A Career at the Top Helps Rebuild Rolar Products
Jack Russell takes a new management approach and the right software to propel expansion into Swiss-type and multitasking machining work.
Meet Jack Russell of Rolar Products. A year ago, he needed to scale his company, facility and people on a data analytics platform that automatically shows the entire organization what good production looks like in easy-to-follow visual signals. When he saw Datanomix, he realized we had cracked the code on job, machine, and factory analytics. Today, his employees always know the live factory score just by looking up.
“The right software would provide a solid foundation for manufacturing capacity growth at Rolar Products. Perhaps more importantly, it would also align current and future employees with the operating style of Rolar’s new management.”
—Jack Russell, Owner, Rolar Products
Recognizing the value of transparency for motivating rather than creating anxiety.
When it comes to production tracking, one of the common fears among machine shop employees is the “big brother” stereotype — that feeling that individual performance is being monitored every second of the day. As employees recognized the impact of their work on the bottom line, the conversation shifted from worries about efficiency tracking to what everyone could accomplish together.
Improvements across the entire shop were immediate.
By Implementing Datanomix, Rolar Products reduced their average time to the first part. As the data began to roll in, it challenged some employees’ understanding of what it meant to “warm up.” Some jumped in and got initial setups done right away, while others allowed the machines to warm up far longer than the two or three minutes cited in the machines’ manuals. Once these disparities were revealed — and broadcast on a central display — the operators realized the importance of this average time to the first part.
In the Modern Machine Shop article, learn what happens when you import 21 years of Tier1 automotive manufacturing experience to a mom-and-pop job shop.
Hear more from Jack in his interview with Tony Gunn on The Gunn Show Podcast:
Rolar Products, Produce Flawless Parts. Deliver On Time. Every Time!
