Lean Legends | Paul Nolan & Paul Vallely | Adman Steel Sheds & Kukoon Rugs
Paul Nolan (Adman Steel Sheds) and Paul Vallely (Kukoon Rugs) are “Lean Maniacs” from the island of Ireland.
In this episode, we talk about:
Why lean was the answer they were looking for.
Making 30-years of progress in 5-years
How to convert your people to lean-thinking
Why doing tours of other businesses is so important
And the power of trusting your people (not to steal a pair of gloves!)
Check it out!
Links:
Kukoon Rugs: https://www.kukoonrugs.com/
Adman Steel Sheds: https://admansteelsheds.com/
Book a Lean Made Simple Tour: https://www.leanmadesimple.com/book-a-tour
Welcome to Lean Made Simple: a podcast for people who want to change their business and their lives one step at a time. I’m Ryan Tierney from Seating Matters, a manufacturing company from Limavady, Northern Ireland that employs 60+ people. Almost ten years ago, I came across this thing called “lean” and it transformed my life… now I want to share this message with as many people as possible.
This podcast unpacks our learnings, lessons and principles developed over the last decade in a fun, conversational way that will hopefully empower you on your own business journey — whether you’ve been doing lean for years or are just starting out!
Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform by searching “lean made simple.”
Thanks and all the best.
— Ryan Tierney
Magic Moment: Building Trust & Culture
Full Transcription of Episode
Paul Vallely (00:00):
The last five years we've made 25 or 30 years worth of progress. We now have a business which is bigger, more efficient, more profitable. There's not many things in life that give you that, kind of, mix of energy and freedom.
Matt (00:11):
Guys, welcome back to Lean Made Simple, a podcast all about transforming your business and your life one step at a time, one improvement at a time. Paul's, both of you, great to see you. We've got two Pauls today, two very, very interesting businesses both on the island of Ireland. We've got sheds, we've got rugs, we've got me looking like a mug, just getting to know these guys and hearing a bit more about their journey. So We're at the Lean Summit, we're live. This is our breakfast cup of coffee. We're trying to earmark these interviews, because it was like, "Why was there wine in the video last night?" So these guys are the early risers and just a little kind of insight into who these guys are. This is really simple, but it stood out to me. I text them, I was like, "Look guys, would you like to do a podcast?"
(00:51):
"Yeah, yeah."
(00:52):
"Now, I hate to make it so early, but could you do half seven?" And both of them were like, "Yeah, no bother at all. Do you want six, 30? We can do six 30 as well." And I was like, "Who are these guys?" Never ever would anyone do that. So, the Lean community is awesome and I really appreciate you taking a couple of minutes to chat with us. Appreciate it.
Paul Vallely (01:09):
Thank you.
Matt (01:09):
So just starting off, give me a little bit about how you got into Lean, like where'd you first come across it and what was your life like before and afterwards?
Paul Nolan (01:21):
I think we knew a bit about it. We had an awareness of it before we found out about Two Second Lean, I suppose. We had been trying to implement it. We'd been seeking help from outside as well, but we weren't really making any progress or we didn't know. So, one of our suppliers said, "You need to get this book called Two Second Lean, Paul Akers." And then he also said, "You need to go and see this company called Seating Matters." And we went to see our supplier first and that was our first introduction to a morning meeting and then that kind of blew us away and that was from there I suppose.
Matt (02:01):
Plus?
Paul Vallely (02:02):
For us, so we started Lean back in 2018. Pre that I probably always had a little bit of OCD let's call it, or for want of a better phrase. I always liked things when it's done in a certain way but had to built the business to maybe 30 people and how I wanted things done and how the business done things were very, very different. The gap was big. We had a local recruitment company we always worked with and they kept one of the guys in a two semi-retired at the time. He kept saying, "You need to go to this place up in Limavady. It's phenomenal. Every time we go back it gets better." The word "lean" was never mentioned because this chap, I knows he's a sales guy and Lean's not in his repertoire but he just kept saying, "Each time we went back it got better and better."
(02:41):
And my dismissive attitude at that time was, "Pat, you're 70 and semi retired. You've time to go up to Limavady. I don't have this time. I'm too busy putting out fires in my business." And then he eventually one day sent me an improvements video and it was Seating Matters, March 2018 improvements for the month and the video just absolutely blew me away. As soon as I seen it, I thought, "Wow, can people be that engaged in the business? Can a business be that good?" And the journey kicked on from there. I went to Seating Matters in April and then the whole Lean journey for us just took off.
Matt (03:14):
So, with your shed company, what were some of the first kind of signs that you're like, "Here, this thing is actually really going to work for us?"
Paul Nolan (03:23):
We knew from reading the book because we had been trying to get help implementing Lean, but we couldn't do it. It was too complicated. We couldn't figure it out and then when we read the book we just knew this is simple, we can get this. But it probably took us... It was about a year after that before we went to Seating Matters. So, we didn't go early enough. So we struggled for that first year and then it was only when we went to Seton Matters and I think we reached out to Tom Hughes and Tom's book, Improvement starts Today... It was only when we started talking to those people and going to visit them is when we really made progress. But we knew from the minute we read the book we knew this is simple, we just do this.
Matt (04:09):
Just like in your bones you're like, "This is the answer we've been looking for?"
Paul Nolan (04:12):
Yeah, we can do this. And we had watched all the videos and stuff as well and we knew by watching the videos we can do this.
Matt (04:17):
What was it about coming up and seeing it for your own eyes that helped the penny drop a little bit further?
Paul Nolan (04:23):
Again, I'm a slow learner so it took me about four visits before. I was there a few times and we kept bringing people back. But, no, it's just you ask a question, glad to give you an answer. You can ring them up and, "Here, how did you do this?" And they'll tell you. They spent all this time making these mistakes and we made loads of mistakes. Tons of mistakes. But everyone is willing to share.
Matt (04:49):
Yeah. What about you? What were some of the early improvements that you were like, "Oh, this is the ticket. We've just got the Willy Wonka chocolate factory thing in our back pocket here."
Paul Vallely (05:00):
Yeah, it's funny to look back and see how small they were by comparison, but just seeing a shadow board go up and probably actually maybe taking them back a step. The things that really stick out for me looking back isn't the improvements, but it was the people that were making them. So, I brought the most senior people in the business up here because I came up, brought a couple of people, we came back, started preaching the gospel, got a lot of blank faces and bit by bit realized, "Okay, everyone's going to come up and see Seating Matters to really kick this off."
(05:31):
So, as each set of people come up, they came back, started preaching the gospel. Once we started to see improvements from people who hadn't been to Seating Matters, but they were starting to hear and feel it from us and starting to engage in the morning meeting, then those are the breakthrough moments where I remember looking at our Lean WhatsApp group and thinking, "Oh, Alice has made an improvement. Well, Johnny's made an improvement. Those guys haven't been to Seating Matters. That's a huge step forward." And that's when the journey really started to take off.
Matt (05:57):
Yeah. So, I'm really curious, Paul... It's like which Paul are we talking about here? I should have gave you guys cool nicknames before we started. Shed Paul, you guys not only make the sheds but you also fit them. Has this kind of idea of lean and contingency improved something? How has that changed the fitting of the sheds? Have you guys been able to speed that part up as well?
Paul Nolan (06:19):
You're just so much more conscious of waste. So, part of the morning meeting is just to teach waste and we don't have that same connection with our fitters because they're obviously out fitting but they know. It's been going on long enough that they know what the wastes are. And we do have a meeting with them once a week, but once you start to see, once you learn to identify what a waste is, then they start to see it. So, no, it does. It's even to how we would load our panels to what we need first when we get to site. It's all... People are starting to think about eliminating waste, so it does definitely plays out.
Matt (06:57):
Any big improvements that stick out to you to be more specific? If you cast your mind back, whether it's far in the past or recently, is there improvement that you're like, "Mate that just continues to give me so much satisfaction every time I see it in play?"
Paul Vallely (07:11):
Yeah, there's probably a couple. So, the first massive improvement, let's say, that really changed the game for us was an improvement we call Johnny Five. So, anyone who's seen Short Circuit, it's an improvement that ended up looking a little bit like Johnny Five in Short Circuit. So, it's a distribution business. The operation side of the business is distribution. You bring product in and you ship it out again. Traditionally the shipping out process is a two-step process. So you go around picking a whole selection of products, you take it down to the packing station and you pack it down there and you add the label and put it into the shipping container. At that point, one of the guy who's our warehouse manager, now he's actually here at the Lean Summit, Frankie, he managed to turn that into a one step process. So, you pick and pack at the same time.
(07:55):
So, as you're picking, you're scanning the product, you're adding the shipping label and you're putting it into that courier's shipping box. So, it's not touched again. So the product is touched once on the way out through the business and that outbound process takes up over 60% of all of our operational time. So turning that from a two-step process to a one-step process and then of course refining it, that happened probably two and a half, three years ago and it's been refined multiple times since then. But every time I see a Johnny Five going around our picking aisles, you just have those little moments where you're like, "Wow, that's something." And it was genuinely, probably... And I feel like I'm in maybe a confession here. When he first came to me with the idea, I was kind of like, "It's not going to work. It's not going to work. But look, if you fancy it, go for it."
(08:39):
And that's really... The old me would've said, "It's not going to work full period." That would've been it, kind of ended, but now Frankie and the team made it happen. And in terms of, I could start quoting you operational numbers and efficiencies, but it's completely changed our business. So, that's the first thing and that's maybe the more tangible one. What we do now, as a business, we really focus a lot of our contention improvement around data and managing data through the business. And we have a tool now built in Power BA that tells us today how our trading margin was right down to the product level yesterday. So it tells us obviously our gross profit but also our shipping cost, our advertising cost, our potential returns percentage based on recent history and can generate basically a net profit for us per day that, whenever we get to the end of month, it's rarely more than 5% out. So, it's [inaudible 00:09:31] piece of data, it's [inaudible 00:09:32] piece of work. It's not your traditional lean as you would see it, but what it's done for us as a business is incredible.
Matt (09:36):
Very cool. Any improvements that go for yourself?
Paul Nolan (09:40):
It's the really simple stuff. It's the really, really simple stuff. Interruptions is our biggest challenge throughout the entire business. People interrupting, but we have a little store room. Most businesses probably have it, but this is where all the small kind of high value items... And then it goes down to gloves and earmuffs and glasses and all this type of stuff. But we always used to have this locked and all day long, every day, people were just coming, "Can I have the key to the storeroom? I need a pair of gloves." We were kind of saying, "Oh, we should just open the door and leave it open. Let people get what they want." And we were kind of saying, "They're going to clean it out. There'll be nothing left."
Matt (10:24):
People are walking out, telling it to you, sevens with pallets of gloves. What do you need them, four or five?"
Paul Nolan (10:28):
We stock up like they're going to run out. We get more. And it used to waste so much time during the day, people coming and asking. Two or three people in the office would have keys maybe and all day long, every day people were coming looking for the keys. So, those interruptions. And we probably did that with the intention of saving that interruption. But what we actually realized is that when you extend that trust, that builds up a lot of rapport with staff. The door's open, just go get what you want. The only thing, just sign for it. That's it. So it's those little improvements that you make them with the intention is doing one thing, we were going to save the interruptions. But you actually realize that when you give trust, most people devalue that. So it builds that culture, it reinforces the culture even more. So those are the type of ones that kind of surprised us. We were full sure everything would go missing, there would be nothing. And it doesn't happen.
Matt (11:35):
Crazy. So if you kind of think back, put yourself in the shoes of maybe some people listening and watching, so they maybe are on the fence about starting Lean. They've maybe just started or they've kind of fallen off the bandwagon because hit their first hurdle. What advice would you give to those people who are kind of in those early stages to move forward with us?
Paul Vallely (11:57):
So, first of all, every business is at different stages in different places. So generic advice can be a dangerous topic. But for me it was very tough. The first year was very tough and those times when you could hear crickets and you weren't getting that engagement and getting that energy. But we've been in business 17 years and I view the 12 years pre Lean as kind of prehistoric. It is genuine. It's going to be hell.
Matt (12:25):
Yeah, before lean.
Paul Vallely (12:27):
Yeah. But it genuinely is true. And the last five years, we've made probably 25 or 30 years worth of progress. Well, sorry, I shouldn't even say that. We would never have made this level of progress if we were in business for 50 years. So, we now have a business which is bigger, more efficient, more profitable, is less in need of my time than ever before. And I guess rather than giving a generic specific piece of advice, all I can say is, if you can get into the weeds, get through the morning meetings, speak to the lean community, get that advice, whatever you need, keep trucking, keep going, keep getting through the hard times, as you come out the other side of it, one of the topics me and Paul spoke about at the bar last night was, do you want to do a four-day week as we do in Cocoon or do you want to do a six-hour day as Paul does in Adman Sheds.
(13:13):
There's a five sixes and there's not many businesses or business events I go to where the business owners are sitting around at our age, in our early forties, talking about do you want to do a four-day week, do you want to do a six-hour day, do you want to go home and collect the kids? And Lean gives you that and there's not many things in life that give you that kind of mix of energy and freedom.
Matt (13:34):
Yeah. Guys behind the desk, producers, make a note of that question because that's a really interesting one. Would you rather have a four-day a week or a six-hour day? Because actually it'd be good for even the three of us to chat about that, because that's really, really interesting. Wrapping up, something that's come up multiple times in your story here is the part of the community. So, I kind of feel like I want everyone in the world to be a part of this. Do you know what I mean? I'm like, if business owners could tap into What's going on literally behind this wall, I just feel like everything would change. How would you encourage someone? How do you break into the Lean community? How do you become a part of it? How do you get around these interesting people?
Paul Nolan (14:14):
I think you just reach out, connect, go visit other companies. I definitely think... We didn't make any progress until we started visiting Seating Matters. We didn't make any progress until we started talking to other people who were trying to implement Lean. We only made progress when we started talking to other companies that were doing it and we learned from their mistakes.
Paul Vallely (14:36):
Yeah, magic.
Paul Nolan (14:37):
Yeah.
Paul Vallely (14:38):
I'd echo that. Getting talking to the group, it just gives you that lift of energy. There's a lot of down days, but you're on the Lean, the Iron WhatsApp group where you have other companies and there's not one single company that's part of the community that wouldn't answer your message very, very quickly and get back to you. It's a wonderful support group.
Matt (14:54):
Class. Awesome. Where can people find you?
Paul Nolan (14:59):
LinkedIn.
Matt (15:00):
Yeah?
Paul Vallely (15:01):
Yeah, LinkedIn for me as well.
Paul Nolan (15:02):
It's probably the quickest way. Yeah.
Matt (15:03):
Awesome. We'll put links to both these guys' LinkedIn in the description. And I'll give you wee clink on that.
Paul Nolan (15:03):
I don't know if we'll hear it.
Matt (15:12):
Very, very cool. Thank you so much for spending the time and I really appreciate the insights. There were some gold in there.
Paul Nolan (15:15):
Thank you.
Paul Vallely (15:16):
Super. Thanks, man.
Matt (15:17):
Thank you so much for listening and watching and you can check out some more of these quick conversations with people like the two Pauls here at the Lean Summit. Just check out the Lean Made simple YouTube page or Spotify page or website or wherever it is that you consume your content. We'll be delighted to see you there. Thanks guys. Really appreciate it.