Breaking the Firefighting Cycle in Manufacturing with Samantha Benbow

Manufacturing process improvement often focuses on what happens on the shop floor, but what if the constant firefighting in manufacturing is actually caused by issues that begin much earlier in the process?

In this episode, we sit down with Samantha Benbow, founder of Benbow Consultants, whose career spans heavy steel production, IT and process design across complex organisations, and hands‑on experience inside fast‑moving manufacturing environments.

We dig into how manufacturing teams stay stuck in firefighting because they only fix visible problems instead of stepping back to understand the upstream processes and cultural patterns that created them.

This conversation covers:

• The upstream process failures that create recurring shop floor problems
• Why culture and communication reveal operational health within minutes
• How process mapping exposes hidden inefficiencies and quick wins
• Why SMEs often choose software before understanding what they need
• The importance of listening without judgement when diagnosing problems
• How small upstream adjustments prevent major downstream issues
• What manufacturers should fix before adding AI or new technology

If you enjoy the episode, follow the show for more conversations from across the manufacturing world.

Connect with Samantha:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthabenbow
Benbow Consultants: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benbow-consulting-limited/

Free Resource
If you want to see how upstream issues may be affecting your own production, try the Factory Firefighting Check. It highlights friction points, repeat issues and early signs of instability that often sit behind day to day firefighting.

Download: https://www.metisautomation.co.uk/factory-firefighting-check/

Transcript

Firefighting And First Impressions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

People get naturally really good at firefighting, fixing things. The line's not operating. Get in there, fix it, and crack on.

Martin Griffiths 0:15

Hey I'm Martin and welcome back to the Manufacturers Make Strides podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Sam Bembo. She's a manufacturing process specialist who spent her career helping organizations untangle complex operational problems from starting out in the heavy steel manufacturing with Chorus to later helping scale a manufacturing SME from 12 million to 24 million turnover. But early in our conversation, Sam shows something that really stuck for me that you can often tell whether a factory is working well within five minutes of walking through the door just by watching how the people interact with each other and what the culture is like. From there, we explore why so many manufacturing teams end up stuck in firefighting mode and why operational problems are often caused much earlier in the process than we realise. And if you listen right through to the end, Sam shares one simple shift manufacturing leaders can make this week to start breaking that firefighting cycle. So without further ado, let's get straight into my conversation with Sam Bembo. Thank you for joining me on the on the podcast today. So like at the start of the podcast conversations, I sometimes like to jump in with just writing at the deep end with a question about what you're kind of specializing in. So just to get the ball rolling, then we'll get into your background and history. So when you walk into a new business, the factory or the manufacturing operations of a business at the moment, what tells you within the first five minutes or so of whether it's working well or maybe not working so well? What what are the signs?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I think you can tell from the people how relaxed the people are, if the people know what they're doing, and if they respond easily when you're talking to them and asking questions, if they're confident and comfortable, you know things are going pretty well. Whereas if they're feeling on the back foot and they're feeling maybe challenged, even just asking questions, I think that those are all quite good signs. You can tell the culture pretty quickly in a company.

Sam’s Path Into Manufacturing

Martin Griffiths 2:25

Okay, that's that's that's nice. It's going to be good to get into some more of the detail of that then later on. That's that's an interesting perspective. Thank you. So, but first off, what first drew you into manufacturing then? What started your career?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

So I've got a manufacturing engineering degree and I knew I wanted to study business and how businesses worked, but I didn't want to go and just learn the theory. I liked making stuff. Both my parents are bakers. My mum worked for Allied Bakeries and most of the big bakeries across the country. Whereas my dad was a craftsman baker, so making proper, proper bread and cakes and pies and things. So my early jobs were working in the bakery in the middle of the night and day shifts and things. So just making stuff, creating things. So I really wanted to do a degree where I'd learn more about the real world and how things are made. So I did my degree. And as part of that, I did a placement year and started implementing an IT solution on the shop floor and working for Owen's Corning, fiberglass manufacturer, and just loved it. I loved being on the shop floor. I loved finding looking at the processes and helping people improve their processes and design IT solutions and find IT solutions that worked and made them work. I just found it really tangible. So that's just where I love. That's why I love manufacturing.

Martin Griffiths 3:45

Okay. That's that's interesting. So I had a similar background actually. I did it well. I did a mechanical engineering degree. My first job was a design engineer. I got pretty bored of that quite quickly and then kind of went down there. I I found myself spending more time on the shop floor and then kind of found myself led to all manufacturing kind of engineering. And you know, yeah, there's a bit more kind of movement and adrenaline, I suppose, in in that, isn't there? Um, which has its which has its pros and cons. We'll we'll come to that later, I suppose. So tell me about what were your first steps into industry then after doing that degree and what did those first experiences kind of teach you?

Designing IT That People Use

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, so I joined the Chorus Graduate Programme, so Chorus British Steel Tata, as it is now, up in Teesside. So because I was on their engineering graduate programme, I started off in the heavy end of steel, so at Concast and the Beam Mills, and then worked around lots of the different steel factories. It's got a real insight into proper heavy engineering. And I just found it fascinating because it just it's so simple and yet it's so not, it's so complex. Working on some quite big projects, well, it felt they felt big at the time as a recent graduate. And everything I was doing was relevant in the news. Like I was looking at rail inclusions on one project, and that was shortly after a big rail crash. So it was just looking at a new way of checking for rail inclusions for safety. And then I was looking at jumbo beams and how they were made and creating marketing information for them that was technical marketing information, which was relevant because there was obviously so much building work going on. So it was it was also relevant to the world we were living in. I just found it fascinating. But then as I moved around, I found actually what I really loved doing was creating processes and IT solutions for people. So I moved all around on the graduate program and then got a job helping develop an IT solution for all the different businesses in Corus. And I needed to bring them all together. And these were businesses that never normally talk to each other, they're doing their own thing. And so I just had to network and get to know people and get to know what made them tick and get to know what benefit they would get out of the system and design the system accordingly for them, but then find out somebody else needed something else. So make sure they got what they need and create this solution that head office wanted, but that met everyone's needs at the same time. And I just I loved it. I loved finding out what people needed and developing a solution that made it work.

Martin Griffiths 6:15

Brilliant. And was that something you found easy? Because I could imagine there could be a lot of different opinions on what that solution should look like. So how did you manage that? And how did you was that easy for you? How did you find that experience?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Well, it's so much of what us I still do and have always done. And it's more about it's getting behind the request. So somebody might, I don't know, want the system in pink, say that's not really helping them with their job. So it's it's differentiating what's a preference and what's a need. And if they think it's a need, go back to basics and look at why it's a need, how do their processes work that make this feature essential and make sure it's not just a want and make sure it actually works for them. And it's a fairly easy sell because if you if they've told you what they need and you design a system to do that, then they get what they need. So if they just if you just design a solution for what they've asked, then it's not really going to do what they need and they're not going to use it. So it's always about getting under that skin, under that level, that surface level. And people want to talk to you about that. They want to explain what they do and they want somebody to help them. So it it it's not easy, but I find it quite natural to do that, to find out, asking people's questions people questions and how they work and how they operate and why. Just asking why all the time.

Martin Griffiths 7:41

So so what came out of that that project then? How did that look like at the end?

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Well, when I left that that project was working and up and running, but then I moved on and worked for distribution. That's the job that brought me down to the Midlands. So I then looked after all the distribution businesses and all their IT systems and processes. So there was about I lose track now, but there was about 26 or so of them that I looked after. And then I met my husband. So I then stayed in the Midlands. But then I realised I needed wider experience. So I left and started working for Athos Consulting. And then a very long, convoluted journey of working for lots of different organizations, helping develop IT solutions. So again, getting under the bonnet of how people work. So I've worked for loads of different companies, different types of companies, some Sanctuary Housing, Housing Association, Hagamai, UK, electrical stockholder, those are Atos themselves, internal processes, re-engineering those, loads of different ones. So I've moved around quite a lot and picked up all sorts of different ways of doing things. And obviously, bigger corporates deal with things very differently, but it was always about getting to the lowest level you possibly can. Like I was designing a software solution for sanctuary housing that was for their engineers when they go out to houses and look for any job that needs doing, they then record it on their PDA and they needed to link that live into Travis Perkins. They could put all of their data in there, they could see what needs doing, and then the system would spit out the products they needed. And by the time they got to Travis Perkins, their local one, all the items they need that they didn't even know they needed were there waiting for them. But that obviously came from a head office requirement, a director level requirement, but it's the engineer that was doing the job. They know how they need the system to be designed, they know what they do, they know what information they've got in front of them, what they need to collect on their PDA, and what they need when they get to store. So it was hanging out with with an engineer for a couple of days to really understand how it works. So it it doesn't matter what the organization is and how it how it operates, it's always just about getting to the lowest level and understanding how it works.

Martin Griffiths 9:58

Okay. So that so yeah, so you worked acqu across quite a kind of broad industry of sectors. You think that's a key thing, though, about understanding the people who are going to use it and what best kind of supports their needs, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly just understanding how they operate, how they work. Yeah, yeah.

Scaling An SME Without Chaos

Martin Griffiths 10:18

So so what happened after after that then? You were in consultant. I guess you got a kind of a vast kind of array of like experiences. Did you learn what you did and didn't like from that kind of consulting?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yeah. I I really enjoyed corporate consulting. It was great. Get to travel all around the country and just get dropped in and go figure it out, which I I enjoy doing. But my husband had set up a colour-coated steel business whilst I was off travelling and then we had kids. So I needed to be more home-based and with the kids, and because he couldn't go off, he couldn't look after the kids as they were growing as I was off travelling, so I stuck around more. And in about, ooh, I can't remember, about 2018-ish, I think it was, he decided he wanted to double the size of the business. So it was ticking over. I'd had I was involved in the business from a very superficial level. I'd help him with processes and and ISO accreditation, things like that, but from a very like b backroom level. Um but when he wanted to double the size of the business, because it was very typical of manufacturing SMEs, everything Excel-based, there was even an access database in there, as often is. Processes based on whiteboards and word of mouth and word documents and Excel spreadsheets, and it was all very typical of manufacturing SMEs. But in order to double it, by that point there were about 12 million turnover. But then everything needed changing. Every end-to-end system needed changing, every process needed changing. And so we got a new line, installed that, we knocked the offices down, put a new ERP solution in, a new business intelligence system in, new HR solution in. So in two years, we doubled it to a 24 million turnover business. It was intense, intense for years.

Martin Griffiths 12:03

Quite a journey, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Yeah. But it it it worked well. Everything worked. But then we sold it. So took it through the acquisition process. But because it was the size it was, of course, there was more stuff to do that Simon used to do on his own. Or I used to do little tinkering in the background, like marketing, things like that. With a 12 million turnover business, it's easy to just tinker and do the background stuff. But 24 million, everything changed. So I then stuck around and took over all the other stuff. So all the technology, all the software, all of the processes like that, all the HR, all the marketing, all of those things were then mine to have responsibility for. So whilst we didn't need to re-engineer any processes at that level anymore, there was a lot to do. So we sold it and I stuck around for about 18-ish months to hand it over. Simon followed shortly after, and then we left. That's a whole story that can go into another.

Martin Griffiths 12:56

It's been quite a journey, and you must have you must have learned a lot there. You've brought that into some consulting now that you're doing for yourself. So I have a couple of thoughts or questions one questions around that. And it kind of touches on what we were talking about before. Some people will describe like a factory or people within the factory as in firefighting mode. Like what does that what does that mean to you? Or what do you think they mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So I think in production, it's really if things aren't moving, if if the factory isn't operating, then you're losing money. So people get naturally really good at firefighting, fixing things. If the line's not operating, get in there, fix it, and crack on. And because manufacturing, when you're not on the line making things, there's not much slack. There's not lots of people set around doing nothing, waiting for a problem to arise and then go, oh, so why did that arise? Let's fix it now, permanently. It is more a case of being reactive because it has to be in manufacturing. We get quite good at that, but in order to improve productivity, it's about obviously looking at what causes those problems in the first place and taking that time out to step back and look at what's gone wrong and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again? Or because we end up in places where people are just doing workarounds and the workaround just becomes the process, it becomes normal, and it it takes quite a lot of effort to okay, I know things are working now, but you're kind of built on sand to like take time and step back and look at the process as a whole. Like, okay, how can we improve this? What's not working? There's so many quick wins in doing that.

Martin Griffiths 14:43

I guess it's kind of just thinking back to the situation you mentioned when you joined Bembo Steel, I suppose, at that when you're at that 12 million turnover level, the workarounds worked, but I guess you realise at that point they may work now, but they would completely break down, I guess, or wouldn't help us reach the goal of doubling. So yeah, if you don't have a kind of a deadline or a high-level goal like that, then what are some other ways of getting out of that? Patching over, you know, kind of fixing with the duct tape and kind of limping along? How do you get out of that cycle of of firefighting then?

Culture Change And Process Mapping

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah, I think it needs a catalyst, doesn't it? So it needs somebody to come along with that approach, and often it's a new person in the team who comes up with fresh ideas. I find it's quite tricky in manufacturing to get to the right people at the right time, talk to them, and explain how I can help, for example, because and I find a lot of people that do what I do find find exactly the same because people are in the business doing the business. And if they're not there, things can go wrong. So it's very easy. I say it's easy, it's more hard to step out and go on networking days and see how other people are doing things. It's very difficult to do that in manufacturing. And so many leaders in manufacturing SMEs are at the coal face all day, every day, and don't get those breaks. And to go off on a jolly networking day and finding those people who can help is really hard to do because you have to justify it if you're not there and things go wrong. Getting those fresh ideas into a business, you have to be proactive about getting them in the first place and inviting people in or going out and talking to other people and how they've done things. And that that's really tricky to do.

Martin Griffiths 16:35

How does a culture fit into this then? Because we opened up the conversation with you mentioning that within five minutes of walking into the business, that you know, the how people react to you, how they're feeling, the background culture, you can tell whether it's a business really well or not. Then how does this fit into this kind of situation then for businesses? Stuck is a cultural change needed, or does that come through the processes?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Yeah, I think a cultured process always helps. If you've got people who are up for change, that's always a good start. But typically people don't like change, they have to see the purpose. And somebody coming in just tinkering is just going to annoy everybody. If there's a clear strategy, a clear goal, then it I've always found it's fairly easy to get people on board. But if you're just going in stuffing a system in for the sake of it, or people feel like it's for the sake of it, or so often you get a system that goes in that's maybe they need more reporting data. So finance wants it. Or they want people want to check on the machines or the uptime of the machines, and therefore they want to get the data from the operatives of how long they're spending on the line. Well, putting that in never really goes too well because unless it's sold as a benefit to the operatives in the first place, because it's very difficult for them to put their time in if they know they're being watched. So what's the benefit for them? So the culture makes a huge difference to how much you can improve productivity. But again, there are loads of people out there who can help change a business culture. They can help coach the leadership team into how to change the culture and looking at putting a roadmap in place to help design the culture that the leadership team need. And then with any segmentation or process improvement, that's down to the change management of that approach, making sure the person that's implementing it has a vested interest in making sure it sticks. Because the software company can easily go in, put it in, off your pop, see you later. And the change doesn't stick because it's it's not really their problem because you're still going to pay the license fee, you've got it in. So it's making sure that change management is taken account of, making sure that the culture follows the system and people are listened to, and that the person putting it in is listening to them about what they need and their limitations. If you're asking something that they can't do, it's the system's not going to stick, it's not going to work, the process isn't going to be changed.

Martin Griffiths 19:10

So you walk into a business kind of similar to this that we're talking about. Maybe they the people that have been stuck in a firefighting mode for some time, but there's some, you know, kind of desired desire at some level for change. Yeah. What would your step be if you're trying to assist a client with through that?

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Talk to people. Just talk to them. Just find out what they're doing. Almost always I'll go into a company and I'll be told that we're really maxed out. People don't have time. So I go in knowing that's the case and being sympathetic to that case. But what always happens is the moment you get people in a room talking, they just spend ages downloading on you. Because it's very rare that somebody actually asks them, what do you do? How do you do it? Why do you do it that way? And really understands and listens to them. So having the opportunity to download is quite compelling. So talking to everybody and understanding the culture and understanding how they do things and why they do things, and just talking, talking, talking, and then checking it back, say, okay, so this person said this. So this is my understanding. Is that your understanding? And sometimes people make things out that aren't quite true because it's in their interest too, but then just checking with everybody and understanding all that bigger picture. It's kind of a case of zooming out and zooming in all at the same time until there's that big picture that's all in my head or mapped out on a process map and understood how everyone works and how everyone relates to each other.

Martin Griffiths 20:40

Yeah, I was going to ask how you how you did that, because I could imagine that it could be quite a challenge that downloading and processing all of that information whilst also figuring out, whilst trying to keep your eye on the end goal.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yeah. Yeah. It's it depends how the client wants it to be. Quite often I'll go in and process map end to end. And it is a case of going in and knowing nothing about the company, the culture, their terminology, how people work, everything, and trying to map out their processes in a way that they understand and I understand them. And you don't know what's coming. So it's very tricky to design. I don't design the process, I'm just mapping what they're saying and then understanding and building that picture up so that you get that really clear view of how everything works and constantly feeding it back. Okay, so you said this, right? Is this how this works? Ah, but we can't do this because you said this at the beginning. So how does that work? And constantly going back and checking it and really understanding it, understanding that what they're saying is how it works. So often they don't know, they just hand it over to somebody else, and then okay, so that's a gap. So we'll go and cover that off later. And really understanding, and that's understanding where those mistakes are made. But I think the other part of that process mapping, even if it's not, I'll I'll use brand paper and post it notes, cut that tends to work for people the best because. You can move things around. But that's not always necessary. Sometimes it's just a case of talking to people and writing it down and checking back with them. Is this what we say? But it's at that stage, it's always a case of not judging. And I think that's really critical. It's really easy to go into a company and go, you do it that way. Why are you doing that? It's not company culture exists for a reason. There's thousands of reasons that that people do things that way. And they might do it differently to somebody else, but there's a reason they do it that way. And it's understanding that that exists as it is. They don't need to justify why they do things. We can figure that out later when we're in the to be process and work out how they want to be. But when you're understanding how a company ticks and get under the bonnet of it, it just is. There's no judgment to it.

Martin Griffiths 22:52

Sure. Sure. Can you think of any stories or examples from maybe some customers that you've had where this has happened and the the change has made a real difference?

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Yeah, most of them, to be fair. One I worked on quite recently, just the nature of processing, process mapping changed the culture and changed the way people felt about system implementation. So I was working for Avery Waytronics last year, mapping out their end-to-end processes. It's a phenomenally complex business. Very old, long-standing company. People have been there 30, 40 years. Most of the people you talk to have done an array of different jobs before. And everyone's quite jaded because people have put systems in before and they've not always worked and people haven't been listened to. And the company often goes through redundancies. And so the culture's a really interesting one. It's like a family. So I was very conscious from being an outsider going in that I just needed to listen. And we had every meeting, it was about a six-month project. And I was there every day and listening to people. And we just built up such great relationships and people being listened to. And they understood their role very differently when I was playing it back to them in a way that they don't do. And just by mapping the process and them explaining their role to somebody else and putting it down and then playing it back. So you do this. We made so many process improvements just from that. Not even, haven't even got to the system implementation yet. We hadn't even got how they want to be. This is just how do you work? And then they realized, ah, well, we send that to that person and that to that person. But actually, we probably don't need to do that. We can just send it all to that one person. And that person has capacity. So it streamlined the whole process. There are so many examples where we did that. Just by looking, it changes things. And just by giving people the opportunity to be heard changes everything and listened to and not judged, changes everything.

The Biggest Change Mistake

Martin Griffiths 24:56

Okay. That's really good. That's really interesting. What would you say, like on the flip side, what would you say is the biggest mistake that businesses make when trying to implement change and maybe not listening to people so much?

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah, I think that happens more often than not, to be honest. It's people going straight in for the people going straight in for the solution. They see the problem and try and fix that problem. When actually that problem problem probably isn't the actual cause of anything. The problem's usually so far earlier in the process. And you find companies that are growing or changing, they might have put an ERP solution in and it's not really working, or they're looking for a solution. So they'll go and they'll talk to their to lots of software providers and they'll get the software providers in to demonstrate their systems, but they haven't done that work beforehand of understanding what they truly do and what they truly need. So software people come in and they demonstrate their product and it looks pretty much good enough. And they find the people that they get on the salesperson that they like the most, that are price point that they can deal with, and then they go down that road and they're looking at the solution before they've even really understood the problem. And that understanding those requirements and what actually happens and why is never done. And people don't know what they don't know. So, especially manufacturing SMEs, they don't know that that's the thing. They know that they need a solution. So they go to the software provider and try and put it in. Whereas corporates already know that they need to do that legwork on their requirements. So many people that do what I do, that process understanding, they work with corporates because it's an easier sell, because corporates know that they need it. So you go in, you do the job and put the software in. Whereas SMEs that they know their job well, they know their industry well, they know their product, obviously back to front, but they only put an IT solution or put a big change project in, hopefully once or twice. So to know the skills that it needs to do that, why would they know? So it it can be quite hard to get to the right people at the right time and go, look, you need to do all this legwork before. And the solution you put in will work so much better. You will hit the ground running, it will work, it will do exactly what you need it to. It won't, it won't mean that you can't service your customers quickly. It mean will mean if you do it properly, you won't revert to paper backups because everything's falling apart and nobody really understands what they're doing. Putting all of that legwork in the beginning means they hit the ground running and save so much money. And they can grow much more quickly if they do it right in the first place.

Myths And Truths For Leaders

Martin Griffiths 27:37

Yeah. Okay. Sounds like a good plan. Quick change of pace now. We have a section called Myths and Truths. I'd like to throw some statements out there. You tell me if it's a myth or a truth. If a team is busy, the business is usually moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

No, myth. Of course not.

Martin Griffiths 27:56

Go on, tell me why. What or why why do you think not?

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Oh, because everyone's busy, aren't they? Everyone's always busy. I I've never been into a business where people have told me they're anything but busy. They're everyone's maxed maxed out. Of course they are. And they often are, they feel it, but that could be for a whole number of reasons. Project I did recently, one person wasn't, I got called in because they thought it was an HR issue, but they weren't sure, so they wanted to review their processes. One person wasn't doing anything, everyone thought they they weren't doing that much at all. They weren't contributing. They felt they were when I talked to them, but they weren't. And there was another person who was absolutely maxed out all the time, constantly busy, constantly complaining they were busy. And the problem was the same, that the company strategy wasn't clear. So the person who was maxed out couldn't prioritize because they didn't know what they were supposed to be doing and when. And they were just stretched beyond belief. And the person that wasn't doing much for the same reason, because they were almost paralyzed by indecision because there was so much to be done and they didn't know where to start. It's that stepping back and looking at that over that picture.

Martin Griffiths 29:12

Um, the same problem showing up twice is a signal, or is it bad luck?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Could be either. But that's again looking at the problem. If you just look at the output problem, you're not necessarily fixing the root cause because it might be that that problem's shown up in lots of other ways that you haven't seen. So it's a great opportunity to go, okay, so this has happened twice now, let's look back at it. But yeah, it's it's not necessarily you can't assume it's bad luck.

Martin Griffiths 29:41

Most operational issues start long before they become visible on the shop floor.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yes. True. Of course. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, because people often find workarounds for things. And then you so often find on a factory level, like somebody hits something with a hammer to make it work. Just they did it once and it worked, great. And then that becomes the normal every single time. Just knock it with a hammer and it works. Without finding what the root cause is until something breaks a few years down the line. Yeah, it's always better to find out what the root cause is.

Martin Griffiths 30:15

If everyone agrees, it's probably the right decision.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

At least you can blame everyone else alongside yourself if it's not the right decision.

Martin Griffiths 30:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

I think again, going back to that manufacturing, because it become it's so intense, getting out there and talking to other people and getting different perspectives is really hard. It's really difficult to do. And I know from our own experience, and I see it all the time, getting that outside perspective is really useful. And certainly when we were employing people at Bembo's, we would try and get people who didn't always agree with us, people who had different viewpoints that would say, Whoa, what especially because Simon and I were running it together, we think very similarly, we challenge each other, but if we were on the same page, we kind of expected other people to be. So we needed a leadership team who would say, Whoa, no, no, that's that I don't agree. And that be okay to do. And to get people who think differently and who understand the problem differently and just fresh ideas. Bringing people into the team, consultants, other people, going out talking to people, getting those fresh ideas helps. And if you've done that, and then everyone agrees, good to go. But just because everyone agrees at that time, you probably, especially in manufacturing, all just kind of that herd mentality. Everyone's thinking the same thing, everyone's driving in the same direction, hopefully. So it seems like the right thing to do. But until you've got that outside view, it's difficult to tell.

AI Readiness Starts With Basics

Martin Griffiths 31:46

It's hard to tell, yeah. Okay, great. Tell me a bit more about what you're doing at the moment. What type of clients are you working with and like what do you enjoy most about your work at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So since we sold the business, we both took quite a bit of time out. Simon's doing bits of consulting, but pretty much retired and took over running home life. I took some time to think, what did I want to do? I wasn't in any rush to get a job, mortgages paid after we solved the business. And so I started to look at what it was that made me tick. And and I just kept coming back to what I was doing before in that process of re-engineering. And I now have that the luxury of being able to work for myself. I don't have to work for a big corporate who puts me in wherever they choose and tells me how to do things. I get to do things my way. So I work with all different software providers. I'm not tied to any. So I can find the best solution for people. And I love SMEs, having run one and worked with so many. I love the fact that I can go into an SME manufacturing business and look end-to-end and within a day, I know how it ticks, I know how it really works, I know what they want to achieve, I know what makes them special. I love all of that, being able to do that and being able to help them. And the manufacturing industry is so it's got quite a challenge ahead of it. We don't look ahead enough. Lots of manufacturing organizations do and they become bigger and grow. But there's so many of those SMEs that are doing what they do, doing it well and just moving forward every day. But especially with AI, the world's changing rapidly. And I want to be able to help those companies and really make a difference and so that we don't have that same problem we always have when people put an ELP solution in and it doesn't work. And when it does, I can then go in and help them fix it and look at that software journey they take and those process improvements. Sometimes they don't need a new software solution, they just need to change their processes. So I get to go into organizations and help them do that. Help them make things work properly, like they should do, and stop doing those workarounds that are time consuming. It's interesting how much time businesses spend on workarounds. They'll spend so much time on workarounds. And if we just took those out and fixed the problem, they'd have so much more capacity and so much more opportunity to grow. So that's what I am doing now. I get to work for lots of different companies and I go in for a couple of days at a time, help design their processes, help map their processes, help them see, and then look at what solutions they need. And then can help them forthways to the end. Yeah, it is. I I really enjoy it. I love it actually. It makes me a bit geeky and a bit weird, but I love it.

Martin Griffiths 34:32

But that's okay. You can indulge yourself. Thinking about the manufacturing leaders and what's in store for the future. What do you think the next generation of manufacturing leaders should be? What change should they be prepared for? So what would you like from the next generation of manufacturing leaders?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

So manufacturing in the UK, we fix things really well. We're brilliant engineers. Niche engineering, we're brilliant at. Getting in and fixing things, we are brilliant at. And I think in manufacturing, particularly, it's very tangible and people like tangible solutions. So going things and knocking things with a hammer or having spreadsheets, things like that, and whiteboards with the processes on. People still will want those. I think we'll always want those. But there's a huge technology wave coming in AI. And a lot of organizations are trying to prepare for it by trying to bolt on AI solutions. And that's their core systems don't work. So often their core systems don't work. Their data isn't where it needs to be, their processes aren't where they need to be. And trying to bolt a solution on is just like building on sand. And hopefully we'll get to a stage where, well, the leaders who are successful, who are driving their organizations forward that are still here in five, 10, 20 years' time, they'll be the ones that looking to the future but making sure their foundations are right, that their processes work as they should do, their data's correct. So that when they're putting AI solutions on, overlays on and building AI processes, they work and they're successful. And those companies will thrive. But the ones that are trying to bolt on solutions and try and force ERP solutions to work when they're not really, and then bolt an AI solution on and they're gonna come unstuck pretty quickly.

Martin Griffiths 36:27

Okay, great. So so kind of fix it at a route first. So you've got some stable foundations to build on.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Absolutely. Definitely, yeah.

Martin Griffiths 36:35

I've got one more question to leave people with. But just before we get to that, thank you for your time today. What's the best way for people to find out more about you and what you're doing at the moment, Sam?

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Find me on LinkedIn, Samantha Bembo. I post reasonably regularly. It gives people an idea of the sorts of things I do and can help with.

Martin Griffiths 36:53

Brilliant. Thank you. Um, yeah, we'll drop some links in the show description. I'd like to leave a final takeaway for listeners. So, what do you think could be a quick win for people if they feel like the team is in that firefighting mode at the moment? What could be one small thing that they could do this week to to change that and get out of that firefighting mode?

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Don't just go straight to the problem. Look at what the process that made that problem happen in the first place. Just look a few steps back and unpick those, and that's probably where the problem will be, not right at the end.

Martin Griffiths 37:28

So don't jump for the quick fix. Look for the the deeper course.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Exactly. Absolutely. And just on that, the the quick fix, it it probably is a quick fix. The fix is not always a heroic big change. You it's sometimes a bit scary to try and look back because you might like open Pandora's box, but quite often it's the smallest of change. There's just some data that's different or some process that's not quite right somewhere. And a small tweak further back fixes everything going forward. So don't be scared to look back. It's not necessarily going to get bigger the more you look back. It's not necessarily a massive problem. It's a it's not a heroic fix you're looking for, just a tweak here and there.

Martin Griffiths 38:11

So if you're enjoying this episode, please give us a follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That would help us to keep bringing authentic manufacturing conversations with the people who are shaping our industry. Thank you. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for your time. That was great to have a chat today.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

It was really good to talk to you. Thanks so much. Cheers.