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 #27: Before You Buy a Robot, Standardize Your Process
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Before you buy the robot…
Fix the process.
In this episode of the Machine Shop Growth Podcast: Operations Edition, Kirk Phelps breaks down what shops need to standardize before they ever think about automation, second shift, or lights-out machining.
Because automation sounds exciting.
But if your tooling changes every job, your workholding is inconsistent, your programmers are reinventing the wheel, and your shop floor depends on tribal knowledge…
That robot may just become an expensive decoration.
Kirk covers:
- How to stop treating every part like a brand-new process
- Why standardized tooling reduces errors from programming to the floor
- How workholding can make or break unattended machining
- Why high-mix, low-volume shops still need repeatable systems
- The role of CAM standardization and verification software
- Why lights-out machining comes before full automation
If your shop wants to grow capacity without creating more chaos, this episode gives you the foundation.
Start with standardization.
Then scale.
Subscribe to our weekly format:
1st & 3rd Tuesdays: Sales & Marketing
2nd & 4th Tuesdays: Operations & Engineering
Joint episodes: Special industry deep-dives with Mike and Kirk
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