Chips in the Shoes: A Lesson in Manufacturing Leadership at the Executive Level

Transcript

[00:01:00] Josh Santo: JD, thanks for being here.

[00:01:03] JD Marhevko: Oh, such. Thank you for the opportunity, Josh. I’m happy to be here.

[00:01:07] Josh Santo: Yeah, I was really excited when I saw that you were speaking at the A SQ conference. I wasn’t able to make your session, but I saw that you had multiple sessions, so shame on me for not making at least one of them.

[00:01:17] JD Marhevko: I did. I was truly blessed and honored. typically I, I got selected for one and then I ended up being pulled in a backup for another. And then I, I did, a floor session, which is a, a 15 minute talk on, uh, AI and digitization. So that was a lot of fun. 

[00:01:32] Josh Santo: Oh, well, I’m gonna add that to my list of questions that I have for you today.

[00:01:37] Josh Santo: Then. Well, speaking of today, we’re talking about quality and manufacturing. We’re talking about executive leadership and we’re talking about the ups and downs and all arounds in both. I wanna start with really just a level set. You are a very experienced vice president within manufacturing. You’ve served multiple companies in this role.

[00:01:56] Josh Santo: I’m curious, what does a typical day look like for you as a vice president of quality at a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company?

[00:02:05] JD Marhevko: Well, what’s typical is there is no typical, e every day is, is completely different. you have to really be thinking on your feet, leveraging your team across the world, and, and being able to listen to others well to see what they need, for their success. So there, there is literally no standard.

[00:02:26] JD Marhevko: Of you go in and you do this, that, or the other. it’s a matter of what’s, what’s dropping in on you and what do you have to manage. it’s just very, very dynamic.

[00:02:36] Josh Santo: I imagine there’s plenty that requires your attention at any given time, and you’ve potentially come up with your own way of prioritizing.

[00:02:45] Josh Santo: Talk to us a little bit about how you decide, out of everything that requires your attention, what do you gotta give your attention to?

[00:02:52] JD Marhevko: You know, that’s a great question. I am. Insanely, organized. I have, lists that I work on. I have my A list, my B list, my C list. I have my notebook that I go to. Yes, I use paper. but, for me, my priorities are safety first. I’m in a safety organization, so if it, if it’s anything that affects, you know, product or process safety, that’s number one.

[00:03:17] JD Marhevko: then after that, it’s business impact if it’s going to cost a lot or have a, a huge, financial potential effect. that’s second. and then I, I’m equal to that. I’m, I’m looking to people effects if, is there something I’ve gotta do to take care of a person, someone’s got something going on that I need to help them with, or, you know, struggling.

[00:03:36] JD Marhevko: So it it, from there, it’s just all the myriad of different projects that are ongoing.

[00:03:42] Josh Santo: Okay, got it. What I love is you’ve got like a clear priority, safety, first and foremost, that safety of the product that your company is making.

[00:03:49] Josh Santo: If there are any risk that’s being introduced there, that needs to be addressed. Process people as well. The business impact. What’s this gonna cost us? What’s the risk to revenue profitability? What’s the opportunity to be capitalized on and the people affect? How does this affect my team, which I think is.

[00:04:06] Josh Santo: a mark of a great leader is always thinking about the people that you are leading, because in this role, you’re not directly responsible for the contributions.

[00:04:16] JD Marhevko: no, I am a, I am a supporter. I’m a system provider, so, so to me it’s, we, we get the data in general of what’s going wrong, where, or, or what’s happening, and then I have to be able to take that data rapidly to the various teams, whether it’s the operations team, the engineering team, supply chain.

[00:04:37] JD Marhevko: the various groups that have actual physical ownership of those specific systems so that they can, we can collaborate together and affect the change because we don’t wanna just make something better. We want to, you know, fix that back end issue. But we also wanna make sure that the front end is permanently resolved so it can’t happen again.

[00:05:00] Josh Santo: I like that permanently resolved so that it can’t happen again. You’re not just reacting, but you’re finding a way of making sure that you’re not putting yourself in the same situation and that you have to address it again.

[00:05:11] JD Marhevko: yeah. I, I call it a squeeze play, right? Uh, if, if something happened negatively, shame on us for allowing the issue to occur for whatever reason. but then making sure that the front end is absolutely managed. And that it’s read across systemically so that it can occur, and then it just squeezes it in the middle and, and then you have a cleaner process.

[00:05:31] Josh Santo: systemically is a word that sticks out to me. It’s, it’s looking at, you know. What is the greater impact or what are the greater before and after that had to come together to make this situation a reality?

[00:05:43] Josh Santo: And what do we gotta do and how does that affect everything else? So you’re not, you’re not thinking just in a silo. In that case, you’re constantly beyond that.

[00:05:52] JD Marhevko: Yeah, I’m, I’m the worst silo person in the world.

[00:05:56] JD Marhevko: I have been told that, why don’t you just play in your space? It’s like, well, my space is everywhere.

[00:06:02] Josh Santo: Yeah. Well, I I have to imagine that that could maybe rub some people the wrong way or maybe challenge folks, uh, in a way that’s not always appreciated.

[00:06:13] JD Marhevko: It can. and then what you have to do is, is you have to make sure that they understand you’re on the same team and you have exactly the same objective. it’s more of a collaboration and, and a cross-functional approach that you’re trying to take, that everyone wants to do a good job and everyone wants to be as successful as they can be.

[00:06:30] JD Marhevko: So if you, if you have information that says, you know, something’s going wrong, what can we do to help facilitate or improve upon this? Can we provide support? Can we provide data? You know, can we provide, subject matter experts on the topic? that really helps people know that you’re there to help.

[00:06:48] JD Marhevko: not to, you know, take credit or steal their thunder, so to speak.

[00:06:52] Josh Santo: In that example, how do you draw the line between scopes of support? You called out, something’s gone wrong.

[00:06:59] Josh Santo: What can we do? How do you really identify where these boundaries are of what you can do versus where someone else really needs to get involved?

[00:07:11] JD Marhevko: Uh, that’s a fair question. I don’t know that I do,

[00:07:16] JD Marhevko: When, when you’re defining a problem or defining an opportunity that needs to be addressed, uh, that clearly then lays out where those issues of insertion are at, where, where is that actually starting from? so then, then you go to that, that point of, of the process where that, that issue is starting from.

[00:07:35] JD Marhevko: And, and those are the team members that you need to engage the most quickly and most thoroughly. Uh, so. From there, having enough subject matter expertise, enough knowledge to be dangerous in almost all of these different topics, we can help in a variety of ways.

[00:07:51] Josh Santo: Got it. So there’s a little bit of just fluidity, flexibility required in this. Identify what the issue is, identify who’s impacted before, after, during, invite those folks to the table, come together. What can we collectively do? I have expertise here. You have expertise here. How can we work together to ultimately affect the 

[00:08:11] JD Marhevko: Absolutely right.

[00:08:12] Josh Santo: Got it. Well, look, you didn’t start as an executive in manufacturing. In fact, in our conversation earlier you mentioned that you originally saw your career in manufacturing, or a career in manufacturing, I should say, as a way out of poverty. And you. Embraced engineering as the discipline to support that goal.

[00:08:33] Josh Santo: Uh, you also mentioned that your grandfather also played a role. I would love for you to share with our audience, a little bit more about him and how he helped shape your career in manufacturing.

[00:08:44] JD Marhevko: Well, grandfather was a, a tool and die maker for, Chrysler for over 46 years. he hitchhiked from Pennsylvania to Detroit

[00:08:54] JD Marhevko: when he was 16 because his parents didn’t have enough money to feed him. And, and that was in the twenties, the 1920s, you know, long, long time ago. So, you know, think about, think about that.

[00:09:07] JD Marhevko: And you’re just making your way across this country trying to find a job. So he was, he ended up being extremely successful. there was nothing that grandpa couldn’t fix, nothing mechanically or even electronically that he couldn’t do. and I was very fortunate. He, he taught me a lot of his.

[00:09:25] JD Marhevko: Tools of the trade. Tricks of the trade. we, he built a house on a, on a lake, and in doing so, you know, we went fishing all the time. I’m a huge fisher person. And, one day I failed to properly hook up the motor from the boat. As we were bringing the boat into winterize and the boat, the motor went down to the bottom of the lake.

[00:09:48] JD Marhevko: So Grandpa says, well. Can’t waste that motor. So down I went multiple times to hook that little stinker back up. We brought it back up. Uh, full of sand and a little bit of seaweed. It was really ooey gooey and, and I had to rebuild that motor when I was 12. That was the first time I built an engine. so, and I had to buy the gaskets with my own money.

[00:10:09] JD Marhevko: I was very sad about that. But everything else we were able to do. and, and then, you know, fast forward about, uh, when I was 28, I was running my first engine plant. So, grandpa had his own tool shop in his garage and he taught me how to run most of his pieces of equipment so I can make things round and flat and square.

[00:10:31] JD Marhevko: I don’t know that they would be complete specs we need today, but they’ll function.

[00:10:37] Josh Santo: so, it sounds like one of the things, not aside from just the actual act of here’s how to, to work on machinery, one of the things that he’s instilled within. You is an element of responsibility, right? You the, the motor went down. Well, gotta get the motor.

[00:10:53] JD Marhevko: I’m really good at hoists now.

[00:10:55] Josh Santo: Yeah. Learn by doing.

[00:10:58] JD Marhevko: Oh man. Yeah. That was a painful day. Yep.

[00:11:01] Josh Santo: Now, you mentioned previously that, you said in, in the story just now how, you’ve rebuilt your first engine at 12. Fast forward to 28, you’re running an engine plant. but there’s, you know, activities that happened in between there.

[00:11:14] Josh Santo: And you mentioned when we were talking previously that when you moved into a managerial type role caused a little bit of friction between you and, and your grandfather.

[00:11:26] JD Marhevko: well, well, grandpa was a, diehard union man. I didn’t know enough about unions one way or the other. but, he was very active in his, Group. And when I went into management, I eventually got my engineering degree. I was very close to getting my, my machinist journey card, because I was almost fairly decent at machining.

[00:11:47] JD Marhevko: But, he wouldn’t talk to me for six months after I went into management because I went to the dark side. Uh, eventually, uh, he, he forgave me. and then said, you know, he, he needed to tell me, how to, to not tell a working man how to do his job. and he called me lots of names. Grandfather spoke four languages and he swore very well in all of them. he called me a lot of names at that time. But, he really wanted to make sure that, that I would respect and listen well to a person doing the physical work and not just being a boss saying, oh, I know more than you because I have a degree. Or, being able to understand and put myself in the position of that person.

[00:12:32] JD Marhevko: And, and you know, when you have a person that’s that’s working on that, he, he called that chips in the shoes, having chips in your shoes. the metal findings and ships. But, he says, if a guy’s got chips in his shoes, he knows more than you.

[00:12:46] JD Marhevko: So I had to make sure that I was respectful and listening well, to all team members anywhere in the facilities that are, that are physically actually doing the job, so that I could see firsthand what the problems were.

[00:13:01] JD Marhevko: And how we could best support those activities. you may need a new piece of equipment, but you just can’t afford it. So, what are your options? What can you do? and when people are coming to you with real problems that they’re dealing with them, you know, day in, day out, 40 hours a week, and that’s all they live, they know the problems quite well.

[00:13:20] Josh Santo: Well, I think that’s such a, poignant piece of advice. First thing you gotta learn is not to tell a working man his job. look for the chips in the shoes. If they have, if they’ve been there, if they’ve been doing that, they know more than you about what’s going on, what they’re experiencing. So, factor that in.

[00:13:35] Josh Santo: Take that into consideration. Engage them. help them solve the problems. I’m curious about how that lesson ultimately translated to your approach to executive leadership.

[00:13:49] JD Marhevko: So what I try to make sure that I do is, is no matter what role I have, running operations, running quality, running lean, environmental health and safety, whatever, whatever functional role I’m in, I I learn about the products and processes first. Yeah. How is it made? What’s the general equipment?

[00:14:07] JD Marhevko: What are the process flows? What are the general issues? You know, what are the people experiencing? and then you, you, you look to the money. What’s going, what’s making profit, what’s not making profit? and then what are the things that are in the way, that we can do to understand those various barriers and start to fix and address those things?

[00:14:27] JD Marhevko: So, so to me, it’s, grandpa taught me about the, what we call the natural leaders in a, in a manufacturing environment when you go into a, any kind of shop. there’s always two or three people within the four walls of that facility that they’re your go-to people. they, that, that’s not the plant manager generally.

[00:14:45] JD Marhevko: it might be your maintenance lead. It might be your, your top production supervisor. It, it could be anybody. And, and you find those people first and, and you ask them, what’s going on here? You know, what’s working, what’s not working? And, you get their buy-in if you wanna try something or you try their ideas to see how things can work because they know it the most intimately and you’ve got them behind you.

[00:15:12] JD Marhevko: And if they say something’s gonna happen, they’ll make it happen in the shop because I’m not there. I go away. I can come and I can say, oh, go do this, go do that. Go do this other thing. But when I go away, they’re gonna do whatever they feel is right that they need to do, not necessarily what I’ve asked for.

[00:15:29] JD Marhevko: So unless I have that buy-in and that support, it’s, it’s not gonna continue on after I leave.

[00:15:36] Josh Santo: So essentially, you know, one of the first things that you do is you go to Gemba. You’re looking to understand what life is like, what’s going on, what are the things that aren’t making its way up to your level so that you can see, you know, with those fresh eyes and engage with the folks that, like you said, those are the people that are well respected.

[00:15:54] Josh Santo: They’ve established credibility. They have the backs in support of everybody else in the facility if you’re serving them. What kind of impact that can have? How does that translate to your team? Because like you said, you can’t be in every facility every single day. You have to rely on local leadership to maintain and support that.

[00:16:13] Josh Santo: How do you develop that?

[00:16:16] JD Marhevko: So I have an extremely global team. I’ve, I’ve always had very global teams all over the world, and what I do is it, it’s a matter of respect and, true gratitude and appreciation for the work that they’re doing and making sure that I’m supporting them with whatever they need. So, I’m available on their time zones.

[00:16:35] JD Marhevko: You know, I’m doing my Asia Pacific calls in, in my evening times, so that. My Asia Pacific team members aren’t having to do it in their evening times or if my, if it’s the European teams, I’m up earlier in the mornings during their daytime versus, versus my time. to me that shows respect. Um, ish. I speak a little German.

[00:16:58] JD Marhevko: It is, I speak a little polish, I speak a little Spanish. So, so to me it’s about the, the cultural understanding. and really working hard to, to acknowledge properly in, in their culture, whatever those cultures are. And there’s a lot of ’em. but you know, if they have a need, I respond to all emails within 24 hours.

[00:17:24] JD Marhevko: Nobody waits for me for an answer. And that is very atypical in upper management. You know, so sometimes you get ignored completely, even in your own company. And, and I just, I just find that horrible and abhorrent. Mm. if someone’s, someone needs input from me so that they can move to the next station, they are not gonna wait for an answer.

[00:17:44] JD Marhevko: it’s gonna be right away so that they can move the ball to the next level.

[00:17:48] Josh Santo: You’re putting others first. In this case, you’re, you’re adapting to the folks that you’re working with. You’re not asking them to adapt to you. In that case, I have to imagine

[00:18:00] JD Marhevko: way to look at it. Yeah.

[00:18:01] Josh Santo: that takes a lot of sacrifice on your 

[00:18:04] JD Marhevko: It’s been, it makes you very busy.

[00:18:07] Josh Santo: Yeah, absolutely. So for the listeners on this call, when I was trying to.

[00:18:11] Josh Santo: Schedule with jd. She told me like, Hey, my day is from like six to midnight, 6:00 AM to midnight. I’m slammed. So she really is living this. How can I help you? How can I meet you where you are? I love that you’ve even taken the time to learn a little bit about culture, a little, a little bit about language.

[00:18:27] Josh Santo: ’cause it’s really about connecting with people. That seems to be a very, a very, important part of your approach to leadership.

[00:18:36] JD Marhevko: Yeah, I run a series of sessions on the generations. ’cause right now, in today’s world, there’s five generations. and then, how do I tailor my discussion towards somebody who’s even older than me, who has a lot more experience than I do, uh, or someone who’s very much younger than me? in these types of roles, you have the full gamut.

[00:18:55] JD Marhevko: Of, of people to deal with. So, so not only do you have culture on top of that, you’ve got age, differences. So if, if I have a very young person working for me and that’s, well, you don’t have 40 years of experience, what do you know? I cannot take that approach or attitude with a young person. they have more access and faster access to knowledge than I ever had.

[00:19:17] JD Marhevko: I mean, I remember encyclopedias and books, right? I didn’t have a cell phone growing up. but these people, they can access knowledge instantly. So, so their rate of learning is much faster, nowadays. But, the point is, is that everybody contributes, uh, in a different way and leveraging and optimizing each person’s ability to contribute.

[00:19:42] JD Marhevko: Is what makes a powerful team.

[00:19:44] Josh Santo: So I imagine part of your approach then is just having to get a lay of the land. You have to understand who you’re working with, what their strengths are, both from your perceived well, your perspective and their own perspective, so that you can help them work together with you, work together with other people.

[00:20:00] Josh Santo: I love that you’re taking this extreme ownership approach of, you know, how can I meet them where they are so that altogether we can get where we need to go.

[00:20:08] ​

[00:20:26] Steve Povenz: I’m Steve Povenz. I have over 30 years of manufacturing experience primarily in the quality field. One piece of advice that I always give people is to understand who your customer is. Sometimes that’s not always easy to understand, but we need to think about who our customer is and what their requirements are, and then we can look at our processes and are they geared toward delivering on those requirements for our customer.

[00:21:00] Steve Povenz: On top of that, do we have the right metrics in place? To achieve what our customer is expecting so we can get the feedback, which is the basis for any continual improvement process. .

[00:21:12] Josh Santo: Now that doesn’t seem like it’s always the most common approach. I’m curious about your exper experience working with, folks at the executive level in manufacturing.

[00:21:21] Josh Santo: What have you seen executives get wrong with regard to leading their organization?

[00:21:28] JD Marhevko: It’s, it’s always challenging. 

[00:21:30] JD Marhevko: Because you, you, you regularly see people promoted and recognized with bad behaviors. and really the only thing that they’ve ended up doing is making more money to the bottom line. And that’s what gets rewarded in the United States Society. In other companies and cultures, it, it can be different.

[00:21:49] JD Marhevko: but in the US if you can make the money, it doesn’t matter who you whack, it doesn’t matter who you offend. It doesn’t matter what your approach is, you get a promotion and it’s, it’s really hard to see that time and again. so I always have to make a conscious decision of that’s not the approach I wish to take.

[00:22:08] JD Marhevko: That’s not how I wanna be known for. and I mean, I’ve still been successful, successful despite that. but I see other people that are really, really successful. And, you know, they’ve just taken that, that attitude and I just find it very, very difficult to to observe.

[00:22:26] Josh Santo: well, from your perspective, why? Why not focus so heavily on the bottom line, just about at, at any cost? What, where do you think that’s really kind of causing some opportunities for improvement? We’ll say,

[00:22:41] JD Marhevko: Well, you know, for me, because I’m in quality today, or you know, I’ve spent about half of my career in quality and half in operations, so, you know, to do things right and to make sure that. You know, the safety of the public is first and foremost, and then you’re protecting the company. It’s, it’s not a balance.

[00:23:01] JD Marhevko: You can’t do one at the expense of the other. You have to have safety and, and business or else the company doesn’t survive or the customers don’t survive. So you, you have to make them both happen simultaneously in other roles. you can more focus on the business. Only I. And, and get away with it, if you will.

[00:23:24] JD Marhevko: but in, in a quality role that’s, that’s not, not allowed as easily.

[00:23:29] Josh Santo: Yeah. So the nature just of your experience in the, the particular aspect that you’ve always led just requires you to, to think. Beyond just bottom line impact at the end of the day.

[00:23:39] Josh Santo: Like you said, safety is first. Safety is paramount. We do have to make money as a business. We do have to be profitable, but we can’t choose one or the other. It has to be both in harmony. I.

[00:23:51] JD Marhevko: And don’t get me wrong, I’m highly, highly focused on the business and the profitability. and I teach, my teams always show me the money. we always have the little memes going on, because if they make an improvement, they have to show the impact. Because if they don’t, what happens is, is finance or the governance, of the, of businesses often see quality as an overhead function and, and not adding value.

[00:24:16] JD Marhevko: So they, they typically get whacked when it’s in cost cutting mode. And if you can continue to demonstrate your value and what you’re bringing to the bottom line, that allows the, those teams to understand exactly what you’re bringing.

[00:24:32] Josh Santo: This is actually a really common topic that I hear particularly among quality professionals. Uh, I was actually at a IAG last year, or maybe it was the year before, but I recall one of the topics is translating quality impact into business results. I’m curious about your perspective on this topic. What advice do you have for.

[00:24:52] Josh Santo: Manufacturers looking to get support or buy-in from leadership to support an initiative who may be struggling to translate what they want to do to that business impact.

[00:25:04] JD Marhevko: Everything you do impacts either the scrap rate, warranty, or efficiency. So efficiency translates into labor. You know, warranty translates into margin, as does scrap. Scrap translates into both margin and capacity. So everything that you wanna be able to do, to make a change in your process is gonna affect those three things or, or even more.

[00:25:30] JD Marhevko: you’ve got premium freight issues with overtime, things like this. So if you can demonstrate. And, and viably show that if we do this, this and that, I’m gonna get these kinds of results on an annual basis. Typically, your finance guys will, will let you try it, and if you’re wrong, they won’t let you try it again.

[00:25:50] JD Marhevko: If you’re right, they’ll let you try it again and again and again. So I’ve been very blessed, when we show our teams, and we demonstrate the fiscal results that we get, As we implement and execute improvements that we’ve requested, and they say, this is where your money went, and you have to show them, you have to demonstrate, and the financial community themselves has to agree.

[00:26:12] JD Marhevko: I just can’t say, Ooh, I saved a million dollars for you. they have to be able to see it in their general ledger or in their bottom line. It has to show up in the profit and loss statement somewhere. And so typically I’ll be in a meeting or in a room with, with any variety of leadership team. And I’ll make a statement, Hey, we save 5 million on this item.

[00:26:33] JD Marhevko: And the, leader, the leadership in charge will say, who? He’ll, he’ll not look to you. He’ll look to the finance person and he’ll say, Hey Joe, hey Bill. Is that true? And the finance guy says, oh yeah, that really happened. So if you don’t to, to me, I’m always partnering with the financial leadership for that very reason so that I can see that we actually did, execute.

[00:26:55] JD Marhevko: And achieved that result and that they agree with it and that they see the same thing. And if I say it’s a million and they say it’s 800, I’m going, okay, 800 it is. but the point is it’s non arguable. and sometimes I’ll say it’s a million. He says, well, you know, I really got 1.5 I like go.

[00:27:11] JD Marhevko: Okay. so it really is developing that partnership and collaboration with the finance guy, so that they see the effect and then. Then you’ve got a bought in partner who’s, again, they’re after the same thing. They want the success of the business, as do you, and now you’re collaborating together to make the team stronger.

[00:27:31] Josh Santo: Hmm. Yeah. And, and putting it in a way that they can understand so that they can then also advocate support as well. ’cause to your point, when you go and you make the claim and somebody’s gonna be turn and say, is that true? Can you confirm that the numbers say that for me? And, when in doubt defer to, to their numbers.

[00:27:50] Josh Santo: but I think that’s an important thing that you called out. It’s partnering with the folks who are responsible for reporting out on the actual finances. The impacts that whatever initiative you had, the impact that it actually had, I.

[00:28:01] JD Marhevko: So when you’re in a global company, you’re doing that at each facility and then it’s rolling up to the divisional level or the segment level or whatever you’re, you’re calling that overall group and, and then you get the whole impact to the total business. So it’s, it’s collaboration. Horizontally across all of the financial teams, across the business.

[00:28:26] Josh Santo: Hmm. And, and I imagine that’s probably a new concept for folks who aren’t in leadership positions. Let’s say you, to take it back to those, those two to three well-respected experts within a facility who may have an idea but have may never have been coached on. Tying the impact of this idea, to the broader financial impacts, how.

[00:28:45] Josh Santo: Much would you say it’s the responsibility of the individual coming up with the initiative versus the individual approving the resources expenditure on the initiative? Who really has to come up with that business impact?

[00:28:58] JD Marhevko: it really, the guy that wants to do the change, be because the, the guy approving it, he’s not a subject matter expert on the, on the process and the results. he’s just the money man, right? He’s not gonna know those details. And he’s, he’s overlooking the entire business, all aspects. Whereas the, the person that wants to make the change, he understands the details and what the, you know, what’s gonna go on, how long it’s gonna take.

[00:29:22] JD Marhevko: How long that return in investment’s going to be, so on and so forth. So it, it’s really the responsibility of that person to put it in a clear, concise, one page overview. 

[00:29:34] Josh Santo: One

[00:29:34] JD Marhevko: I just, yeah, one page. You gotta keep it, I call it short attention span theater.

[00:29:41] JD Marhevko: If you can’t convey it in one page, you’ll lose them.

[00:29:43] Josh Santo: Yeah, that you’re absolutely right. well I’ve certainly seen that firsthand and, uh, you know, I’ve learned going through school it was very much a focus on, you know, you gotta have this seven page, 15 page, 30 page research papers.

[00:29:57] Josh Santo: And now if you can’t get the information across in three to five, maybe seven seconds, no one’s gonna read your work.

[00:30:06] JD Marhevko: Yeah, you need the seven second tagline and a one pager overview. So one of the things that I do globally is I have a, I, I’m very blessed to lead a, a, a team for 13 years. it’s with a SQ, the American Society for Quality and IMA, the Institute of Management Accountants. And, the IMA team, they certify CPAs.

[00:30:26] JD Marhevko: Okay. The finance guys and then a SQ is everybody in the quality world. So, so I bridge, I have a, a team that bridges these two groups and the, the quality team works with the finance guys to say finance guys. what do you need as a customer of the quality team? for information, feedback and input and finance team, you know.

[00:30:48] JD Marhevko: What this is what we need from you, to be successful, we need to know what the strategies are. We need to know where your biggest pain points are, and what are you seeing in the financial so that when we say we make a savings, it shows up. so I actually literally just gave a face-to-face session at an IMA, section, less week.

[00:31:06] JD Marhevko: And then, in this upcoming month, I’ll be speaking at the IMAS International Conference on strategic Planning, just hitting this very topic. You know, talking about the quality with the, the financial arm of things. So, it’s allowing us to get a lot of spread and communication, not just in a place that I work per se, but literally across the world.

[00:31:30] Josh Santo: yeah. And what I’d love is that this, this kind of consistent message still comes through. You’re still very much taking on the, the ownership of adapting the message to the people with whom that you need to work, the people support that you need. And it very much ties back to that approach that you described initially with your regard to leadership is you’re very much taking the servant.

[00:31:50] Josh Santo: Relationship, servant leadership relationship, and also essentially treating folks as your own customer, your internal customer.

[00:31:59] JD Marhevko: They are, they are my customer. I don’t make a darn thing.

[00:32:03] Josh Santo: You are an enabler, right? A supporter. You remove obstacles, but they have to come to you with, here’s the obstacles we need to, to remove

[00:32:12] JD Marhevko: I have very big pom-poms.

[00:32:14] Josh Santo: the cheerleading. Uh, well, well, great. So we talked about leadership. We talked about, you know, this idea of getting buy-in and ways of working well with one another, kind of taking that systemic approach. I wanna switch gears a little bit. I really just want to throw this out there. I’m curious about what’s happening in the world of manufacturing or maybe in the world of quality within manufacturing that’s got you excited.

[00:32:41] JD Marhevko: Wow. The, the age of digitization to me is, is huge and really, really powerful. we’ve done quite a bit with it recently. I’ve been on a global digitization team with a SQ. for over five years now, and, we’ve written lots of content, trying to get information on the basic definitions of, of what it isn’t, educating our quality community, across the world on, you know, Excel is a powerful tool.

[00:33:08] JD Marhevko: And, and don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Excel and I use it every day. yet it can be enhanced. there are more tools out there to leverage to, to get us where we need to go to faster and more powerfully. so agility is the name of the game, and you can take all of your data and information and, and take it from a data format and transform it into what we call actionable information.

[00:33:35] JD Marhevko: And the more actionable your information is. You, you end up short-cutting a lot of those analysis steps in the middle so you can get to the actions quicker. And, and that’s what we’re trying to do. and we’ve been very, very successful with this. I’ve had multiple teams, doing this globally and, with really fantastic results.

[00:33:54] Josh Santo: Well, one of the first things you mentioned is just getting a basic definition of digitization, what it is or what it isn’t. I’d love if you would share your perspective on that topic.

[00:34:05] JD Marhevko: Well, for me, digitization is, is taking all of these data sources, getting them into one common pool, often called a data lake, and then having the automation of it, pulling the data pieces that you need. And putting it into a format so that it’s actionable, whether it’s a trend analysis, a Pareto analysis, a summary of the verbatims, something that tells you what to do next.

[00:34:33] JD Marhevko: that way you are not doing all the v lookups, like you would in, in Excel. You are not doing all of the oh, what are those called?

[00:34:41] Josh Santo: The pivot tables

[00:34:42] JD Marhevko: Thank you. The pivot tables, you’re not doing all the pivot tables. it’s doing all of those for you automatically. and now I’ve got my information and I can see where I need to focus on.

[00:34:54] JD Marhevko: it digitization does the mechanical work for you, but it doesn’t do the actions you still need to execute the activities. ’cause the data’s there. The information’s there. But if someone now doesn’t act upon that, it’s still just as useless. Right?

[00:35:14] Josh Santo: absolutely, I, I’ve had this type of conversation with, a lot of folks and, and coach them the exact same topic that you brought up. It’s about getting to action quicker.

[00:35:22] Josh Santo: ’cause everything else is essentially a non-value added activity, right? Capturing the data, aggregating it, putting it into a dashboard, even analyzing that so that you get to the insight. not really. Value added can be fun, don’t get me wrong, if you’re a nerd like me. But it is about that action that you take otherwise, the data that you’re capturing, the information that you come to, it’s just a fun fact and maybe it’s not even that fun.

[00:35:50] Josh Santo: And that’s one of the things that I’ve coached a lot of people on is it’s really about how do we get to action faster? So I love to hear that. This is the first time you and I talk about it, and we’re already on the same page with that. So I take that as a,

[00:36:02] JD Marhevko: I, I, I just find it very exciting. I do a lot, whether it’s at work or outside of work, whether I’m supporting a SQ or other societies. I’m, I’m doing a lot with digitization on a regular basis.

[00:36:15] Josh Santo: Well, you mentioned at the start of the conversation that at a SQ you did, uh, an in-person session related to AI and digitization. We talked now just a little bit about digitization. I’d love to hear your thoughts on ai ’cause I know that that is a topic a lot of people are curious about and how.

[00:36:31] Josh Santo: You can effectively and safely use AI within manufacturing.

[00:36:36] JD Marhevko: Wow. so artificial intelligence is, is again, using various software tools that are. Reading the, the, the reams and reams of data that come out. it’s common today for many production lines because of the, the manufacturing enterprise system, the MES, that the, and the programmable logic circuits, the PLCs.

[00:36:58] JD Marhevko: You’re getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of data points in, in, in an hour or two. And, and no human can translate that amount of data. so you can use an AI tool to assess, simulate and, and determine what to do with that information, and then adjust the equipment so that it can optimize the production process one way or the other.

[00:37:22] JD Marhevko: there’s cobots, you know, the, the ability of, of cobots working with people. So for the ergonomics, for the safety to in, increase efficiencies, how to present a part so that you have. You know, less ergonomic issues going on. there, there’s just the, the potentials are limitless. it’s really, really powerful.

[00:37:42] JD Marhevko: the things that I’m, struggling myself is, is now the, the people that are out there that I, I consider evil. there, there’s people out there that are, you know, doing wrong and improper things, to, to steal money from others. And the technology is growing so fast and the, and the evil doers are so, so far out there and the legislature hasn’t caught up.

[00:38:04] JD Marhevko: So it’s, it’s gonna be quite a while, before we can see how bad things get, while you’re trying to leverage it for the good. You’ve always got that other component. And I, I, I always just, there’s a special place for those folks and I hope they get there quickly.

[00:38:17] Josh Santo: Yeah, well, you, you’re absolutely right. I’m reminded of the, the quote from Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility, and there is. Great power in AI really centered around the idea that you brought up with digitization. It’s about getting to action faster, and in some cases it’s where can you automate certain actions at that point, but it’s still about taking action faster.

[00:38:40] Josh Santo: But to your point, technology is way ahead of the regulation that really needs to be in place to ensure that it is something that is benefiting people and not causing harm, whether that’s to an individual or to an organization. Yeah.

[00:38:54] JD Marhevko: Yeah, my mother’s in a nursing home and, she has a cell phone and she refuses to answer her phone ever now because she gets no fewer than one to 2000, scam calls a month.

[00:39:08] Josh Santo: Wow.

[00:39:09] JD Marhevko: And the preying on people that are unable to protect themselves is just. It’s beyond criminal.

[00:39:18] JD Marhevko: And, we’ve tried to do some things to protect those from coming in, but still some of them get through and, and people will stop at nothing to steal from what’s not theirs. And I It is, it’s just, it’s just hideous.

[00:39:32] Josh Santo: Yep. I’ve seen it in my family as well. I myself am a millennial and one thing about us millennials is we don’t like talking on the phone, so I just don’t answer for anyone. Just period. Text me, I’ll get back to you, but call me. Not gonna happen.

[00:39:47] JD Marhevko: Well, I mean, texts come through the calls come through. yeah. It’s just, it’s just horrible.

[00:39:53] Josh Santo: Yep. The scams are everywhere. That is absolutely true.

[00:39:57] JD Marhevko: Yeah.

[00:39:58] Josh Santo: Well, one last question for you before we move into the the story side of things. Thinking about our conversation, thinking about your career, I know that you’re a mentor for young professionals as well what would you say are the must have tools or skills or books or training that you would recommend people prioritize in order to continue driving the industry forward?

[00:40:21] JD Marhevko: Wow. I’ve got a couple of favorite books that I, that I, that are go-tos for me personally, I like, Sun’s Art of War.

[00:40:27] Josh Santo: Oh, okay.

[00:40:28] JD Marhevko: That’s one of my faves. I do a lot of the different lean books, learning to see the Lean book. but, f for me it’s for the, for the people, young people, it’s patience. You know, they, they just, they don’t know what they don’t know. And it’s hard. None of us don’t know what we don’t know. But to, to be able to, to be patient with somebody older than you or somebody different than you or somebody with a different accent than yours. making sure that you understand that others have just as much, if not more to contribute than you do.

[00:41:05] JD Marhevko: And, and no one person makes it by themselves. it’s a team. everyone has to do it together, so. People are, you know, people wanna get ahead people, you know, the kids come outta college and they wanna make a hundred thousand dollars on the first day. You know, no one’s gonna give you that really, maybe you get lucky.

[00:41:28] JD Marhevko: But the point is, is that you have to, you have to put in your time somehow, uh, so that you can earn those, you know, earn that level of respect. And, and be able to, to build yourself up so that you get that credibility and you’re able to move forward.

[00:41:47] Josh Santo: Patience is a key one. And, and there’s elements of patients that you’re describing, patients working with other people, patients with yourself, patients with.

[00:41:55] Josh Santo: The process to some degree, and I, I’d imagine you’d agree with this, it’s okay to have a little bit of, drive of wanting to get to certain places faster, but just recognize what the reality is and what your constraints are. I think if I were to think back on our conversation, this may be putting words in your mouth, but maybe there’s a, a skillset of adapting your approach to the people with whom you’re working with.

[00:42:20] JD Marhevko: Oh no, absolutely. It’s, it’s all about being gumby, you know, being flexible. With, with whoever you’re working with. and it’s hard. I, I mean, I, I don’t necessarily find that easy ’cause I think I know what I wanna do. I think I know how I wanna do it, and someone comes in with a different idea. Hmm.

[00:42:36] JD Marhevko: Okay. but at the end of the day, it doesn’t hurt to try it for the most part. If it doesn’t work, then we can come back to the other way, or, or we can settle on, well, let’s try it for a day or a week or a month and see how it goes. Uh, and then people are much more amenable to different options.

[00:42:53] Josh Santo: Well, great. Well, let’s get into the story section of the episode. I would love to hear from you out of all the topics that we, we covered today. I’d love to hear about a time in which one or more of these learnings really clicked for you, and what was that like?

[00:43:10] JD Marhevko: I’ve got so many stories. I think one of my favorite, stories is for me was in the aerospace industry. And, we had, two airplanes with what we call unplanned landings. that’s what they call them. the planes did land safely, but not when and where they wanted to. so we were, we were contacted immediately and had to figure out what was, what was going wrong.

[00:43:36] JD Marhevko: with the airplane. Our, our product had failed. We knew it was our issue. so I didn’t even have the part, to see it. ’cause the part was in a different part of the country where the plane had had landed and I was dropped into the facility and in four hours we had root cause and we had figured it out.

[00:43:57] JD Marhevko: and what we did was, you know, we went step by step to see where in the process something we, we knew mechanically what had happened to the part. the part was a hose, a rubber hose. And it went into a metal fitting and the hose separated from the fitting, and that, that, that process of fitting them together is called skiving.

[00:44:18] JD Marhevko: When that metal fitting is put onto the end of the hose, think about a, a gas, a gasoline pump when you’re going to the gas station and you’ve got that handle and the metal fitting on the end of the rubber hose. It’s, it’s kind of what that was like, but the, the hose had blown off of the metal fitting while the airplane was flying.

[00:44:35] JD Marhevko: Not a cool thing. So, uh, we went in there and we figured it out and the, the hose is supposed to be round and the hose wasn’t round, the hose was oval, and they were using a measurement device called a pie tape. And a pie tape is a, flexible, measuring tape that, you know how the tailor puts a measuring tape around your waist and says, Ooh, you’re 32 inches.

[00:45:01] JD Marhevko: Yay.

[00:45:01] Josh Santo: Yeah, on a good day,

[00:45:03] JD Marhevko: On a good day, suck it in. and that’s what it does, is it is you take that tape and you measure it around the hose to see, you know, what the diameter of it was. Well, the pie tape doesn’t measure. Diameter doesn’t measure if it’s circular or not. It just measures that whole circumference the whole distance around.

[00:45:21] JD Marhevko: So the, the people on the production line, you know, they’re, they’re doing a little pie tape thing, they’re getting the right readings. Yay. So they’re letting the product go. so it, it would go on to the, it would go, they would be able to shove it into the, the metal fitting. It would pass tests and off it would go Well, when we, when, when we saw that they were coming out oval, well, this isn’t the right tool for the job.

[00:45:44] JD Marhevko: How did we decide to use this kind of measurement device when we should be checking for roundness instead of circumference and. You know, some time ago the engineering team had said, ah, here’s the tool you need to use. So the people in the production environment, they just use the gauge that they’re handed.

[00:46:04] JD Marhevko: They’re not a subject matter expert. They don’t know if an oval hose or a round hose is gonna have a problem. They just said, ah, it’s 10, therefore it’s right. Therefore it goes, so in doing something like that, the, the engineering team failed to understand, the criticality. Of the circularity of the product.

[00:46:24] JD Marhevko: and this is all to me, the, the a measurement system opportunity. and when we figured that out, we were then able to, you know, do a couple of things. We were able to isolate why we had an oval hose instead of a round hose. we figured that out there was a setup issue with a machine and that got fixed.

[00:46:45] JD Marhevko: So it was, it was contained to a very small amount of product, which was very fortunate. So we were able to, to isolate and get those contained worldwide. and then we were able to train and educate the engineering team to say, look, you need a different kind of tool to, to look at roundness versus circumference.

[00:47:04] JD Marhevko: so that was done quickly, but then we had to train that whole engineering team on how engaging system was supposed to work. ’cause they don’t teach that to you in engineering school. You know, you, you get radius and you get geometry and you get a lot of math, but you don’t get gauging systems. And so that’s, that’s what actually I was teaching at the, uh, at the A SQ World Conference.

[00:47:25] JD Marhevko: I had two sessions on gauging uh, so ’cause, ’cause to me that’s always something that’s near and dear to my heart is it’s such a simple error that’s made very, very far upstream. And then the, you know, the person making the product, he has no clue. And, and then, you know, if, if it were, had been a bad outcome, if someone would’ve gotten hurt as a result of that situation, you know, how do you feel?

[00:47:51] JD Marhevko: so it, it was such a severe event.

[00:47:54] Josh Santo: Yeah. What do you think allowed you to, to get so quickly, like go through that process so quickly? Was it experience, was it the process itself? What are your thoughts there?

[00:48:05] JD Marhevko: Well. When you’re problem solving, there’s lots of different recipes you can use. There’s a recipe called eight d, the eight disciplines. There’s dmaic, define, measure, analyze, improve control. There’s plan, do, check, act. There’s a process called a three legged five y. You can pick any of those tools and they, they all work.

[00:48:24] JD Marhevko: on that particular instance, had used the DMAIC define measure. I went to, as soon as I saw the measurement, I go, Ooh. That’s wrong. So that’s, that’s what allowed us to figure out the measurements so quickly was isolating the, the measurement system gap, uh, very, very quickly.

[00:48:42] Josh Santo: Yeah, because this is something that comes up pretty frequently when I talk to folks, particularly in quality, is if you have a strong approach to problem solving, you’re gonna be able to overcome just about anything that

[00:48:52] JD Marhevko: absolutely. Right. Yeah. You, you have to be fearless in asking anybody anything. but you have to ask people in a nice manner. You just can’t be in their face screaming at them. yeah, you really have to be polite about it and if you can in their language.

[00:49:07] Josh Santo: For sure. Yeah. Well, JD, this has been a great conversation. I feel like I’ve, learned a lot just in our conversation here.

[00:49:13] Josh Santo: Think, learn more about servant leadership, learn more about what it takes to get an initiative going, and who needs to be bought in, and what people need to see. I love your perspective on adapting to the people with, for whom you are working and really taking that servant leadership approach.

[00:49:29] Josh Santo: So, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for joining today and sharing your perspective on all these topics and more.

[00:49:37] JD Marhevko: Oh, my pleasure, and thank you so much. I, I appreciate your time and yourself for doing this, Josh, so thank you so much.