Designing Efficient Yards And Door Shops For Speed, Safety, And Growth: Scott Morrison, Do it Best

Episode Transcript
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Stefanie Couch (00:00):
You get in there, you see the problems, you
diagnose, and then you start tomap it out.

Scott Morrison (00:04):
I can help them to break it down into smaller
steps, analyze it, and then say,okay, here's the best way to go
forward.
Where are the machines today?
And what are the footprints?
Uh, what are the steps, thedance steps that go from machine
to machine?
And that's when you start toreally dig into the to the
issue.

When you think about having a machine operator
on a door shop assembly line,and that person is having to
walk 20, 30 steps to go getinserts for that door, if you
could make that where they turnaround and grab it without
taking a step, how many hours ina week could that save?
I mean, it's a lot of time.

Absolutely.
If you just move it half thedistance, it's the effectiveness
of you're going twice as fast.
Working with one of the do itbest members by implementing the
system, they're saving 90minutes per day.
The impact on that is lessovertime.
The trucks are coming back, andthey're loaded for the next
day.
And so now the next day at 6 30in the morning, 7 o'clock,

(00:55):
they're ready to go.
That's a good winning twice.

Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast, the
playbook for buildingunmistakable brands that grow,
lead, and last in the builtworld.
I'm Stephanie Couch, thefounder of Grit Blueprint.
And I'm a lifelong buildingindustry insider.
I was raised here, built mycareer here, and now my team and

(01:19):
I help others win here.
The truth is, you can be thebest option in your space and
still lose to someone else whosimply shows up better and more
consistently.
Each week on the GritBlueprint, I'm going to show you
how to stand out, earn trust,and turn your brand into a
competitive advantage thatlasts.

(01:41):
If you're ready to be seen,known, chosen, and become
unmistakable, you're in theright place.
Let's get started.
Welcome to the Grit BlueprintPodcast.
I'm your host, Stephanie Couch,and I'm here today on site at
the Do It Best Market with myfriend Scott Morrison.
Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

And you are here in a really cool role that
actually you came into in thespring.
So this is your second market.

Right.

Tell me a little bit about what you do at Do It
Best.
And you've got 40 years ofoperational excellence
background.
So tell me about that.

I'm an engineer, uh, industrial engineer, and uh
have worked uh in manufacturingquality operations, and really
the last 20 plus years has beenmostly consulting, and I'm doing
for do it best exactly what Idid as an independent
consultant.
Uh going to lumber yards, uhdoor shops, trust plants, wall

(02:37):
panel plants, and I help themget far more efficient.

That's awesome.
I've walked a lot of doorshops, and I've walked a lot of
lumberyards, and I know you havetoo.
Yep.
They're not always the pristineorganized beauty that they
could be.
Sometimes they are panicinducing uh from a safety
perspective and all of that.
And I know there's a lot thatcan be done.
So tell me a little bit abouthow you're actually working with
members and what are some ofthe most common problems that

(03:02):
you see when you do talk tomembers or walk a lumberyard.

This type of work is almost always more
effective when it's on site.
Yeah.
Um so a member, a do-it-bestmember will call me, I'll go in,
um, we will map out what I callthe current state.
And uh they will tell me wartsand all what all the problems
are.
And it's really important to behonest because if you don't

(03:28):
start with a problem statementthat's accurate, you're gonna
solve the wrong problem or notsolve the problem at all.

Does it help to uh to act like you're better
than you are?
Because then, like you said,it's not it's really just a
waste of everyone's time.

It is.
I I always go in as I'm not Idon't have the answer.
Yeah.
And uh a lot a lot of timespeople at first at first think,
hey, you're just gonna come inhere and just tell me what to
do.
And it nothing could be furtherfrom the truth.
I always have to get all theinput from them on what the
problems are.
They're the people that arethere 40, 40 plus hours a week.
I'm not.

(04:02):
And um, when they tell mewhat's going on, then that's
where my skills come in becausenow I'm listening and I'm going,
okay, I think I know whatyou're talking about.
Let's talk more about it.
And eventually things like aprocess map comes out, a layout
comes out.
Um, it might be as you'retalking about door shops, there
might be something that's justas simple as just where are the

(04:24):
machines today?

Yeah.

And what are the footprints?
Uh, what are the steps, thedance steps that go from machine
to machine?
And that's when you start toreally dig into the to the
issue.

Yeah, when you think about having a machine
operator at on a door shopassembly line, and that person
is having to walk 20, 30 stepsto go get inserts for that door,
or they're having to go get theright threshold or whatever
they're doing, if you could makethat where they turn around and
grab it without taking a step,how many hours in a week could
that save?
I mean, it's a lot of time.

Absolutely.
I I always and in the yard too,uh, they'll be, well, can't we
just make something go faster?
I'm like, if you just move ithalf the distance, it's the
effectiveness of you're goingtwice as fast.

Yeah.

So it's real simple.
And it's almost always thenon-value added time.
It's the steps and the motionsthat are in between the
activities.
That's what you're reallyattacking.

Yeah, we have a rule in our business.
We actually took this from aNavy SEAL that we like, uh,
Jocko Willink, who's aleadership trainer, but he talks
about how simple solutions, youknow, make it as simple as
possible.
And Elon talks a lot about howdo we take things out, how do we
delete things.
I think that sometimes thesolution is that it's just
simple to move things, like yousaid, and they they think it's

(05:36):
overcomplicated.
Do you find that people oftenhave kind of a solution mapped
out that they just need yourhelp implementing?

They do.
A lot of people will know kindof what they want to do, but
they don't quite know what theprocess steps are.
And that's where I come in.
I can help them to break itdown into smaller steps and then
analyze it and then say, okay,here's the best way to go
forward.

Yeah.
And you showed me a few daysago a whiteboard of you on site
with a member.
Uh, it's a beautiful whiteboardwith all different color
post-it notes and all thesenotes.
And it's so uh, I'm sure youuse a ruler to make your lines,
right?
I mean, I did actually on thatone.
It was too beautiful to nothave been rulerized.
But um, that is kind of how youwork with people.

(06:20):
So you you get in there, yousee the problems, you diagnose,
you talk through, their teammember has to have buy-in,
right?
Their team's got to be a bigpart of it.
And then you start to map itout.
So tell me a little bit aboutmaybe one of the stories.
I know you worked with acustomer doing some trust stuff
the other day.
We talked about some warehouselayout.
So tell me one of the storiesof you know, somebody that

(06:41):
you've worked with recentlythat's seen great gains because
of the work you've done.

I've done uh just recently a zone picking uh
project.
And zone picking, for those whomay not be aware, is um instead
of giving a ticket to thepicker or a stager and say, go
drive around the entire facilityand find all this stuff, what
you do instead is you break theyard or the warehouse down into

(07:05):
smaller bite sizes, and nowthey're working very, very
efficiently and effectively in asmaller area.
They bring their stuff to acommon area and then it gets
picked up.
And uh recently, uh workingwith one of the Do It Best
members, they found that byimplementing the system, they're
saving 90 minutes per day.

(07:26):
Wow.
They were finishing up at fiveo'clock and now they're
finishing at 3 30.

Wow.

And the impact on that is less overtime.
The trucks are coming back uhand they're loaded for the next
day.
And so now the next day at 6 30in the morning, 7 o'clock,
they're ready to go.
That's a winning twice.

Because contractors want that load on
the job site as soon as they canin the morning.
They don't want it at, youknow, 10 o'clock.
They want it at 6 30 or 7 ifthey can get it.
They want to get it donebefore.

Right.
First out, first outs arecritical.
Uh, and so many people, the thethe kind of they're they've got
all their crews ready to go.
And if you weren't there thenight before preloading the
truck, then you are indeedshowing up late, and now
everyone's getting frustrated.

This episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast was
sponsored by Do It Best Group.
Do It Best Group is the largestco-op in the world, and they
help independent hardware andlumber yards all over North
America win.
Do It Best offers services,products, and people that can
help you win long term.
They are the champion ofindependence.

(08:31):
So when you work with peoplelike that, how do you have their
team in the room?
Like, how does that work?
I mean, how do you get to thatconclusion?

Even the picture that you were that you were
describing a few minutes ago,there were actually six people
in that room.
I just had them all stand backand get out of the way so I
could take the picture.
But um, I always start with uhthere's a site leader.
I call that person thequarterback.
Uh it's a person who is goingto be my point of focus.
So I'm not emailing and tryingto get a hold of five, six,
seven people.
Uh there's an operationsrepresentative, there's usually

(09:12):
someone from sales in some way,shape, or form, even if it's an
office, uh, an office manager,um, and then people from the
yard or from the or from theshop.
And you've got to cut throughall the layers of management.
You can't just have all onelevel or all or all another
level.
You got to have a goodcross-functional team for it to
really be effective.

(09:32):
And the other thing, too, isit's an iterative process.
I know a lot of people think,oh, we're just gonna come in,
just be a one and done.
It's not that way.
The first, the first futurestate layout or whatever it
might be, the first one, a lotof times they just hate it.
Yeah.
Because you're like, oh, Ididn't think of it that way.
And I don't like this, I don'tlike that.
I get it.
That's why you have me here.
I'm I'm here to break yourparadigm.

(09:53):
But then once you get to thesecond one, the third one, and
the fourth, and the fourth one,sometimes more, but now they
really take ownership becausenow they're like, wow, I helped
to I helped to create thatfuture state.

Right.
Well, and also uh weimplemented a warehouse
management system which istechnology driven, but that's a
pretty big deal.
When we had to, you know, putthe warehouse management, relay
out everything.
But once we decided that itwasn't going to be the end of
the actual world for about twoweeks, we were like, this is the
worst thing that's everhappened to us.
But about two weeks after that,it was like, how do we live

(10:27):
without this?
And I see that a lot withprojects like this, is that it
it really does seem like a holycow, I can't believe we did it
the old way for so long.
And we wish you had come inbeforehand.

Yeah, the zone picking is is truly a perfect
example of that.
I mean, they knew they wantedto do zone picking, they just
didn't know what were the steps.
How could how could theyanalyze the data, which is the
sales history?
How could they analyze thatdata and come up with something
that was fair and equitable forthose five turn up to be five
zones?
Yeah.
But that's where I came in wasto balance it out.
But yeah, they uh once they sawit, then it was a pretty good

(11:03):
sprint to the finish line.

Yeah, I love that.
Well, tell me about anotherproject that you've done.
I I know there's always itseems like no matter how big
your yard is, no matter how bigof a warehouse you have, space
constraints.
Right.
I don't know how thesewarehouses fill up so quickly,
but it is crazy how fast you canfill up a warehouse.
You recently did a project witha warehouse layout where they
were wanting to reallocate somespace and make more out of what

(11:26):
they had.
Tell me about that.

Exactly.
It's a uh a consolidation.
They're they're looking at howdo we bring mill work into a
site uh without impacting theircurrent LBM operations.
And the other constraints werethere's uh city ordinances for
setbacks and things.
Um obviously environmentalconcerns, they have to have a
you know a retention base andall that.

(11:48):
They thought they had thisgigantic area, but then when the
architects built in all that,it turned out to be 45,000
square feet.
Now, depending on your yourpoint of view, it's like that
could be gigantic or it'd bereally small, but surprisingly,
they didn't know if they weregoing to fit everything they
wanted to.

Yeah.

So my assignment was take a look at the
footprint.
I couldn't, I couldn'tchallenge the size of the
building, but what I could dowas I could specify door widths
and I could specify where theaisles go and nothing in the way
of things like beams and all ofthat.
And again, data analysis.
Uh they sent me the list ofeverything that they had, what
they wanted to put in there, andalso futures, future concerns.

(12:27):
They want to grow the business,which is great for everybody.
Yeah.
So they said, what can you dowith this?
So worked on it, took severalpasses, but um came up with a uh
with a system where they couldput everything they wanted in
that building and leave room forabout 50% growth.
Wow.

(12:47):
Now the side benefit of thatwas it also didn't impact their
LBM operation.
So working on that and findingout they were losing space
because of this warehouse.
So I also worked on that sideof it, and we found about 50%
less travel by centralizingwhere the uh where the staging
area is.

So everybody was happy, nobody was mad at you
when you left.

Well, the space that they lost to be allocated
to the warehouse and the parkinglot for the for the employees,
they lost that space.
So I had to work on the spacethat was left.

Yeah, you're kind of like a little bit of a
magician.

It's a lot of fun.
A lot of fun.

I love it.
Well, I am excited for membersto be able to have a resource
like you.
You obviously have a ton ofexperience, and there is a lot
of problems that come up inthis.
You know, I'll give an example.
When we were laying out thedoor shops when I started those
Greenfield door shops with myteam, uh, we had an expert come
in and lay out two differentracking layouts.
And I think we got 400 morespaces by doing it one way

(13:45):
versus the other.
But then in the end, the flow,we actually felt like we had
made a big mistake by going, wehad to make a hard choice.
It was like, do you need theracks or do you want the flow?
Yeah.
And it's hard to see that.
And we uh we wanted to move theracks after about two years
because it was just too itcrossed the warehouse in a weird
way.
It's tough.

I mean, yeah, you're bringing up a great
point, and that's that's veryimportant in the work that I do.
I'm I'm always asking the thefolks I'm working with, don't
just tell me what you want tohave, you know, next year.
You got to tell me where youwant to be in two, five years.
Yeah.
And that's where that warehouseexample uh is is perfect for
that.
If they didn't tell me that, Iwould have come up with just

(14:24):
filling up the space with thestuff.

Yeah.

But now I know that you can't completely fill
it because they want to grow.

Sure, 100%.
I love that.
Well, I am excited for membersto be able to work with you.
So tell me a little bit aboutif someone's wanting to do an
operational excellence projectwith you, how do they work with
you?

It's real simple.
There's a QR code that'll bepart of this uh podcast and also
at the market.
Just scan it and that willbring you to a worksheet.
Yep.
Just very simple questions toanswer, you know, who you are,
your member number, and uh howwe get a hold of you.
And then we will contact youand we'll set up a meeting.
It's a complimentary 60-minutemeeting uh on Teams or Zoom or

(15:05):
whatever it might be.
And uh, we talk through whatyour issues are, no cost.
Yeah.
So it's all absorbed by Do ItBest, which is fantastic.
And um, and then from thatpoint, I'll write a report and
from there they decide what theywant to do.
If they want to re-engage, thenwe'll talk about a project.
But that's awesome.
But that bottom line, uh, that60 minutes, we've already done

(15:26):
it over a dozen times here inthe past the past uh two months,
and it's been extremelyeffective.

That's great.
Well, if you are interested inmaking your operation excellent
in all the ways that we justtalked about, whether it's a
door shop or a lumber yard,don't miss out on this
opportunity.
And I really appreciate youcoming on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you, you too.

Thank you for listening to the Grit Blueprint
podcast.
If this episode helped youthink a little differently about
how to show up, share it withsomeone in your building world
who needs it.
If you're ready to turnvisibility into growth, then
head to gritblueprint.com tolearn more and book a call to
talk to us about your growthstrategy.

(16:07):
Until next time, stayunmistakable.

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