Patrick Adams  00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. My guest today is Tom Pissarro. Tom is the president and co founder of innovative power products, which is located in Long Island, New York beautiful area, I have to say, by the way, he has been an entrepreneur for over 35 years in the RF and microwave industry. Tom and his team embarked on their Lean journey about two years ago. So I’m super excited just to kind of hear from Tom, a little bit about their journey, some of the some of the challenges, maybe some of the seller some of the opportunities to celebrate. So Tom, welcome to the show.

 

Tom Passaro  01:06

Thank you, Patrick. I really appreciate you inviting us.

 

Patrick Adams  01:09

Absolutely. I’m excited to hear a little bit more about what you guys are doing innovative power products. And for those that are listening in that have no idea what the RF and microwave industry is. Or maybe I’ve never heard of innovative power products, can you tell us just maybe a little bit about your company?

 

01:27

Sure. Innovative power products, we design and manufacture couplers resistors termination things that are used in wireless communication equipment. So we we were in a fair amount of military programs, commercial applications, emergency services, or products or an MRI equipment. And basically the products take a signal divided, and we use transistors or other power modules to build more power, and then our products will recombine it, and then monitor signals out to antennas or radars of that took

 

Patrick Adams  02:07

super interesting stuff. And I’ve you know, personally been on site at your facility and some pretty amazing technology that you guys are working in. How did all this start? You know, I mentioned earlier when I introduced you that you, you know are an entrepreneur, you have been for over 35 years? How long has innovative power products been around? And what you know, what’s kind of what did that look like as far as how it started? Or where you know, where the idea came from? How you got involved in all of this?

 

02:39

Yeah, originally back when my partner TJ Dowling, and myself, we’ve been partners since 2005. And we were partners in our first company together. So you know, TJ is a an engineer designing the circuits. And my role is more overseeing operations, finance, costing sales. And there was a need for products and T Janu had a designer, and we started making them and started selling them and became popular. We have hundreds of customers around the world. And I feel we’ve built a nice reputation in the industry. And we’ve been a great combo together.

 

Patrick Adams  03:23

That’s great. And so people are probably, you know, you explained a little bit about the products that you offer. But there are some people probably who are maybe not familiar with the RF or microwave industry. You know, we talking about like these, are they massive, you know, these massive pieces of material and you know, different things put together are we talking little tiny components that go into, you know, what’s the end product, tell us a little bit about the products that you guys provide,

 

03:56

it’s a combination, we make very small products that go into Manpack radios, and you know, those are used by soldiers around the world, other things will go into vehicles, which have more power and can transmit further signals. And then you go into very high power things MRI equipment, so you know, the higher the power, the more the slices that they the medical sector can see more of what’s going on. And then to the point where you’re transmitting in radio stations 1000s of kilowatts worth 1000s of watts of power.

 

Patrick Adams  04:34

Very nice. So if we were to take like your let’s just say, you know, one of your top running products, what would be the you know, maybe the the high level process steps that that would go through from the point of like you receiving in some material or components, or you guys have a complete assembly shop, do you do you know, quality checks, like what would it look like if we walked through the value stream at every process? Along the way, what can you give us kind of a general understanding of what the flow through your facility looks like?

 

05:05

Sure, we set up our manufacturing, well, let me back it up a little bit. And say we have six different product lines, and each one goes through its own cell. Okay. So that was our way of getting things to flow better through manufacturing is, instead of them going through a same process, we divided them out and specialized in that process for it. So the product will flow through from assembly to test, and then through QA, sometimes back through test, if value add was done after that, and then to the customer and out the door, we check 100% of the products. You know, and I’m very happy with our return rate over the last few years has has just been tremendous.

 

Patrick Adams  05:58

Very nice. So who would be like your ideal customer, if someone was out there listening in and they were like, you know, this sounds interesting. Seems like it might be in our wheelhouse, like Who? Who? What would your ideal customer look like?

 

06:14

They range. The tier ones out there are the the larger OEMs for the DIA, Department of Defense, DOD. And then there are people that supply to them. I really don’t want to mention names of Oh, no. And so but it rolls up that ladder, there’s considered tier one, two, and three. And they they kind of all go up to the Department, Department of Defense or, you know, MRI equipment that are used in large corporations.

 

Patrick Adams  06:49

Absolutely. Okay, good. So now we have, I think we have a good we’re kind of level set on your company and what you guys do and just kind of the process flow. So now let’s talk about your Lean journey. I introduced you we talked about the fact that you embark on your Lean journey approximately two years ago. What was the where, where did you hear about Lean? Or what was your introduction to lean? Why did you guys decide to embark on your own Lean journey?

 

07:20

They always felt like, lean was just a word that was kind of thrown around, you know, oh, they were doing Lean, because they did something, you know. And I actually in the beginning, but we were doing Lean because we had cell setup, you know, and it was like flowing better. And it was like, Okay, we’ve we’ve cleaned the manufacturing, now we have products flowing. But I was very wrong. The more I learned from it, it was clear that there was so much more going on. And well, so we looked into it further, because we would go through these spikes in sales. And every time we went through a spike our on time, deliveries would plummet, and then we rebuild out of it. And it was a cycle that we couldn’t get out of. And it kind of said that systems needed to change. So I started listening, you know, to podcasts, reading books, things about it. And honestly, it’s pretty confused. When you’re thrown in there and you start looking at all the tools that are available. And what do you use for different applications? What do you use to get to get people interested? Right? It’s very difficult to change the way things are going. So when you embark on something like this is tremendous effort to get everybody going in the same direction to get them believing in the system, to following you, as most typically feel, okay, we’ll write this for a little while it’ll change, you know, and we’ll go back to the old way we did things and everyone will be happy. But so you need that consistency as we were doing it. And it really changed the way we are doing things. There’s a calmness in here. The on time deliveries for the last three quarters have fluctuated about 3%. You know, and we’re right at goal. So I feel that we’re building stability in the system. Sure, sure.

 

Patrick Adams  09:35

And it’s been two years and I know because I’ve worked with you personally over the last few years that you know, you would have liked for things to happen like, fairly quickly. I mean, you when we first started talking you were like, you know, we’re we’re looking to make some significant changes pretty quickly. What what’s been how’s that experience? When did it all happen? And overnight? Would would that have been the right approach? If it did? What do you think?

 

10:06

It doesn’t happen overnight? That’s number one, you know, changing the culture, changing systems, changing philosophies, changing habits, all of that takes time. And, you know, you hear so many quotes along the way about with processes, you go quickly with people, you go slowly and, honestly, is the case. And, you know, even with the guidance and coaching, right, as coaches, you probably want to move along to so that there’s some, I don’t know, how do you say, the companies are getting the benefit from using a coach, but it still takes time, it just still takes time, you have to assess where each person is at. And you don’t want to leave anybody behind. So you slow the pace and let everybody start gathering more momentum behind them. Sure, but go ahead. No, it was tremendous. You know, the, the coaching is undoubtedly needed, you know, with?

 

Patrick Adams  11:11

Yeah. And you’re the president of innovative power Products Co Founder, you’re obviously, you know, one of the executive leaders at the organization. You mentioned, TJ being another what’s, what do you feel like has been the benefit of having executive leadership? involvement, you know, in your Lean journey, and what I guess, you know, let our listeners know, what has been involvement from the executor executive level? And then and then what have the benefits of that then.

 

11:43

So, there has been from the top, you know, we’ve been interested in day one, TJ, shared the sediment, that it’s not easy to go through the cycles that we were going through. And the benefit is absolutely taking one level out of this, right. If, if you’re in an organization, and you’re trying to get top management to change, and they don’t want to change or support you, that makes it harder, you know, and it’s already hard enough. So having, having us on board, you know, and there to support and telling everybody, this is direction we want to take just eliminates one of the, you know, obstacles will searcher.

 

Patrick Adams  12:29

And I know, you’ve had, you know, many challenges over over the last few years, you know, you mentioned obstacles, what have some of those challenges been that you that you’ve had, you know, being very early on your Lean journey.

 

12:48

Being patient, on my behalf, you know, people, I was, say, I was a little bit ahead of the curve, because I was doing the reading, I was doing the research, I was trying to find it. So having people catch up. And that’s really where the coaching comes in. Because as a coach, you know, how to teach it, you know, how to get people involved, you know, which is instrumental in getting momentum going in that direction. So that was probably one of the biggest challenges. And, you know, it always takes time, you know, one of the foundations of it is you’re learning along the way, you’re not just doing your learning. So you need to give people time to learn. And that’s what they’ve been doing.

 

Patrick Adams  13:40

Absolutely. A couple, you know, good challenges that I think a lot of people listening probably have had, as well. And just for those that are listening in, that are maybe at the executive level within their organization, or, you know, some type of a management position. I mean, what would your advice be to, to someone who is looking at lean and going, this looks like something that could benefit my company, you know, as a new way of doing things. You know, what kind of advice would you give based on some of those challenges that you’ve had? In you know, maybe just kind of if you could go back, what would you say to your earlier self, maybe, maybe that would be a better way to, to present the question.

 

14:26

So it’s absolutely worth the effort, okay. The atmosphere in the company is far different than where it was. And you know, you often walk around and say, we look like we have no work in the place, because all the whip is just like disappeared. The products flow through nicely. There, there is not the stress in the organization. But if I going back on it, the most beneficial thing that we scene has been the gimble walks, right? Getting gimbal walks out early. And building the action items from that has been tremendous. Each week, we have two teams of three. There’s 13 people on the whole team, they’re all now yellow belts. And they have made an impact by going around and actually not just seeing what’s wrong, but you know, fixing what’s wrong. So, we’ve we’ve gotten buy in from the people as well, you know, every employee of the organization has seen some change happen in their area, so they’re behind it as well.

 

Patrick Adams  15:37

Oh, that’s amazing. what’s your what’s your process for your gimbal? Walks? You know, how do you how and I guess it hasn’t changed? Since you started? Like did you? Did you make adjustments to how you were doing gimble walks? And what is it? What does it look like to have gimble walks at innovative power products.

 

18:06

So it has changed in the beginning, of course you’re cumbersome, you’re not really you don’t know what you’re you’re really doing, you’re going through the motions, you got a little checklist, you’re gonna look at an operation, you’re looking at the work instructions and how they’re performing the processes. And then you come back, you write up some action items, and we delegate them out, we have a continuous improvement meeting, which we meet every other week. And we would log him in there. But since then, we’ve been able to do through software. Mike is on board. He’s a programmer for our company. And he has written software that allows us now to trigger the meeting right through it. And then after we do the gimbal work, we go back to the conference room as a team, we put in the action items into the software, and then they automatically show up as on people’s to do. So whoever was getting that action would be there. And then somebody else has to sign off on it. Every month, I send out again, but walk schedule, right? We do it to week as mentioned. And every other week, somebody will do a couple.

 

Patrick Adams  19:21

And it’s nice that you have that structured schedule in place. And obviously you have a very good system at documenting, you know, some of the the, the outcomes from those those walks. And there’s, as some of the listeners might know, there’s many different types of gimble walks. So for you guys, you know, just getting the the leadership out there not just leadership, I know you’re doing it with the whole team. But you know, being able to go out there and if you see something that you know can be fixed when you’re out there, obviously you’re doing that. But then some of those things that are going to take a little bit more effort outside of these gimble walks, you’re logging those into the system. They’re getting assigned to someone in the then there’s some follow up that’s happening there. So, you know, with that what what kind of results are you seeing from having this the structured gimble walk system that you’ve put in place for your team.

 

20:14

We have seen, you know, as you mentioned small things to very large things where we’ve, you know, found doing CFCs and logging lot numbers for traceability, and everything as being cumbersome is now being done through software. And if a part is going on taping real, then we entered once, and all those numbers transfer right over to CFCs, and other things. So little things, you know, larger things like that are taking place. And, you know, one of the things that sold me on it is a quick story on how we were scanning in jobs to become paper, paperless in the company. And what we found is after we finished the job, we put them in a pile, the pile would move up front, the person would then take out the staples and scan it in, and then we put them in a box. And that would be there until you had four or five boxes, and then you throw them in the car and bring them to a shredder and pay $50 to shred them. And that was the old system. We all got together. And we talked about okay, what’s the biggest problem that is happening here? Right? He was taking the staples out, right? That was the biggest problem, people would open up the job, staple things in different places. So it was hard to scan. So we remove staples, one would have a clip on it. And you know, now we scan it in and final QA goes back to the managers and everything is shredded that day. And you know, just started. So you know, that all came about from just monitoring and watching the systems. So that

 

Patrick Adams  21:56

was an observation that was made. And I think that one probably the most amazing thing that I’m as I’m hearing you talk time is. I mean, I’m talking to the president of a large company, a large global global company. And you’re talking about going out to the gamba with your team and observing this type of thing. And you’re seeing that it’s causing a problem for them to remove staples. I mean, that in you guys, you know, you you took the initiative to you know, help remove some roadblocks and be part of that change. And I just think you know, what an amazing way to, to lead from the front right to show people that being at the gamba is important for everyone in the organization. As well as that, you know that that’s what you’re there for. It’s to help remove roadblocks to help provide guidance for some of these issues in struggles and problems that your team is having. I just think it’s amazing. But I also know too that you not only are you involved in these gimble walks you know I’ve seen your Leader Standard Work you personally have Leader Standard Work as well as the rest of your leadership team and management team follows Leader Standard Work. And you guys are doing a ton of other things as part of that. But what have the results been in the last two years? I mean, I think you mentioned a little bit earlier about some of the bullwhip effect of ordering and and sales ups and downs and what that’s done or the what that did do to you guys in the past what what have been some of the other results as you have applied leaning, you know, not just in your assembly areas but also throughout the rest of your organization and purchasing in you know in sales and what other benefits have you seen from that?

 

23:44

There’s been just where do you pick it up it’s like simple things like modifying a plate on where we put Island machines I listened to into products by them being level at the time of the operation it reduced rework. I can’t even tell you how much it’s just all little things make such a large impact using packaging right products going through the floor would be put in boxes and if the box was moved too quickly, the parts would be moved around. So in one of the gimble walks we noticed all this and then we said okay, let’s use a packaging that we use for our customers and bring them through the floor that way so they don’t get damaged anymore. It makes it easy if you cute a to handle the test everybody goes out of one package back into the next and and goes through the production floor so much better that the you know there’s less handling of the products through sales now you know we we developed a ticketing system. So now everything every customer inquiry that comes in will get a ticket it’ll go through engineering through drafting, we can monitor it all the time, we can see where it is. And we correspond to the customer better, we’ve also started adding that ticket to the first response to the customer. So if they have a question, they can respond back, and we’ll know it’s ticket to nine, one or whatever it may be. And then we’ll have all the information right in front of us, because every time somebody touches it, it logs in the history of it, which is great.

 

Patrick Adams  25:28

That’s amazing. And obviously, you know, those are just a few examples of where you’ve identified a problem. And they came up with a solution that has provided, you know, some some pretty exciting results for you for your company. What about the intangibles? I mean, what what is this done for your team? For the, you know, the the level of engagement from the team members, you know, throughout your organization, what what has just the, you know, embarking on this journey, and you mentioned learning earlier, and that it’s a continuous learning process, what of those things done for for your team?

 

26:10

Well, the atmosphere was absolutely better said that. The way we interact with one another is better. You know, it’s funny, prior to this, you barely had time to spend with people. And you know, that’s not the right way to manage, but you didn’t have time. And now, you know, five hours a week, I blocked to spend an hour with each manager who reports to me, they’re spending time with the people that report to them, and so on, and so forth. So it’s going down through the organization. And everybody is, is focused on helping the next person do what they need to do, you know, and, you know, back about six months ago, the next thing to look at was, okay, we are meeting but our agenda is good. So let’s look at the agenda, what we have for the meeting, and see if we can make that more effective as well. So, you know, that’s part of the continuous improvement, right? You look at things, you see how it’s going every quarter, we tend to look at it again, it’s a good milestone to say, Okay, this is the history, this is how we’re doing. Now, what do we need to change? You know, so the agenda helps us do that. If you have good agenda for a meeting, it helps you get to know if it’s working.

 

Patrick Adams  27:32

Absolutely. So Tom, what would you say? Do you have to celebrate? I mean, what would you say? You know, currently, after two years of being on your Lean journey, you know, what would you say are some of the highlights the things that you, you would say, let’s, let’s, let’s celebrate this?

 

27:52

Well, definitely celebrating that the on time deliveries have stabilized. The fallout is down, which are the two areas that we started out, to focus on. What the main thing is that everybody is learning. Everybody is feeling appreciated, at least I believe they are. It seems to be the census, that we went down a good path. And it’s helped the organization. You know, we would never hold a meeting on a Friday, that was the end of the month, right? Because, oh, everybody’s scurrying around trying to meet the month, you know, and it’s like, pretty funny now, because we don’t look at that we look at everything is flowing through the company on a regular basis. And products are going through the operations. They have work instructions for everything now. And, you know, it’s just made a tremendous difference. I love how people are believing in themselves more That to me is is the real winner. Because you know, that momentum is starting to carry on their own now. So two years in, it’s, it seems like, you know, there’s a brighter future, and less, less having to push, the momentum will carry itself.

 

Patrick Adams  29:15

What would you say is next for for you on your Lean journey? Obviously, you and I both know that there’s no end to your journey. Right. But what’s next? Where are you guys going next?

 

29:31

What I’m trying to work on a little bit more is getting everybody to think of reflecting. Right? You know, it’s easier said than done. Do you really stop and pause? Is it on your lead? It’s standard work to reflect and see what we were doing how we can do it better as you’re going forward. So that’s kind of where where we’re heading. And I think it will go a long way. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Patrick Adams  29:59

And you involve your, your, your whole team in that, right I mean, your Leader Standard Work for you guys has become, you talked about time blocking and certain things that that are important to your team, you know, you’ve established or you’ve helped kind of lay the direction for the team. But having them be involved in this entire process from the beginning, I think has been such an important piece for you guys. You know, and so when it comes to reflection and learning and kind of taking those next steps are looking at, you know, where you’ve gone, and what the next steps are for you guys. Do you see that continuing to involve the entire team? Or, you know, what do you see that involvement being from from the team going forward?

 

30:48

I absolutely see it, you know, we have some great players here. You know, you’re fortunate, you know, rich, Dan Janis, the ozone board, now, we have a great team. And I’m really looking forward to them continuing to grow, and go into the next phases of things, you know, really looking at tack times looking at other things, what products can we put into one piece flow even though we batch because we use robots and pick and place machines and things, but I am, you know, I love the fact that they’ve picked up kata, you know, in a big piece of this and just stick with works for us the gimble walks, work, the kaizens work, one of the things that you taught us is to have a document over overseeing the whole lean plan, you know, the Lean journey, in a sense, and that was tremendous, because he was able to put into a format. And now because it’s a format, that’s understand it, right? So

 

Patrick Adams  31:56

becomes your management system, right? Yep. But I will say, you guys are doing some pretty amazing things. Tom, I mean, from daily Kaizen to Kaizen events to some kind of thinking, and, you know, you are doing active root cause analysis, driving to the root cause, and really solving your problems at the root, and you’re seeing some pretty amazing results from that. So hats off to you guys and your team and the amazing work that you guys are doing, I am so happy that you were able to come on to the podcast say being that you’re early on your Lean journey, there’s so many people out there so many listeners that you know, have never haven’t, they might even be hearing the word lean for the first time right now. And so to hear from someone like you that is early on your Lean journey that sees the benefits, you’ve you’re working through the challenges, I mean, you’re literally in the trenches, you know, working at this day in and day out, and you guys are doing some pretty amazing things. So again, hats off to you guys and the work that you guys are doing at innovative power products found if there’s anyone out there that wants to ask you another question or interested in maybe you know, the the work that you guys do at innovative power products, where would they go to to find you or to get a hold of you?

 

33:15

They can get me on LinkedIn, I’m not on there that often. Probably better as my email address. And as I’ve heard your shows before, you can put that in the notes to T Pissarro at innovative pp.com. But it’s the one piece of advice is it’s well worth it. You know, it’s it’s not easy to get going. But once that momentum starts and people see the changes, it’s been tremendous bursts, you know, and just keep it light. We We do try and have a lot of fun here when we’re doing it. Usually at each other’s expense, but it just keeps the it keeps it light and and just makes it worthwhile. Because it can will be too serious either. Yeah,

 

Patrick Adams  34:03

absolutely. All right. Well, we will definitely throw your email into the show notes, Tom and looking forward to getting back out there again, and just continuing to follow up on your progression as an organization love the work that you guys are doing. And yeah, maybe next time we’re out there, we’ll get I know you have to be careful about stuff that you can share picture wise and video wise, but it’d be nice for people to see a little bit of the some of the visual stuff that you guys are doing two pretty, pretty good stuff. So keep up the good work. And thanks again for being on the show.

 

Tom Passaro  34:36

Patrick, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.