Cody Cecchetto Podcast Transcript
Cody Cecchetto joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Cody Cecchetto. As the engineering and design services manager, Cody Cecchetto skillfully oversees the day-to-day operations with a focus on efficiency, quality, and team development. As a leader, Cody emphasizes a culture that fosters growth and development, placing a significant emphasis on automation and reducing the overall cognitive load of his team.
His mantra is to achieve more work with less effort. Creating an environment that supports the professional and personal advancement of team members. Cody’s impact on the engineering and design services team is evident through the development of various systems that have been efficiently managed, queue loads, enhance productivity, and reduce non conformances. Together with a leadership team of supervisors and leads, Cody and his group have streamlined operations while ensuring a high standard of quality.
Well, good afternoon, Cody. Welcome to the show!
Cody Cecchetto: Hey, really glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate this and I appreciate you making the time.
We’re just talking about how cold it is. Up there in Eastern Canada, I know it’s sometimes a challenge to navigate the cold, let alone get on a podcast early in the day or late in the day to do this sort of thing, but I really, really appreciate it. And Cody, we’re going to jump right into your questions here.
Let’s talk about Protocase. It’s well known for its mastery of mass custom manufacturing people might think they know what that means. But to Protocase and proto space, it’s something very unique and special. Can you explain it from your perspective? What’s it all about?
Cody Cecchetto: Yeah, absolutely. So mass custom is really the DNA of everything that we do here at Protocase, especially in the department that I’m responsible for, which is the engineering and design services department.
And I’ll explain how that works for us in just a little bit. But so, you think about a mass production facility. So, picture an automobile factory, think about how they produce thousands of the same vehicle. Something like a headlight housing may come down the assembly line and the same LED light bulb goes in the same spot, you know, one after another until that quote is hit.
So, what we do here is a bit different than that, but it also shares a bit of the same idea. So, we have two things that really define mass custom for us. And those two things are what we call work elements and parameters. So here in our production facilities, every single piece of machinery has an operating procedure.
So, this is what the operators use every day to set up their machine and use it to add value to a physical part. So, work elements are those steps within that process and procedure that never change. So, let’s use our powder coating station as a very simple example. So, every part that requires a powder coat finish is done the exact same way.
The production operator retrieves the parts, he hangs them, you know, they may clean out the powder coating gun, load the powder, and begin to spray at a set distance away from the part, you know, until that part is fully coated. These are the same steps used every single time a pair is powder coated, but there’s one thing that changes each time, and that’s the color of the powder coat.
So, this color is what we call the parameter in this case. It’s the variable or input that changes every time. So, these parameters come directly from my department, from working with our client’s requirements. So, a parameter can be anything custom on a job. It can be the material being used. It could be a certain length that we need to bend a flange to.
Could be a certain fastener that gets installed into a specific hole, or in this case, you know, the powder coat color. Every 1 of our production stations are set up this way. So, the work elements are the how and the parameters are the what. So, my department is solely responsible for taking customer requirements, breaking them down into parameters, building a sort of blueprint on how to manufacture the part and then providing that to our production floor.
So, by separating these two very distinct features of our work, we’re able to add, you know, a certain level of control. It also allows us to simplify how we train our operators and how we perform our tasks. So mass custom is really present in everything that we do here.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I didn’t know a whole lot about mass custom, you know, when I heard about it before, but this is amazing that you’re able to impact this for our audience. A lot of times we have folks in our audience that are, whether they’re an entrepreneur or a technologist, we get to learn some things about some innovative manufacturing techniques. And I appreciate you sharing that, Cody.
So, Cody with a client base that includes major names like Boeing, Google and NASA. What do you believe is the key to managing such a diverse and high-profile clientele?
Cody Cecchetto: Sure. So, I think there’s really a couple of really key things that need to be done too in order to manage those types of high profile companies.
Number 1, I think for us, it is definitely customer experience. So, we really do try to give our customers the best experience possible when they order from us. You know, this comes down from the 1st time you phone in. You speak to real humans who care about the work you do. They’re friendly. They want to develop a relationship with you.
You know, you’re taking care of the entire way through the order process. And once my team gets involved, we’re very good at providing design for manufacturing advice, you know, just to ensure that your parts are going to work exactly as you intended them to. And I think that extra care really does go a long way with some of those companies.
The second most important key, I think, is how quickly we’re able to turn around these parts. So, companies like Boeing and NASA, you know, they work quickly. Their projects and requirements are always changing. They’re always needing physical parts in their hands for testing as quickly as possible to be able to proceed, you know, with their own internal or external project timelines.
I think that’s where Protocase and ProtoSpace are really at the top of the industry. So, we’re using our mass custom way of thinking. Having a very fast and efficient engineering and production team, we’re able to provide quality parts to these guys at a very quick turnaround, I think goes a really long way when it comes to managing projects.
So, you think about a person managing a project at some of these high profile companies, you know, they want a supplier they can rely on to get parts correctly and efficiently. And I think that’s really where we shine.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome and thank you and I know a lot of people have talked a lot of people in the supply chain and from procurement all the way to the manufacturing side and it’s always been a challenge and a lot of times a delayed product holds up a major project, so I appreciate your insights on that.
And Cody, Protocase has a significant focus on custom electronic enclosures with unmatched speed and service. What challenges do you face in maintaining these standards? And how do you overcome them?
Cody Cecchetto: Yeah, I mean, as with most places, I think maintaining a high level of standards can definitely come with challenges.
We’ve, we certainly face a lot of challenges over the years. This place has grown so much in the 9 years that I’ve been here. Thanks. Keeping up with that growth year after year, it was definitely difficult times, you know, you think about staffing and scheduling and strategically trying to tackle large amounts of incoming work.
I think 1 of the biggest things we’ve done to overcome that specific challenge was it was definitely investing in our training department. So, we have an extremely efficient training program that we put our people through. We’ve managed to break it down into very small chunks of training at a time.
So that new employees, when they come in the door, are ready to hit the floor and start processing work within a week or 2. So they gain points by working on certain complexities of work and maintaining good quality. And then once they’re ready to level up, then they go back for another round of training that allows them to work on a higher complexity work.
So that kind of keeps our people engaged, gives them a level of control and gives them access to a kind of skill tree that you might see in a video game, for example. So, besides that, I think there’s something to be said about the challenges that just come naturally with doing so much custom work. You know, you’re very rarely working on the same job twice.
You have to adapt and change your way of thinking when switching between tasks. Thankfully, we have a great team of programs here that specifically help my team with different levels of automation. You know, we try to simplify much of our tasks and the repeatable work elements, as I mentioned before. So, making sure everybody that walks in our door understands that concept is really important to our success as an organization.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m sure that you leverage all types of, you know, different process improvement methodologies as well as looking at some of the technologies as well to improve that efficiency. So, I appreciate the share Cody and Cody. Last question of the day. As someone deeply involved in the technical and design aspects of Protocase, how do you see emerging technologies influence influencing future product development and customer needs?
Cody Cecchetto: So that’s a great question. So, it’s something that I have to think about, you know, quite often in my position. So, my team and specific bears probably the heaviest cognitive load in the company. So, automation is becoming a bigger and bigger part of part of our job. So, I mentioned earlier that that customer experience is extremely important to us.
So being able to cut out some of those monotonous mistake prone tasks, but still maintain that level of human touch is critical. So yeah. We use SOLIDWORKS as our main CAD or computer aided drafting software. So, we’re, we’re always trying to develop new macros. I can handle those mistake prone tasks that take up a lot of brain power, such as, you know, counting the number of fasteners on the parts or measuring the sheet metal flat pattern size to make sure that they’re going to fit in our machines, all those things that we have to verify to make sure that the parts meet our manufacturing constraints.
So, taking away or automating those tasks frees up brain power. It allows our team to focus on the more important things, you know, the design attention. Ensuring that all the customer requirements are met. Another thing that’s been really growing in the industry lately is the use of AI. So, we’re still in the very early stages of trying to figure out how that fits within our business model.
But for a production facility, you know, we invest in new machinery all the time. So, things like programmable press breaks. A new wet finishing machine that, you know, removes sharp edges and applies a nice aesthetic grain finish at the same time. A new laser marker, a new ink film machine. We’re always trying to stay on top of the changes in the industry so that we can meet the requests of our customers.
And if a customer requests something that we don’t currently offer, you know, we put it into a hopper and we measure the need for it on a regular basis. This allows us to make strategic decisions on when to implement some of these offerings and ultimately give our customers what they need.
Brian Thomas: Thank you and thank you for highlighting some of the processes and, and some of the technology and machinery that you utilize there to make the process obviously more efficient and keep that high quality there as well.
I appreciate the, the share, Cody, for sure. And Cody, the last thing of the day, I always like to let you know it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Cody Cecchetto: Thank you very much, Brian. I appreciate it.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Cody Cecchetto Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
