Machine Shop Growth
The Machine Shop Growth Podcast gives a fresh perspective to help you grow your shop by focusing on 3 key factors - Sales, Marketing and Efficiency. For decades the machine shop industry was build on a “good-ol-boys” mentality and was full of great machinists and engineers that made great parts. What has been discovered is many of those amazing shops have plateaued or are starting to decline - because they didn’t put enough emphasis on getting more work and making more money with the work they had.
On this podcast you will hear first hand advice from machine owners and mangers how they are getting more work and how they are making more money. Now let’s Grow Your Shop!
Machine Shop Growth
Episode #26: Should You Start a Second Shift for Growth
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A second shift sounds like growth.
More hours. More output. More revenue.
But what if adding a second shift is actually the fastest way to multiply your problems?
In this joint episode, Mike Fritz and Kirk Phelps tackle one of the most common ideas floating around machine shops right now:
“Should we add a second shift?”
On paper, it sounds simple.
In reality, it can create more complexity, more liability, more labor pressure, and more process breakdown than most shops are prepared for.
In this episode, we break down:
- Why most sub-$5M shops are not actually ready for a true second shift
- The hidden cost of off-shift management
- Why process refinement should happen before labor expansion
- How automation, fixturing, tooling, and better routing can unlock capacity first
- Why lights-out manufacturing is often a better “second shift” than a manned one
- How bad processes duplicated at night only fail faster
This episode is a must-listen for shop owners who are feeling maxed out, thinking about growth, and wondering whether second shift is the answer—or just a very expensive distraction.
Because sometimes the capacity you need is already sitting inside your current shop...
You just have not uncovered it yet.
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1st & 3rd Tuesdays: Sales & Marketing
2nd & 4th Tuesdays: Operations & Engineering
Joint episodes: Special industry deep-dives with Mike and Kirk
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