Help Mobtown Offroad Continue To Improve

I've run into WordPress plugin update issues where I need to go back and fix some settings that get wiped out (GravityForms). It's important to make sure plugins are up to date. But it's also important to read what is in the update from the developer before updating. Then of course after updating the plugin, test all functionality to make sure nothing is broken.

 

Just a note on the quality of your sliders. I don't own them "yet", but I did see the link on the sliders product page "Click here to find out why our sliders are the best!" I read it. But most people don't read. Most people skim over stuff and click. I think it would be a good idea to somehow summarize why your sliders are the best in the industry within a pull-quote on the product page. Get that information right in front of the customer where the pricing and add to cart button are. The second they click off that product page, they are already a step away from the path-to-purchase.

It's like a funnel with some leaks. You're trying to showcase your products to the customer with the ultimate step of them purchasing a product. Too much info is bad too. It would be nice to have some social media sharing functions on your pages too. That way people can easily share your products to their social media accounts (free advertising).

Just a few thoughts on a Friday afternoon before I get out of work and go camping. Hopefully installing your tailgate reinforcement products this weekend.

 

ETA on 2016+ LCA Skids???

 

1st quarter 2018.

 

NEW PRODUCT: Hi-Lift Oversized Base

• Made from 1/4″ A36 Plate Steel
• Sand Blasted & Powder Coated Red
• Base measures 16″ x 16″
• Weighs 22 lbs
• Great for soft ground
• Teeth help dig in to the ground on lifts that aren’t vertical
• Lift sold separately
• Holes to mount on your Toyota Tacoma Cleat Rail (Locking Bolts and Cleat Rail Nuts Sold Separate)

Visit mobtownoffroad.com for price and to calculate shipping.

 

How can you call it the “big foot base” when @RelentlessFab has already called theirs that?

 

We didn't know they called theirs Bigfoot until yesterday. We are changing it at the request of everyone. Maybe Sasquatch...

 

Look, it is unfortunate. Between Tacomaworld and Instagram people are at their ready with pitchforks. We had no idea Relentless made this until last night when someone on Instagram mentioned it. What's worse is we even called them the same name because it just made sense. You can believe what you want to believe. I already contacted Eric apologizing, I've already changed the product name on our end. We saw a plastic base on Amazon that was kind of small but designed for this idea. We wanted to improve on the plastic base. It is a simple product and there is only so many ways you can change or improve products. Similar to hi lift adapters, bed side reinforcements, ditch light brackets, and so on. How many companies make those with subtle variations? Simple products are simple... A bumper is a bumper, rock sliders are rock sliders, skids are skids and get again, they all have variations to make them different. Again, it was not an intentional copy and I know it struck a chord with people more so on the product name. Our base has subtle differences, size is the biggest and and a feature. Not that we wanted to "copy" anyones design and it isn't very PC to do so but the truth is it is no patented or trademarked so really, anyone could copy it. We don't do that, we didn't mean to use the same title, it looks really bad on us and I'm not to thrilled about it either. It's was an unfortunate error and we said sorry.

 

Appreciate an honest response. Like you said, if it happened as such then it is what it is. By you taking the action to change things up for the sake of respect for other companies is really all you need to do. Im sure folks will move past this, its just fresh at the moment. That being said, I applaud the shovel portion on the bottom...might look into this soon.

 

X2 owning up is huge and very respectful. Accidents happen, and I certainly believe you guys didn’t intentionally copy the name.

 

Can someone hang on sign on this guy that says "Joe"?

 

Haha, okay, that made me laugh.

 

that's hilarious

 

Welcome to the internet my friend.

We have made it easier for every armchair conspiracy theorist to screw down their tinfoil hats even tighter and expel their cranial flatulence across the great pond we call the internet.

Just looking at it you can see that it something that can be sketched up on a shop table, fabbed, say hmmm,
-square is easy to cut,
-tube for the jack,
-better reinforce that tube so it does not fold over
-and while we're at it, extend the gussets out to the end of the foot so it does not fold over,
-round off some sharp edges,
-lets add teeth here for traction on a slope cause that one time Billy-bob almost got his leg crushed...
- yellow is easy to see but the paint don't stick, let's use red.
Did I get the design process right? or was it a notepad with carbon fingerprints all over the sides...

A simple need will have a simple design and different people looking at the same simple problem will generally come up with similar simple designs.

As to the naming, hmmm it's the foot of a Jack and it's Big, lol well .... the Conspiracy theorists will say you hired Hillary's Russian hackers to monitor Eric's text messages to his R&D center in Washington. As to the design? Well c'mon said hackers got that while they were in the computers.

As to the truth (X-files music ) since you're shop is out in farm country... you feed Chernobyl grown grain to the local chickens that turns them into... super psychic chickens that will peck out competitor's ideas onto your shop's walls in 3d art.

Now let your tinfoil bearing Tinder friends know about the chickens, and I bet they will forget all about Bigfoot.

And warn them the Russians have been training seagulls with mind rays and to immediately fab some AFDB's and put them on quick, you can then point them to a DIY site for said protection... https://zapatopi.net/afdb/


As for suggestions on how to improve Mobtown.
Look for information on Toyota's production system, Lean Manuafacturing and Kaizen (continuous improvement, no matter how small), then change your mindset of making excuses that your are a small shop. To over summarize it, every motion that does not add value to the product is waste, eliminate waste and job satisfaction and job efficiency will increase. When I led Kaizen teams, the employees task was to make their jobs easier so they did not have to "walk to get", "go looking for" , "bend and lift", "get tired" . Measure where you are, then find ways to make it better and chart it for all to see.

Toyota made investments with a 7 year payback, GM invested for 6 month payback, GM went broke, Toyota has billions in the bank.
What's your 7 year plan for capital equipment, manufacturing process improvement, floorspace expansion and improved work flow? Don't have that, stop working as sales guy and work as CEO, easy to get sales people to chat with the customers...

So why do you answer phones,emails, chat on forums? I bet you worry about hiring someone at $20 an hour when you have not realized you're cost/value to the company is over $100/hr and as the company grows it will be over 1000/hr, are you still dealing with all the shipping personally? What is more cost effective, you chatting to fred that his bumper is smooth and taking pictures for him, or a high school intern do that, and you look into a Hobard Robot that could put pre-cut skid plate blanks into a brake press and knock out 400 a day without breaking a sweat.

Work flow, does a product start at one side of the plant and go in a straight organized fashion, or when you draw it's work flow path, it looks like a drunk chicken walked across the plant floor?
Poke-Yoke - Mistake proofing, if you have setup a "system" PROPERLY, you can ask a person off the street to come in and they can find, assemble and do the task in less than 5 mins of going Uhhhhh. So start looking at your jigs and fixtures that they are easy to move find and store and that a pissed off monkey could not put the wrong part in the wrong place.
Kanban System - Minimum stock quantities to meet just in time manufacturing for shipping. With a Poke-Yoke method of re-ordering when said min quantities are reached.
Visual communication, - How have we done better? What projects are on the go? What are the priorities?

Hardest thing your going to have to accept is that your now an international aftermarket manufacturing supplier, you have to look at your past 2 years of sales and now forecast them forward, it's gonna get scary because now your going to have to look into bigger and bigger capital investments to try and keep up. By the sounds of it, you're not. Smart enough to realize it and listen to others in the hope that you can get some pepper out of the fly shit.

Don't make the mistake of trying to get into too many products at once before you have your old ones "buttoned down" by buttoned down I mean;
- Any job from the receptionist to the shipper has a backup, anyone gets sick, nothing is affected.
- Any critical component to a product can be stocked in time, sourced in time (redundant supply) or fabbed in time to meet an order just in time.
- Any person could make any product because the manufacturing is that easy.

When you start juggling too many cats in a thunderstorm people are only going to remember that you let a flaming cat set the couch on fire, not that you successfully juggled 10 cats in a thunderstorm for a while.

 

You hit the nail on the head with the comments on the base, like, scary close.

As for Toyota and the Kanban System, I know it well! Before we started this venture I was a Manufacturing Engineer who specialized in Lean Manufacturing. I read that book that was written by Toyota. It was amazing to say the least.

I do my very best to implement that system into our company now. Its not too hard when youre starting a new company from nothing. Its very hard to walk into a company that has been running old school for 30 years with over 100 fabricators working. Trying to make change is near impossible.

I appreciate you taking the time to write this up. It was definitely a good read and it ahows you know this topic very well. Are you in that profession? As in, Lean Manufacturing?

 

Many moons ago when Toyota set up operations in Canada they picked a few "strategic suppliers" to be taught in the Toyota Manufacturing system. I was one of the bright eyed and bushy tailed Quality Engineers sent over to Japan to learn the "Toyota way" from the manufacturing floor to the design offices. I was told that I was one of the few gaijin that really understood the system and didn't screw it up like most North Americans did. We then had to Train the trainers in North America. Since I was good at problem solving I got sent around the world solving "manufacturing opportunities for improvement".
Worked on just about EVERY manufacturing process there is for Cars, Trucks, Trains, Planes, some work for submarines, satellites and military and medical equipment. Used and designed a lot of quality and test equipment, from CMM automated system to reliability testing fixtures. One week I might have been dealing with a powder metal gear in a transmission and next week I would be torsion twisting frames on a truck then onto why they only get a 10% acceptance rate for the hand made Viper hoods... Seen truck assembly plants that were dark dingy and all you could hear were pounding hammers as they made things fit, to plants like the VW glass plant where a stray fingerprint seems out of place.

When tasked with changing over a "old dog plant" , my opening tirade would generally start out with something like;
"Do you like going home dirty, do you like having sore muscles at the end of the day? Do you like being too hot, too cold? Do you like it being noisy? Do you like getting cuts and scrapes? Do you like having to look for things and reach for things? NO? Well then lets start treating you people right". Or in the Japanese phrase, Kimono Up. In Toyota Japan, manufacturing and design engineers answer/report to the shop floor. The operators have major input in the design and layout of their work areas. If you as an operator don't like doing something lets find a way so you don't have to do it.

Never even had issues with Unions, nice and grumpy Auto Workers reps were all suspicious of my intentions, but then after things get rolling and people start looking forward to showing off their projects at work that make their jobs easier, then those same grumpy Union Reps bring their kids up to meet you on Family Tour Day at the Plant and they say that they are proud to show their kids were dad works. You then know the only ongoing battle is going to be with Corporate bean counters that can't understand the importance of time put aside for team development or even a proper canteen.

 

“Cranial flatulence”

 

This is a good read...at the same time I question the applicability of the scope of this approach.

I know this model has many applications, but with a fabrication company I could see how certain criteria of this could be close to unpredictable/constantly evolving to make long term goals. Unlike a vehicle manufacturer that has its own goals and possible new iterations that it can invest in down the road for the long term goal, I view fabrication as a somewhat reactionary business. The fabricator is constantly having to evaluate the demand for accessories for these vehicle platforms and can only hope to invest as long as there is an interest for these parts.

As I just learned, Toyota plans to unveil their 4th gen Tacoma supposedly on Feb 8 at the Chicago auto show. If that platform is successful, can you honestly predict the criteria of what should be made for it right now without watching the market for it? Sure, the basic items such as sliders and a front bumper are an easy decision, but I see a challenge in making credible business flows for these items as you have to rely on the market to justify the design in new product.

I can see from a work/tool inventory perspective to constantly seek improvement in material processes, work flow layout, bigger space, shipping collaborations, etc., but I get the vibe that Mobtown has a moderate rent cost considering their location. At the same time, its a hard demographic to employ skilled trade from and I see the negative in operating in that area. At some point it would be good to get a strong evaluation of what is worth it to either keep operating with limited personnel, or to move to a more costly, business capable area where the company itself can grow?

Not knowing the books or the data tabulation of this, I couldn't give any recommendation on this, but I would think that this must be one of the most constant dilemmas with Joe's current particular situation. As much as I think it could be cool to jump to the fabrication side of things, to me its a little too niche to really grow to the profit margins that big companies like Toyota and GM play with. That said, unless Joe were to consider "going outside the box" and started supporting other manufacturer platforms (Jeep, GM, Ford), then I just don't see enough consistency to incorporate and INVEST your 5-7 year philosophy as the demand may or may not be there depending on the timing.

Like you said though, many people will look at the same situation and think there are "better" ways to execute it, but I don't think its that clear in this type of profession.

 

There are some pretty good responses in here recently so I will try to keep mine simple.

I think some automated status updates would be a nice to have. We get emails for order placed and order complete but I think other updates would be nice such as sent to powder coat, ready for shipping, or maybe unexpected delays , without spamming too much. I’m thinking of it from a planning for pickup perspective but even if I wasn’t picking up I’d still be excited to see an email saying sent to powder coating.

As the consumer we don’t need every update, only major status updates. I’m not sure what your current methods are for tracking but automated status tracking built in with some inventory management would beneficial to everyone, if you don’t have automated tracking in place already.

Overall I’ve been happy with my experience with you guys so far. I’ve gotten quick, transparent responses from you guys. I’ll be even happier when everything is on my truck!!

 

Thanks for the suggestion. We are currently working on a new website design. Hopefully it will be sexy and functional. Automated status update emails are something we hope to roll into the update soon. We get a lot of emails from customers looking for updates to their order. While we enjoy the conversation time, it pulls us away from fulfilling current orders, assisting customers with future orders and designing new products. Customer service is a significant amount of time/work. Currently we have help with the fabrication, but soon we will be seeking help with the administrative/customer service tasks.

Thanks again.