, and we can start being more competitive on, let's say, some of these more complex parts. Was that all right?
Exactly.
It's a great story. I mean, that makes perfect sense as to where you can look at a company and say, hey, this is what they're doing really well today, this is what I can bring to the table. You know, my next question was kind of in that same vein: what did you see was working well, and then what did you see that could be changed? Would that be your same answer for that, or are there other elements where you have a different answer in this regard?
Well, you know, now we talk about the opportunity of the automation in the actual machining of the parts, so we're going to go from multiple operations to a single operation. But I think the same thought process applies to the whole process surrounding the actual making of the parts: how you quote the parts, how you program the parts for the CNCs or for the multi-spindles, how you program your quality and your quality documents and your PPAPs and all of that, all the way to how you're programming the machines.
And so the very quick answer would be the opportunity not just in the automation of the manufacture of the parts, but how do you leverage technology to use the people you have to accelerate the volume of parts that you can get into the machines, to sort of cinch that digital thread that's running through manufacturing. And instead of a person, where with older technology they could program a machine in X amount of time, with newer technology they could program it in a tenth of the time, and that allows them to do sort of 10 times the work in the same amount of time.
I'm glad you brought up your people. I'm going to ask you about your folks here in just a second. A couple more questions on the acquisition side. One thing that I'm curious about is, you can get a lay of the land of a company you're purchasing pre-purchase, right? But I'm sure once you're in here for three months, six months, whatever it is, you start noticing other things that you probably didn't see on the front end, and that's just the nature of any type of purchase. So what did you look for in the beginning, and then what did you start seeing once you were out on the shop floor a bit more? I'm curious how this story started a bit.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Number one, I need to give credit to the seller of the business, Mark Pindel, who, you know, in most instances when a seller sells the business, as soon as the money hits the bank account they sort of lose interest, even if you have a transition agreement, things like that. But Mark actually stayed on board full-time for two years and then another three years part-time, and had a real selfless interest in both my success and the business's
success, you know, and the employees and all, which was really unusual. Did you get the vibe he was going to be that type of person when you were looking at buying the company? I've got to think that factored into a decision as well.
It did. Quite honestly, we were introduced a year to the day before I acquired, and when I was introduced, started to proceed pretty quickly with acquisition discussions, but then I had a family medical issue that came up that I'd prioritize higher, so I put the acquisition on the shelf for about four or five months. And then when that issue successfully resolved, was able to take it off the shelf, but all that time keeping in touch with Mark and really got, to your point, that sense of a selfless individual interested in the success of the business, and it was going to work out well in that regard.
And he was valuable in helping me think through changes that I was considering and the challenges that you see that he might have been living with for 30 years, but you see sort of a different way to go about things. To your question about what did I see initially, but then also what did I see a little bit further into the acquisition:
Interestingly, they say evolution explains everything. Well, when Mark was running the business, the individual who sold it to me, he was sole sales, sole quoting, and a lot of customer service, as in he didn't have a team helping him with those activities. And in that environment, he's not going to go off and have the time and the latitude to only find the best parts and the best customers and be able to say no. Spread a little thin is what I'm hearing. Going to be spread thin, and the bias is going to be to have a smaller set of customers and to do a larger share of their machining needs, whether they were a fit for the technology and the capabilities of the company, Pindel, or not.
And what you end up with there is a dynamic where every RFQ that the customer puts out, I think there's a bias towards being awarded that part, whether or not, because otherwise it's for some competitor to come in, perhaps get a lousy part, but get that relationship with the customer, come up the soft underbelly. I hear you, threat. And so that's what we came into: fewer customers but a really big share of their machining spend, regardless of whether it was, in some cases, parts that just weren't a good fit for our machines and would tie up people, they tie up processes, and they are frankly a hindrance to growth.
So one of the big aha moments along the way was the realization of what do you want to be when you grow up. And we had strategy discussions over a number of years, and we focused on our niche, based on the equipment, based on the people, based on the systems: complex parts at medium volume. So complexity, it's got to have materials, tolerances, features. If it's too simple, we don't want to do it. Medium volume, we now say over on the CNCs our ideal volumes are between 1,000 pieces and 200,000 pieces; on the multi-spindle it's 100,000 to 3 million.
And we just are willing to say we do not do low volume well, prototypes, 100-piece runs, 200-piece runs, but we also don't do automotive high well. At either end of that spectrum, those are operations where the equipment, the processes, the people are all geared to serving those markets well, and we did not want to contort ourselves to serve those markets well. And while we didn't have automotive high, when you look through the portfolio a couple years into the acquisition, we had a lot of low volume, we had a lot of low value-add, simple parts, things like that.
And we developed the courage over time to say, we're sorry, Mr. Customer, those aren't a fit. There are shops that are better configured to do that for you. And we would separate ourselves from those parts, either just being honest with the customer, raising the price, elements like that. And I think that was really a super valuable decision point for the company, because once you figure out what you're going to focus on, that allows you to put all your chips on the table in that direction. And it's done wonders for sort of streamlining the operations, a lot of clarity around what we're going to be training people to do, what kind of equipment we want to buy and train people to handle.
So you got to be more discerning about the work you took on. You got to pick the work that was ultimately best for your company, best for your customers, and say no to the things that quite frankly wasn't really a good fit for either of you at that point.
So if I were to summarize this whole part of the conversation around if someone's looking to buy a manufacturing business out there, I don't know how many of our audience members might be thinking about this, but I heard you talk about the integrity of the previous ownership, them sticking around. You talked about looking at the company, seeing what they do well, and also seeing where you think you can make an impact. Yep. Is there anything else that people need to be looking at if they're considering buying their own manufacturing business?
Yeah, I think you can have the best model you can have, feel like you have it all wired and it's ready for prime time, but you got to have a plan, or at least a capacity to accommodate situations you don't expect. I acquired in 2012; I think in 2016 the bottom fell out of the oil market. Yeah. And I didn't realize that we had as much concentration in higher oil prices in the energy market as we did. We didn't sell directly into the energy market, but somehow that had a really challenging impact on the company. So long story short, you got to have some capacity to accommodate unforeseen circumstances, the plan not working out.
I often say we are now at year 11 where my plan had us at year five or six, and you need to manage expectations. Fortunately, I was able to acquire the company without partners, so that's been a blessing in the sense of control, but I've had to, you know, the benefit of partners... There's pros and cons to it. That's right. Other thoughts, others to weigh in. So you figure out how to virtually recreate that dynamic.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you taking us through the whole acquisition experience. Super helpful. We're going to switch gears to the other side of this conversation, which is upskilling. We talked a little bit about that at the start, but maybe let's set some baseline. What does upskilling look like today at Pindel, for example?
Great. So, having spent almost nine years in the military, I realized that one of the most important aspects of the US military that made it so powerful was its non-commissioned officer corps, which is that level of senior enlisted leadership, petty officers, chiefs, sergeants, that are leading the troops. And you see it in countries that don't have an NCO corps, Russia, all the challenges there. The US does. And we've taken pages out of the US military's playbook for training NCOs, where we have multiple layers of development: six levels of machinist, four levels of quality, four levels of industrial maintenance. Into each level we weave online classes through Tooling U. We've got an unlimited subscription to Tooling U. We have shop floor qualifications, we have NIMS credentialing, a nationally recognized credential system.
And it's all part of our belief that everyone is looking for a profession, that a profession shouldn't be just lawyers, doctors, and accountants. A profession should be enduring, it should be transferable, and it should be valuable, lucrative. And just like an accountant that moves from Milwaukee to another firm, or Milwaukee to another state, they shouldn't lose their value, and similarly our advanced manufacturing professionals should have the same opportunity. So we created this program so that their skills and their value isn't solely specific to Pindel, that if they go to another company, they go to another state, what they have learned here is captured in sort of a professional recognition, and that value follows them. So you've got those elements of it.
And what that training and upskilling program has really allowed us to do is to hire for attitude, train for skill. It's always great to have the "We're hiring" sign out front, always got it there, and if you can find someone who's experienced in the areas you need, awesome, hire them. This day and age, that's challenging. And so we are really looking for those with the right attitude who are already on the team and demonstrate capacity to do more, or those that might be able to join the team and do more. And so we've got this really fun record of identifying talent, and sometimes the talent self-identifies itself, giving that talent opportunity, training both in-house or with vendors or with creatively structured upskilling programs outside, to bring the skill level up so those individuals can create more value. And in some cases they're seeing, from prior jobs coming in or from in-house jobs moving over, anywhere from like 20 to 80% plus gains in wage structure.
Well, when we were having lunch before this conversation, you shared a story about how there was a woman on the janitorial staff here that I think you said your team members identified and said, hey, this person could be great for the team, and now she's also upskilled and she's, I think you said, on the CNC equipment right now. I mean, perfect example of hire for attitude and then train the skills afterwards as well.
That's right. That's right. Outside janitorial service team, our in-house team saw her hustle and said, how about we bring her on board? And that's worked out really well, because once you're on that path of embracing this technology and allowing the business to invest in you and you in turn to invest in yourself, it's really limitless where it can lead in this day and age, because you're not restricted. The market rewards the skill level.
Yeah. Well, let's say we're having our second old-fashioned at this point. Let's say maybe one of us has switched to a Spotted Cow, I don't know, whatever the Wisconsin beverage is. Let's hear what the future of upskilling looks like according to Bill. These are your perspectives. Feel free to talk about the things you're doing here or where you think the industry needs to take some next steps as a whole.
Yep, yep. So I think the key aspect of upskilling is that there already exist out there in the market a lot of different opportunities for an individual to acquire more skill. It might be a CNC Swiss OEM that offers training courses, it might be some group that offers software courses, a spree training, things like that. And so, number one, as part of any sort of, let's say, regional upskilling program, I think there's an opportunity to serve almost as a clearing house, saying, okay, how do we give transparency to companies and individuals of what already exists out there, and point them to those courses, saying this would be valuable in a machinist curriculum, machinist upskilling: here are 10 different courses being offered, here's where they're offered, all of that.
The other aspect of it is you've got the clearing house, but then where it doesn't exist, I call it sort of the coordination center concept of let's have industry figure out what are those skills, and let's have this group sort of identify where can you coordinate those skills to be offered. Maybe it's working with a technical college on a special program that would be repeatable, and various shorter modular levels that are offered around industry-friendly hours, so companies can send the individuals to get that training, say four hours a day, then they come back, they add value. Maybe that's three or four days a week, and maybe that's like an eight-week-long module, and then there's module two and module three.
The challenge is a lot of the technical colleges are focused on filling seats with full-time students, and often FAFSA, student loan documentation, asking them to pay ahead of time, hoping the job's on the other end, but based on the school hours not really able to work while they're going to school. I think the model of the future is industry-directed, industry-paid-for. I do think there's an element of a public contribution of a portion of that cost, maybe an offsetting, because the reality is every one more skilled person out there in society is an addition to the industrial commons, a benefit to the industrial commons beyond that one company, and where there's a public benefit, I think there's an opportunity for a public contribution. So I could see models there, but really, unlike in a lot of other areas, I think it does need to be industry-driven, industry-paid-for, caveat for a public contribution towards that, facilitated or offered around industry-friendly hours, and having sort of a certificate-based, stackable aspect to it.
The certificates has been a big theme on the podcast lately. A lot of people bring that up, that that's the way we know when someone goes from company X to company Y that they know what they're getting. Similar, back to your profession comment, right? Lawyers, doctors, you pretty much know what you're getting with those individuals because they're so credentialed. So love that answer. I feel like a very appropriate answer for someone that's been running his own manufacturing company for over a decade as well. I feel like you checked a lot of very pragmatic boxes there. So what does upskilling look like next then, as things evolve at a company like Pindel in this case?
We're going to continue that journey of investing in the technology, training the team to leverage it to the greatest extent possible, so that, our adage here to the team is more value created, more value captured. So if you allow us, the company, to augment the value you can create by training you to handle it to the fullest extent, all of that is going to lead to more value captured, in the form of wages, bonuses, all of those opportunities. So we're continuing that path, and we are increasingly focusing on that digital thread that runs through manufacturing.
Interesting, we have had over the past couple of years interns coming in who have taught themselves this new technology called robotic process automation, so RPA. UiPath is the software we use, but basically what that does is it automates software processes. So as an example for you, we've got a lot of reports that get refreshed daily out of our SQL database, piped into Excel files, stored, distributed by email. All of that used to
take our earliest arriving individuals each morning probably an hour and a half, two hours to run all those reports, now, you know, refreshing them, storing them, all of that. These interns came in, learned this software, applied the software. It automates those processes; all that happens at 3 in the morning. And you know, the team that gets here early in the morning is incredibly thankful they don't have to do this low-value work of refreshing reports and all that. They just get right at, you know, starting to use the data and make decisions and communicate and all of that. So, you know, an example for you of how to sort of think differently around some of the tools out there and the skills that need to go with those tools.
What advice do you have for the manufacturing leaders out there about getting more out of the interns that they hire at their company? Because that's one other takeaway I got from that statement. So what is the way that someone that has interns on their team can make sure they're there to make meaningful contributions?
Yep. Well, I think it's incumbent on the employer to set meaty goals. Yeah, like don't have it be, you know, okay, intern, not a whole lot of training in the world, you know, we're going to have to file paper or, you know, do something low level. You know, I say expect a lot: critical thinking skills. Be open to their input.
They got a fresh education; like, they're seeing the world through new eyes right now.
Totally, totally. You know, and you as the employer give them the latitude to learn. I think, you know, we always see the past year with ChatGPT and OpenAI, you know, that's a whole other frontier. You know, last summer we had an intern, Leis Strobel. In addition to the RPA work he was doing, you know, we gave him the title of Chief AI Officer.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, which is basically a mandate and an ask that he follow this technology, report back to us on it, but also try to see where that could fit into our ecosystem. So you know, we use a software, the name escapes me right now, where during meetings you have this software invited to the meeting, it will capture the conversation, transcribe the conversation and distill the takeaways and the follow-up items.
This is the second time in one week I've had a conversation about this. The first one wasn't recorded, so we'll count this one. People are raving about that solution right now. I need to try to find a link in the show notes for whenever I do the outro for this, but totally, great tool.
Yeah, I mean, and you think about our professional development program. We get a new micrometer, and we want to, okay, what's the learning objectives? How do we break down the training on this new micrometer? It's amazing when you type that micrometer name into ChatGPT and you say, please give me a learning plan as well as practical examples on how to handle this new micrometer. Boom, two pages later, you know, 15 seconds later, you have a training plan on: here are the key facets of that device, and here are, you know, 5, 10 exercises to have the new student complete, prove they know it. So I think there's a lot of potential there.
Yeah, I didn't expect to go this direction with today's conversation, but I'm glad we did, because it's always good to learn a few surprises. From here, you know, as we get to the end of our conversation, is there anything you wish we would have talked about more that we haven't yet? You know, I know you talked a little bit about the digital thread there, or just any other advice for the manufacturing leaders out there that you want to leave them with. This is totally your choice.
I mean, you know, yeah, I love the open end. I've benefited from being a member of PMPA, so Precision Machine Products Association, and I think there are, you know, similar organizations out there, and I would highly encourage manufacturers to be part of those types of organizations that are collaborative. Despite being competitors, they are collaborative, they're idea sharing. I've had a ton of wins and insights that come from those.
You know, and in turn, I think it is those types of organizations that are going to have an increasing role in sort of helping determine what is the learning pathway. Because the reality is upskilling, you know, when I was at GE, you know, at the time the biggest company in the world, it had all of the resources needed to invest in its own upskilling of its own people. It had Crotonville, it had courses, it had DVDs, all of that. But the reality for a small to medium-sized manufacturer is it's incredibly expensive to upskill. You know, we're making that effort, but I can't expect everyone else to, you know, be creating their own training program, identifying the resources, what are the tools, all of that.
And I think that these industry trade associations and groupings of employers can, you know, realize some economies of scale, like figuring out ahead of time, okay, what are the skill sets, what are the resources, what are we going to do there. And this is, you know, interesting: I'm working on an initiative with Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, MMAC. It's in their sort of workforce development area, of how do we try to maybe put some structure to upskilling on a regional basis, and, you know, ways to sort of figure out what are the different training pathways, what are the resources available, some things like that. So, you know, we'll save that update for a January, February fish fry with old fashioneds at Buckley's.
I like that. Maybe we'll pull a few others into our conversation too. That sounds like fun. I like when we leave an episode with a commitment for a fish fry and an old fashioned, so I look forward to continuing the conversation at Buckley's at some point. And in the meantime, Bill, I just want to thank you for taking the time to jump on the show today.
Awesome, thank you for asking. It's really been a pleasure, been a lot of fun. Cheers.
Article published