Lean Built: Manufacturing Freedom

This week, Jay and Andrew talk about Andrew's recent election victory and what it looks like to bring lean thinking into local government. They get into the importance of knowing the right people, solving problems close to home, and making small improvements that actually matter. Then it's back to the shop, where Jay shares how a $7,500 investment brought an underused Haas VF4 back into full produ...

How do you grow a machine shop without losing sight of what makes the business worth running in the first place? In this episode, Andrew and Jay discuss the relationship between short-term goals and long-term growth, exploring machine utilization, shop rates, unattended machining, and the financial decisions that shape a company’s future.  They dig into the economics of lights-out manufacturing, t...

Jay and Andrew kick things off with a spirited disagreement over Jay’s decision to take a palm sander to his 1977 Fender Precision Bass. From there, the conversation turns to Andrew’s latest adventures cutting 4140 steel on the Matsuura, Jay’s big announcement about his new Haas UMC 500 with a 27-pallet pool, and the importance of choosing equipment that actually makes sense for your business. The...

What do flying tiny homes, CNC machines, electric guitars, and the Tesla Roadster have in common? More than you might think. In this episode, Jay and Andrew cover a lot of ground, beginning with the challenges of moving a 19,000-pound tiny home over a house with a massive crane. That experience sparks a conversation about professionalism, customer service, and why manufacturers should pay more att...

This week, Jay and Andrew talk about finding the right balance between speed, efficiency, and quality in the machine shop. After catching up on Jay’s experiment with working remotely during a family vacation, the conversation turns to used tool holders, the hidden costs of excessive tool changes, and some unforgettable machine crashes. They share stories of broken pull studs, destroyed spindles, a...

Jay and Andrew talk through the shop decisions that look wrong on paper but make sense once you consider the whole system. That means knowing when excess inventory is costing you more than it is worth, why cheap equipment can sometimes be exactly the right equipment, and when spending money now saves far more expensive time later. They also dig into 3D printing, toolholding, material choices, and...

What happens when your business grows to the point where you no longer know everything happening inside it? Jay and Andrew talk about the strange transition from doing everything yourself to building a team that can make good decisions without you. They get into delegation, giving employees room to improve processes, knowing when production needs to take priority, and why good employees eventually...

Jay and Andrew are back from IMTS 2026 with sore feet, too much espresso, and a lot to think about. They compare notes on what actually stood out at the show, from higher-density workholding and spindle-gripper automation to pallet pools, CMMs, in-process probing, and the surprising lack of AI hype on the machining floor. But the bigger question is what any of it is actually worth to a working sho...

Andrew and Jay are getting ready for IMTS and talking through what they actually want to find when they get there. The conversation starts with high-density workholding and the tradeoffs between flexibility, access, and optimization, then moves into 3D printing, shop organization, prototyping, and the difference between looking organized and actually improving flow. They also talk automation and A...

AI is starting to change the shop in ways that go far beyond ChatGPT. Andrew and Jay compare notes on the AI tools they are actually using, from automating invoices and administrative work to the possibility of simply describing a part and having AI build a 3D-printable model. They talk about where Autodesk Fusion’s AI tools are today, why learning CAD may look very different in a few years, and w...

Andrew recently sold an underutilized CNC lathe, which raises a bigger question: when an investment does not work out as planned, was the money wasted? How do you gauge what value you got out of it, even in learning? Andrew and Jay discuss knowing when to experiment, when to hire expertise instead of learning everything yourself, and why good business owners need to understand what they should and...

What happens when the systems meant to make your shop more efficient start creating more complexity? Can automation be dangerous? When a system works reliably, how do you keep human checks from becoming mindless? When should something live on a checklist, and when should it simply be automated? And what happens when you keep stacking new solutions on top of problems that have already been solved?...

What does a real lean shop look like when the cameras aren’t hiding the mess? In this episode of Lean Built, Jay Pierson goes solo to break down a behind-the-scenes day at Pierson Workholding...and some of the misconceptions people have about lean manufacturing. A lean operation isn’t necessarily spotless, effortless, or perfectly optimized. Sometimes two guys wrapping a pallet is actually the rig...

If you’re heading to IMTS 2026, don’t spend three days wandering around looking at machines you could have watched on YouTube. In this episode, Andrew and Jay share their best advice for machine shop owners who want to get real value out of IMTS, from crafting a better elevator pitch and making the right connections to finding hidden capacity gains in the tooling, workholding, and processes surrou...

Change is inevitable, but how do you get through it without losing your culture? From improving systems and giving honest feedback to hiring the right people and knowing when someone is no longer the right fit, Andrew and Jay share lessons they’ve learned from change over the years. They also dive into why continual improvement matters, how to create a team that’s willing to adapt, and why great l...

This week, Andrew and Jay dive into one of the most overlooked competitive advantages in business: simplicity. Inspired by Stuart Brand’s The Maintenance of Everything , they explore why every system naturally drifts toward chaos, and why leaders should must eliminate it. Along the way they discuss why simple systems outperform complicated ones over the long run, the surprising leadership lessons...

This week, Andrew and Jay are back from vacation and comparing notes on what it takes to unplug without losing momentum. They talk about the transition back into work, why deleting emails can be more productive than answering them, and the systems they rely on to keep their businesses running while they’re away. They then shift into leadership and communication through the lens of Surrounded by Id...

This week, Jay and Andrew treating vendors like partners, and why that pays off. They also dive into the evolution of their daily morning meetings, sharing how they’re constantly tweaking the format to make those few minutes more meaningful for their teams. Finally, they tackle AI in manufacturing. Where does it actually save time? Where does it make people worse at thinking? And how do you use it...

What if one of the fastest ways to improve your machine shop is walking through someone else’s? In this solo episode, Andrew shares lessons from recent shop tours, including visits to manufacturers in Japan and Toyota Material Handling in Columbus, Indiana. He explains why every shop owner and manufacturing leader should regularly visit other facilities, shamelessly borrow great ideas, and expose...

Andrew shares how a simple magnetic tag meant to prevent a security mistake failed, not because the idea was bad, but because the process wasn’t complete. From there, Andrew and Jay explore Kanban systems, physical signals, mistake-proofing, and why the best systems don’t rely on memory. Along the way, Andrew and Jay trade stories about forgotten garage doors, rusting cast iron, Toyota-inspired fi...

A single drop of coolant shut down an overnight production run that should have been making parts for hours. Nothing crashed or was broken, yet the machine stopped, production stopped, and the schedule slipped. That small failure leads to a bigger discussion about one of the hardest lessons in manufacturing and business: the more optimization you pursue, the more opportunities you create for failu...

Andrew returns from Japan with 15 lessons that challenged the way he thinks about leadership, training, standards, and continuous improvement. These include thoughts on how leaders accidentally become bottlenecks, why standards drift over time, and what it means to build a culture that surfaces problems instead of burying them.

What happens when an iconic brand starts fighting its own fans? This week, Andrew and Jay discuss Fender’s controversial cease-and-desist campaign against Strat-style guitar builders and discuss the difference between protecting intellectual property and damaging brand loyalty. What can businesses learn from the backlash? The conversation then shifts to Andrew’s recent trip to Japan, where he spen...

Jay welcomes John Grimsmo of Grimsmo Knives for a wide-ranging conversation on leadership, manufacturing culture, lean systems, and the Six Types of Working Genius assessment. Fresh off implementing the framework with his family and team, John shares how understanding “working genius” helped relieve pressure, clarify leadership frustrations, and reshape the way he thinks about people, meetings, an...

Is a good leader a dictator? In this episode, Jay and Andrew wrestle with the tension between decisive leadership and collaborative growth. What starts as a customer support question turns into a deep conversation about lean manufacturing, parenting, company culture, value stream mapping, and the hidden danger of “at some point” processes. They unpack why servant leadership is often misunderstood,...