Lean Built: Manufacturing Freedom

Stop Buying CNC Machines You Don't Need | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E171

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

What Should You Fix First in Your Machine Shop? | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E170

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

Are Your Lean Processes Lean? | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E169

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 turn

What CNC Machines, Baseball Bats, and Guitars Have in Common | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E168

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

Are You Running Your CNC Machines Too Slow? | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E167

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 work

Buy It, Build It, or Make Do? | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E166

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 cos

Letting Employees Make Decisions Without Losing Control | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E165

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 e

Why We Left IMTS Optimistic About Manufacturing | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E164

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 highe

Get More Optimized, Be Less Flexible? | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E163

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 a

Don’t Automate Waste | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E162

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

When to Cut Your Losses in Business | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E161

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 w

When Automation Creates More Work | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E160

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

Your Shop Doesn’t Have to Be Clean to Be Lean | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E159

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

Going to IMTS 2026? 7 Tips for Machine Shop Owners | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E158

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 thei

When a Good Employee Isn’t the Right Employee | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E157

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

Why Simplicity Beats Complexity in Business | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E156

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,

Your Team Doesn’t See You the Way You Think They Do | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E155

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, wh

Don’t Let AI Do Your Thinking | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E154

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 co

Why Every Machine Shop Should Take More Shop Tours | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E153

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, inclu

Your Memory Is Not a Management System | Lean Built - Manufacturing Freedom E152

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, And