Our Conversation With Paul Ostlund of Timesavers: How Paper-Less MES Helped His Company Reach Its Potential

Below is a transcription of our interview with Paul Ostlund, V.P. of Operations for Timesavers, Inc. Our questions are bolded, and Paul’s responses are italicized.

Could you talk a little bit about your processes before implementation and what they were like and why you felt you needed MV2? 

We are a 78-year-old company, and we have had a significant absence of metrics and dependable data points for an extended period of time. I’ve been here two years, and I am a firm believer in a couple of varieties of the same saying: The first one is, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” and the spin on that one is, “if you treasure it, you measure it.”  In manufacturing, if you’re not measuring what you’re good at and what you’re bad at, you really don’t have any idea where you’re making and losing money. So, getting us to the point where we could measure and evaluate labor utilization, jobbing performance, and moving rapidly here over the next couple of weeks towards picking accuracy in our parts. Picking is allowing us to really measure what we treasure, which is performance and profitability. To really summarize that, we went from the dark ages to a contemporary manufacturing facility almost overnight with the implementation of Paperless.  So awesome, it’s very good. 

Were there any surprises, challenges, or favorite moments that you had during the implementation process?

When Sean came in here months ago and presented this to us, we were in the process of multiple software upgrades and enhancements across a variety of platforms. So, we were a bit overwhelmed with the amount of things that needed attention here. Myself and our CFO were hired at the same time; we’ve been here a little over two years and we’ve been really overwhelmed with the number of things that the company really needed to invest in.  Sean is just a no-nonsense guy. To me, you can sense a salesman very quickly; Sean doesn’t come across as a salesman. He comes across as an operations person, and that’s something that I value a lot. We have gone through a lot of these systems and software upgrades over the last two years, and what was surprising to me was the total lack of surprises. You’re almost expecting a problem, and every bit of feedback that I was getting during the process from Sean, and then also from Diane Danielson, our systems manager, is things are going great. One of the really positive feedback points I got from our people is how thorough Sean is in his training. He’s detailed, he speaks a common nomenclature. It’s not high-tech software lingo, and he really walked people from our IT department all the way through machine operators through how to do these things in a way that everybody understood it so that on day one, we were a hundred percent accurate on jobbing accuracy on the first day.  We had 100 percent jobbing accuracy on the first day. So, it was fantastic.  It’s just it’s just a very challenging thing, especially in old time manufacturing, which we are it’s really why? When Sean and Ryan presented the dashboard to me two weeks ago, it was a no-brainer. It gives my plant manager, my three production managers,  our plant scheduler, and our tech support salespeople visibility into what’s happening out in the manufacturing area, and allows them to really make adjustments and pivot quickly if a machine goes up or down or workload changes, and it gives me analytics to be able to deliver profitable returns to our investor group. I didn’t have to make a decision on it. I made the decision. It was during that call; I could see the value of that dashboard. There was no question. We were implementing it. 

 How did your team react when they were informed that this switch was going to be happening? Did you do anything to prepare them to make the transition as painless as possible? 

I think we could probably boil that down to the fact that over the last two years of me being here, we’ve changed everything we’ve touched, so they’re getting accustomed to change. But I am a very firm believer that the change happens with you, or change happens to you. So, what we did to prep for this was, we had a lot of conversations, right? We made sure that every single person that was going to be impacted by this was aware of what was coming, was aware of how it was going to impact them and was aware of the fact that they weren’t going to have change forced on them and then be unsupported. They were going to have internal support. They’re going to have Sean’s support. And we prepped for it by being very transparent on what we are needing to accomplish to really be able to deliver positive results as a for-profit company.  I really think putting any other person in this implementation other than Sean probably would not have gone nearly as well as it went. I am a Sean fan, and just his detail and his work instructions with his screenshots are phenomenal, just phenomenal. In a lot of ways, I look at this like taking your child to the orthodontist; you could put the child in the orthodontist chair, and they could straighten your child’s teeth in one visit. Of course, the kid would be in the hospital from the pain. [It] would be intolerable, and that orthodontist would never have another customer. It’s like orthodontics, right? You turn the screw a little bit, you tighten the wire, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s not unsafe. And we have had to really show our team that change is uncomfortable, but it’s not unsafe. If you don’t get on board with it, it’s going to happen to you and you’re not going to have a say in it. Sean has been just great in showing people that this change is safe. We had a lot of great feedback about him and about your system as a result of how he handled this implementation. 

How has post-implementation life been treating you guys? Have you run into any issues?

That’s a really interesting question because the only thing that I’ve heard that’s been any sort of a hiccup is about 30 minutes ago, one of our machinists, the system wouldn’t let him job off. My systems manager, Diane, who was our point person on this with Sean, her office is next to mine intentionally. She had been trained enough by Sean and by MES that she was able to log in and get it done. It wasn’t even an issue with Paperless — it was an issue with our scanning gun.  Really, we’ve had no hiccups. It’s been outstanding. 

What positives have you already seen after implementation, and what are some things you’re expecting to see or hoping to see as time goes on?

Yeah, great question. So, what I’m really seeing is the user-friendly platform. This is user-friendly for people who are used to doing physical work with their hands. These are machinists and assemblers. So, computer systems and software are typically a point of frustration for them. They don’t want to be sitting in a computer. They want to be building things and making things. To me, a really positive point in this is how easily and how thoroughly they’ve adapted to this system, and it’s an endorsement of how thoroughly your team has thought through how to build this software and how to implement it so that it’s user friendly at the user level and it’s analysis friendly at the executive level.  

Our product was designed with all levels in mind, specifically minimizing keystrokes and making its navigation as easy as possible. We’re happy to hear it’s working exactly as well as we’d hoped it would! 

You guys, in a lot of ways, are like Ford Motor Company. The full Ford pickup truck is designed for drivers that wear work gloves. Did you know that is their methodology? That’s why you don’t see massive touchscreens in Ford trucks. That’s why you get actual buttons. You’ve got taller cab height for guys that wear hard hats and wear hats — they know their audience. So, the user platform in a Ford is designed for people who are working with their hands.  I think your process of keystroke minimization and usability is really modeled around the people in our plant that make the money for us. I don’t make the money for us. I keep track of it. Our people that are building things are the ones that generate revenue for us, and that’s who we have to cater to. So, giving them tools that don’t hinder them, but also give us data analysis is really a significant advantage for us over our competitors. 

Overall, how would you say your experience was working with our team?

Easy, thorough, completely professional, comprehensive, intuitive, and easy. I like easy. There’s enough hard stuff going on that I like easy. Yeah, your group has made the relationship very easy and very comfortable.     

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