Manufacturing Culture Podcast

Jim Mayer
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Manufacturing is more than the products we make; it’s the people who make the parts. On The Manufacturing Culture Podcast, I sit down with leaders, innovators, and everyday heroes to uncover the stories behind their journeys in the industry. We talk about where they started, how they’ve grown, and the challenges they’ve overcome along the way. Each episode brings a unique perspective; some practical, some inspiring, and all rooted in the human side of manufacturing. From lessons learned on the shop floor to big ideas shaping the future, it’s all about the people who make it happen. Because at the heart of every company are the people who work there, and every person has a story.

  1. vor 1 Tag

    Jim Goerges | He Never Laid Off a Worker Because of Automation

    Jim Goerges is an accountant who fell in love with a machine shop, and then fell in love with the one job in that shop nobody else wanted: keeping the coolant right. He was so obsessed with it that when he could not buy the tool he wanted, he built it himself, and that turned into a whole second company. His shop in Brainerd, Minnesota started with four products in 1993 and now has around six thousand, and odds are good it had a hand in the glasses on somebody's face right now. The heart of this one is a simple idea Jim has spent thirty years proving out: the best robot you can buy is the machine that makes the part. Precision Tool Technologies runs lights-out, nearly around the clock on a single labor shift, because Jim chased unattended manufacturing back when the industry still thought a mill was a mill and a lathe was a lathe. When coolant became the weak link that stood between him and a true 168 hours, he invented a full-shop coolant sensing and top-off system, now running in shops around the country. But the number that tells you who Jim is has nothing to do with spindles. He has never laid off a single person to a technology improvement, not once. He took hand deburring off his people because it hurt to do, not to cut heads. And for a crew of 23, the company 401k will clear five million this year. This is a conversation about automation done with a conscience, about a dad who came from Germany with nothing and instilled a work ethic in ten kids, and about why the unglamorous work, done with pride, is the work that builds something noble. Key Takeaways The best robot is the machine that makes the part. Jim's whole approach is to buy equipment that runs unattended rather than bolting automation onto old habits. Automation without layoffs. In thirty years he never cut a person for a technology gain. He removed the jobs people dreaded, like hand deburring, not the people. Necessity invented a product. Coolant was the weak link in running 168 hours, so he built a full-shop coolant sensing and top-off system that now sells nationwide. Culture is telling people the truth. Good news or bad, Jim tells the whole group, so his people are part of the solution instead of blindsided by it. Do more to get more. The accountant's logic underneath it all: every incremental part spreads your fixed costs thinner, and affordable automation is how you get there. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and meet Jim Goerges 02:36 Icebreakers: your life as a movie, and what culture means 05:05 The accountant who fell for a machine shop 07:30 The PettyEgg and inventing to help people 11:41 Four products in 1993, six thousand today 15:30 Learning lights-out before the industry figured it out 20:08 Why the company is named 168 Manufacturing 22:37 Changing your thinking to change your outcome 28:58 Automation without a single layoff 31:40 What he is most proud of, and his father's story 37:35 The sprint car and working hard the right way 39:26 The future of PTT and the coolant automation story 47:10 The future of American manufacturing 53:09 Say yes to a great idea, and closing thoughts Find Jim LinkedIn: Jim Goerges Precision Tool Technologies: Brainerd, Minnesota 168 Manufacturing: 168mfg.com

  2. 4. Aug.

    Ronak Gandhi | Make American Manufacturing Badass

    This episode was recorded as part of a paid partnership with Structify. Ronak Gandhi grew up in Fort Worth, where Memorial Day means fifty people in the backyard, dinner cooked by friends who brought their own coolers, and a clock that somehow reads midnight before anyone notices. He explains the difference between that and a New York Memorial Day, all brunch reservations and itineraries, and in doing so tells you most of what you need to know about why he built Structify the way he did. His grandfather came to this country in the 1960s, took his first job at a fish processing plant, stayed thirty years, and retired there. That story, and the values under it, loyalty, integrity, and showing up in person, shaped Ronak's decision to leave an isolating skyscraper job and build a company for the people he calls the backbone of the country. Structify helps manufacturers find real ROI for AI, lays the foundation to implement it, and captures the institutional knowledge that walks out the door when a key person retires. The promise is blunt: a path to ROI in sixty days or your money back. Recorded in person with Jim at ATD in Phoenix, Ronak and Jim get into why Silicon Valley gets manufacturing wrong, why you cannot serve this industry from a desk on the coast, why 65% of digital transformations fail, and why the problems on a shop floor are the most exciting part of the work, not the thing to hide. It closes on the line that could be Structify's whole reason for existing: he does not want the industries that built this country to get left behind in the next technological leap. Key Takeaways AI fails without a foundation. Most digital transformations fail because people rush to the solution. Structify maps the business first, then finds where AI actually drives ROI. Capturing institutional knowledge is the real win. The workforce crisis bites hardest when a key person retires, and their knowledge leaves with them. Day one is about capturing it. You cannot serve manufacturing from the coast. Ronak lives on the road, and he argues every shop is different, so no off-the-shelf solution works for everyone. Change is not the enemy. People do not resist change; they choose it every day. Give operators the tools to build their own solutions and adoption follows. Relationships beat transactions. The values he learned in Fort Worth, loyalty and integrity, are what he says the coast gets wrong and what manufacturing gets right. Chapters 00:00 Meet Ronak: two Memorial Days, Fort Worth vs New York 01:47 The moment he knew manufacturing needed Structify 05:01 The isolating skyscraper and why he left 08:39 His grandfather's fish plant and the pride in making things 11:30 Why build for a physical industry Silicon Valley ignores 16:02 A hidden industry and what outsiders should know 19:28 What Silicon Valley gets wrong about manufacturing 22:45 The workforce crisis and two narrative battles 26:21 The shop that detonates bombs to fuse metal 28:03 Why 65% of digital transformations fail 31:50 What Structify actually does 33:05 How it differs from a consultant 36:20 Why people actually love change 38:22 Finding real ROI, not AI for its own sake 40:17 What day one looks like 43:56 The five-year vision: make manufacturing badass 45:36 What he's most proud of, and why Structify exists Find Ronak LinkedIn: Ronak Gandhi Structify: structify.com

  3. 28. Juli

    Bob Teska | Dream Big, Success Is the Only Option

    Bob Teska describes his life as an underdog movie, Rocky by way of 8 Mile, opening on a kid getting picked on, a dad who disappeared, and a mother who told him he would not make it through his first semester of college. He turned wrenches for ten years, went to school at 26 with a newborn at home and three jobs to pay for it, and walked out with a near-perfect GPA and a path to becoming a CPA. He spent fourteen years as an audit partner advising family businesses, and then did the thing most advisors only talk about. He took the operator's chair himself. The company he chose is Dalen Products, a third-generation, 100% family-owned lawn and garden manufacturer in Knoxville that just crossed 51 years. It started when Neil Caldwell raided his kids' college funds and took a small business loan to build inflatable snakes and, later, the plastic great horned owl you have probably seen in a garden. Dalen has sold 9.3 million of them, and in 1995 NASA bought eighteen to guard a space shuttle from woodpeckers. Bob's real work is the culture. He walked into a place that felt frozen in 1982, time cards written out by hand, morale low, a wall between the office and the floor. His answer was to learn every name, take a lap on the floor every single day, and lead by one rule he states plainly: he worked for a lot of assholes, and he tries hard not to be one. He hires out of halfway houses, has kept six of the seven people he has brought in that way, and is bringing production back from China, now 85% made in Knoxville. He calls the whole project Dalen 2.0, building the next fifty years without breaking the first fifty, and he frames it not as ownership but as stewardship. He did not build this. His job is to hand it back stronger. Key Takeaways Stewardship over ownership. Bob did not build Dalen and does not treat it as his. The goal is to hand a stronger company back to the family and the next generation.Culture is what happens when leadership leaves the room. He rebuilt a broken one by learning names, walking the floor daily, and tearing down the wall between office and shop.Second chances are a hiring strategy. Building relationships with halfway houses gave him loyal, motivated workers and a six-of-seven retention rate.Reshoring is a decision, not a slogan. A new injection molder brought 15% of production back from China, moving Dalen to 85% made in the USA.Nobody wants to work is a myth. People want to work, they want to be treated like human beings, and they want to be told they belong. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Bob's unconventional road 03:07 Icebreaker: the underdog movie 05:50 Success is the only option 06:53 What culture means to Bob 08:42 A hard start in Syracuse 10:03 College at 26 and the two teachers who believed in him 15:13 Becoming a CPA and learning to network 19:01 What ten years of turning wrenches taught him 21:02 From advisor to operator 23:02 Finding Dalen 26:13 Walking into a broken culture 30:47 Leadership is stewardship, not ownership 33:07 Dalen 2.0: building the next fifty years 33:50 Hiring out of halfway houses 42:23 The owl that saved a NASA launch 48:07 Bringing production back to Knoxville 49:25 On the front page of the New York Times 53:40 The next five to ten years 55:39 What he wants to leave the next steward 57:21 Dream big Find Bob LinkedIn: Bob Teska Dalen Products: dalenproducts.com

  4. 21. Juli

    Alex Huckstepp | The Paperwork Tax

    Alex Huckstepp has spent his career where new technology meets the people who make things. A mechanical engineer out of USC who graduated into the wreckage of 2010, he spent the next decade running commercial strategy at four hardware startups in a row: 3D printing, metal additive, robotic forming, composites. All of them fundamentally new ways of making physical things. Then he and his co-founder Benny got tired of begging investors for money to build complex hardware, and went looking for a problem they could solve with software. They found it inside the tens of thousands of small high-mix shops across the country. Before writing a line of code, they spent three months inside twenty to thirty machine shops, trying to be flies on the wall and failing, because curiosity got the better of them. What they learned shapes the best part of this conversation. Shops don't dislike software because they're behind. They dislike it because software has never served them. And work doesn't leave the country over the labor rate anymore. It's energy and materials, it's tariffed machine tools, it's the two or three people in a nine-person shop tied to a desk doing paperwork, and it's the friction of getting a quote out of your local shop when someone overseas will answer the phone. Alex and Jim don't agree on everything, and the episode is better for it. It ends where Alex's work lives: a barbecue and a cooler of beer in a square mile north of the San Jose airport that holds more than a hundred machine shops, most of which have never met each other. Key Takeaways It isn't the labor rate anymore. The gap has narrowed to two or three times on skilled labor. The real drivers are energy, materials, equipment, and overhead.Speed is the product. Engineers source overseas because someone answers. Responsiveness and a firm lead time often beat a lower unit price.Overhead is the quiet killer. In a nine-person shop, two or three people sit at a desk doing paperwork, a ratio you do not see overseas.We should not be tariffing machine tools. If the goal is a domestic base, equipment should be incentivized, not taxed.Ecosystems beat isolation. A hundred shops sit within one square mile near San Jose and most have never met.You can't argue people into the trade. Kids follow visible, successful people in their own communities, not campaigns. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Alex is 02:19 Icebreaker: if your life were a movie 03:43 What culture means to Alex 06:30 Why culture is an alignment of values 08:22 Choosing mechanical engineering 10:03 Graduating into 2010 and the first job 12:43 Four hardware startups in a row 14:55 Why some people are wired for startups 17:49 How Uptool started 22:54 Three months inside thirty machine shops 25:35 Building software shops will actually use 26:20 Why US shops lose work to Asia 29:24 Energy, materials, and tariffed machine tools 30:52 The overhead nobody counts 33:42 Where the hollowing out really started 35:15 The workforce problem underneath it all 37:46 You can't convince people to care 40:42 Why Uptool shows up in person 42:57 A hundred shops in one square mile 45:11 The future: a lot of little SpaceXs 47:30 Where to find Alex Find Alex LinkedIn: Alex Huckstepp Uptool: uptool.com Shop map: usamachineshops.com Catch Uptool at IMTS in September, their first show as a startup, in the software section

  5. 14. Juli

    Todd Drouillard | Buildings as Machines

    Most manufacturing conversations are about the machines. This one is about the building around them. In this episode of the Manufacturing Culture Podcast, host Jim Mayer sits down with Todd Drouillard, licensed architect and principal at HED, one of the country's top science and technology design firms. For twenty-five years, Todd has designed the places where manufacturing actually happens: clean rooms, hydrogen test cells, semiconductor plants, robotics labs. A Detroit native whose father and grandfather worked the steel mills, he explains why lighting and daylight change a shop floor, why a warehouse is usually the wrong home for a production line, how architecture becomes a retention strategy, and why the best factories are buildings that work like machines themselves. Key Takeaways The building is part of the process. Purpose-built factories, labs, and clean rooms are engineered around what happens inside them, and the best of them function like machines themselves.A warehouse is not a factory. Wide open space does not mean it's right for production. The first question is always the process, then the power, the slab, and the steel.Small moves change a shop floor. Lighting, color temperature, painted white structure for light reflectance, and any daylight you can introduce cost little and change how a place feels to work in.Architecture is a retention strategy: safe design, a clean, quiet place to step off the floor, a cafeteria, closer parking. Small things signal that the people inside matter.The building tells the story. A well-made facility gives employees a reason to say I work there and I build things there, and pride follows. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Todd is01:59 Icebreaker: If your life were a movie4:36 What culture means to Todd06:43 Wanting to be an architect at ten years old10:12 The road to HED12:14 Detroit roots, steel mills, and the draw to manufacturing17:04 Buildings as machines17:41 The first thing he looks for on a plant floor18:52 When the building is wrong for the work21:57 What a building does to the people inside it24:07 Detroit, the middle class, and what a factory builds27:27 Architecture as a retention strategy30:12 Doubts, waste, and the things that drive him crazy33:20 The future: robotics, AI, and keeping the human connection36:55 What makes him proud38:04 Defense tech, drones, and R&D spaces40:40 Where to find Todd Find Todd LinkedIn: Todd Drouillard, AIA HED: hed.co

  6. 7. Juli

    Anoosheh Oskouian | Challenging, Difficult, Never Impossible

    Anoosheh Oskouian came to the United States alone at fourteen years old. She had convinced her father to let her leave Iran before she finished high school, the same way she had once convinced her parents to change her birth certificate so she could start school early. She landed in Denver, finished high school at George Washington High, and then the revolution back home turned Iranians into targets overnight. So she did what she has done at every hard moment since: she set her own rules, kept her focus, and moved forward. Decades later, that same resolve is the foundation of Ship & Shore Environmental, the Long Beach company she has built and grown organically for more than twenty-five years. Today, the firm designs and fabricates custom air pollution control systems for manufacturers across the country and around the world, and Anoosheh sits on the South Coast Air Quality Management District committee that helps write the very rules her machines are built to meet. This is a conversation about grit, reinvention, and what it costs to be the only woman CEO in a room full of men. Anoosheh talks about the people who underestimated her, the young engineers she now mentors, the planet she is trying to leave cleaner than she found it, and why, after everything, she still believes the American dream is real. Challenging, of course. Difficult, of course. Impossible, never. Key Takeaways Resilience is a discipline, not a moment. From arriving alone at fourteen to building a business overnight, Anoosheh's story is about deciding to move forward and refusing to be derailed.She bet everything on herself. Draining her 401 (k) to cover payroll and rent for two months, she insisted on doing it on her own, and 25 years of organic growth followed.She writes the rules and builds the solution. Sitting on the SCAQMD committee, Anoosheh helps shape air quality regulations and then engineers custom systems that enable manufacturers to meet them.Clean air has no borders. Her work spans the US and China because pollution migrates, and the goal is a cleaner planet, not a cleaner zip code.Representation changes the room. As the only woman CEO she knows in her field, Anoosheh mentors young women, opens her shop to interns, and proves what is possible by standing in the room and speaking her mind. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and what this show is about00:59 Meet Anoosheh Oskouian and Ship & Shore Environmental03:30 Icebreaker: if your life were a movie05:47 What culture means to Anoosheh08:59 Leaving Iran alone at 1411:31 The revolution, being a target, and going it alone14:25 University of Colorado and a love of chemistry15:49 Fluor Daniel and the road to Long Beach18:30 The overnight bet that started the company20:33 Growing the team and opening in China22:32 What Ship & Shore designs and builds26:58 Inside the process, from assessment to clean air30:39 Writing the rules and building the technology34:57 Being the only woman CEO in the room38:13 Mentoring the next generation41:23 A tour of the shop floor44:03 The future of American manufacturing49:38 Where to find Anoosheh Find Anoosheh LinkedIn: Anoosheh Oskouian Ship & Shore Environmental: shipandshore.com

  7. 3. Juli

    Hexagon's Shop Floor Social Dallas | The Shiny Object vs. the People Who Make It Work

    The Shop Floor Social came to Dallas, and the room was full of people who run the floors. Hosted by Jim Mayer and brought to the community by Hexagon, this live session of the Manufacturing Culture Podcast put three local leaders on the panel: Chase Auker, a quality metrologist at Firefly Aerospace who measures everything from rocket engines to lunar landers; Andy Mears, who leads intelligent factory integration at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Grand Prairie; and Fernando Castaneda, the quality leader at SPM Oil & Gas. The night started where every honest manufacturing conversation starts: what keeps you up at night. The answers came back fast. People. Speed and scale. Schedule. From there, the room worked through the question on everyone's mind: what AI really does on a shop floor today, and the panel was refreshingly grounded in it. AI is a sharp assistant and a strong learning tool, but it's only as good as the data and the people behind it. Garbage in, garbage out. The real skill, they agreed, is knowing how to ask. What makes this session worth the listen is where it lands. Under all the pressure of cost, supply chain, cybersecurity, and a shrinking talent pipeline, every panelist circled back to the same answer. You cannot buy your way out with the bright shiny object. You invest in your people, you fix your process, and you let the technology amplify both. Then the conversation turns to the pipeline itself: why the fix starts in high school rather than the want ads, and why the best recruiter you have is already standing on your floor. This is session one, recorded live in Dallas. Key Takeaways People are still the answer. Across speed, scale, cost, and AI, every panelist came back to the same conclusion: you invest in your people and your process, not just the next machine.AI is only as good as the data behind it. The heavy lifting is structuring the data and learning to prompt well; prompt engineering is the real skill.Cybersecurity shapes everything. From CMMC 2.0 to a buried chip caught in incoming hardware, aerospace and defense shops run their own internal tools and vet every device before it touches the network.The bright, shiny object is a trap. Buying a machine feels safer than betting on a person, but technology without skilled, empowered people never delivers the return.The pipeline starts before college. The fix is to reach kids in high school and middle school, partner with community colleges, and lean on referrals, because your best recruiters already work for you. Chapters 00:00 Welcome to the Shop Floor Social 02:00 Meet the panel: Firefly, Lockheed Martin, and SPM 04:00 What keeps you up at night: people 05:00 Speed and scale, and a 41-month build cycle 08:00 AI as the assistant that remembers everything 11:00 Garbage in, garbage out: the data behind the answer 12:30 Ignorance is a choice: AI as a learning tool 14:00 Building agents that think like you 18:00 Why prompt engineering is the real skill 20:00 Please, thank you, and the drone that fought back 22:00 Capturing the silver tsunami before it leaves 24:00 Cybersecurity, CMMC, and the black box problem 30:00 Good, fast, cheap, and the cost squeeze 32:00 The supply chain is squeezed from both sides 37:00 Bright shiny object syndrome 39:00 People and technology, together 41:00 The leg nobody talks about: process 43:00 The skills gap and fixing the pipeline The Panel Chase Auker, Quality Metrologist, Firefly Aerospace Andy Mears, Intelligent Factory Integration, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Fernando Castaneda, Quality Leader, SPM Oil & Gas Presented by Hexagon

  8. 30. Juni

    Becca Wolfinger | Saving People Headaches and Heartaches

    Becca Wolfinger did not set out to run a machine shop. She figured she would cheer her husband on from the sidelines after he left the military, went to school to become a machinist, and got tired of working for people whose only answer was "we've done it this way for twenty years." Then the website needed building, and the LLC, and the logo, and one by one, Becca did all of it herself. Before long, she was scooping chips, breaking down setups, and learning to make parts on the floor of a renovated 1970s garage in North Carolina. What makes Becca different is not that she built Mill Spec Manufacturing. It's that she refuses to hide any part of how she did it. In a trade built on protecting what you know, she writes and films the mistakes, the crashed sensors, the four o'clock mornings, and the fear of signing a first industrial lease, because she believes the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to stop gatekeeping and hand the next person a map. This is the North Carolina stop in the fifty-state shop series, and it's a conversation about culture in the truest sense: an environment where people feel free to be themselves without judgment. Becca and Jim get into why she started, why she shares, the community she's building shop by shop and meeting by meeting, what it felt like to be trusted with work that matters, and the one thing she wants to be remembered for. Key Takeaways Anti-gatekeeping is the strategy. Becca shares her failures publicly because the fastest way to rebuild American manufacturing is to help the next shop owner go further and faster than she did.Authenticity is a competitive advantage. Showing the crashes and the hard mornings validates every machinist who has made a mistake and makes the trade feel reachable.Community is infrastructure. From the Machining Summit to her own monthly manufacturing meetings, Becca builds third spaces where shop owners trade work, tooling, and support rather than competing in isolation.Small shops rebuild capacity. The mom-and-pop shops with fewer than ten employees are where offshored capacity comes back, one garage and one Tormach at a time.Education is the next chapter. Becca wants to spotlight schools, bring manual machines back, and teach the basics the curriculum skips, because everyone starts somewhere. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and what this show is about 00:57 Meet Becca Wolfinger and Mill Spec Manufacturing 02:54 Icebreaker: if your life were a movie 05:38 What culture means to Becca 06:18 Why she started a machine shop 09:30 Why she shows the mistakes, not just the wins 11:03 Saving people headaches and heartaches 12:18 Her most memorable failure 13:43 Why rebuilding American manufacturing matters 16:24 How do we get more people to start shops 19:33 The power of community 23:39 What made the Machining Summit different 26:47 Building community in North Carolina 28:11 Being a mom and "balancing" it all 29:11 The win she's most proud of 31:16 The future of Mill Spec and Becca 35:35 The mark she wants to leave 36:25 Where to find Becca Find Becca LinkedIn: Rebecca Wolfinger Instagram: @rebecca.wolfinger Mill Spec Manufacturing: mil-spec-manufacturing.com

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Manufacturing is more than the products we make; it’s the people who make the parts. On The Manufacturing Culture Podcast, I sit down with leaders, innovators, and everyday heroes to uncover the stories behind their journeys in the industry. We talk about where they started, how they’ve grown, and the challenges they’ve overcome along the way. Each episode brings a unique perspective; some practical, some inspiring, and all rooted in the human side of manufacturing. From lessons learned on the shop floor to big ideas shaping the future, it’s all about the people who make it happen. Because at the heart of every company are the people who work there, and every person has a story.

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    Jim Mayer
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    2023 - 2026
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