Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s time for Chattanooga Business Radio now. Here are your Business RadioX hosts.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Chattanooga Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Rock Creek Informatics, Mr. Andrew van Breugel. How are you, man?

Andrew Van Breugel: Doing well. Stone. Great to be here and looking forward to, uh, to sharing some time with you and your listeners this afternoon.

Stone Payton: What a delight to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions, Andrew. We may not get to them all, but what I think would be a great place to start, just maybe if you could share with us a little bit about Rock Creek, what mission, purpose? What are you guys really out there trying to do for folks?

Andrew Van Breugel: Sure. So, sir. Look, we’re a small business consultancy based here out of Chattanooga. Um, we try to do most of our work in this south east Tennessee. But it doesn’t work out that way. Typically, we do work all over the country, and what we’re trying to do is help small to medium enterprises, uh, with their process efficiency and their business performance, um, particularly on the operational side. Uh, we have a, um, a bunch of consultants that that work with small businesses. They’re all highly experienced with a lot of, a lot of work background. Um, and we’d like to get into the nitty gritty, uh, down low and dirty, uh, with organizations and really get into what they’re doing and see if we can assist them with their with their efficiency.

Stone Payton: What’s the backstory, man? How’d you get into this line of work?

Andrew Van Breugel: Uh, how long has this guy for this? Uh, look. A long story, so I did a lot of my work overseas. You can probably hear I’m not, uh, from the US. I’m Australian. Uh, I spent a lot of time in Asia working for some large corporates over there, and I met my current business partner over there. He was bringing students over from Lee University up in Cleveland. Here, um, he teaches the MBA program there, and they would come to Singapore, uh, you know, to get some experience and do some projects in my plants that I was running over there. And as time went by, you know, we talked and we decided, hey, look, why don’t we do this, uh, on a more serious basis and run this consultancy and do some work down here in Tennessee. So I came over to to run the consultancy because my business partner, guy, he has a passion for teaching. So he’s a professor there at Lee University teaching the business school.

Stone Payton: So now that you guys have have gone out and started to, to do this, what what are you finding the most rewarding and what’s the most fun about the work these days for you?

Andrew Van Breugel: Look, it’s always a similar sort of thing. So most organizations, you know, particularly smaller ones, they either have the founder and the family, or maybe some employees trying to run the business, and they really don’t have all of the skills and capabilities and expertise, and certainly not all of the experience that’s necessary to really do well. So that’s where we come in. Um, and to see them improve their business, to teach them, especially because we don’t just like to go in and leave, you know, we like to go in and leave something behind. And what we leave behind is, is as much knowledge as we can, and the tools and techniques that we feel will help them run their business better. So that’s always very rewarding for us and the part that we certainly enjoy the most.

Stone Payton: So you touched on something that suggests to me that smaller and midsize businesses, maybe they do have some unique challenges and opportunities that really are a little different from your large organization, where previously. Yeah.

Andrew Van Breugel: Oh, absolutely. So large organizations typically have all the capabilities and experience and skills that they need, not only to run the business, but to improve it on an on going basis. Smaller businesses tend to obviously have what they need to run the business and to remain, uh, you know, successful or survive, let’s say. Um, but they rarely have the resource to actually improve the business, to actually look at how we’re doing things, map out the processes, see where the waste is, figure out why things aren’t flowing better. Uh, you know, that’s a job in itself. That’s a that’s a vocation in itself. And, uh, very rare that a small or even a medium business is doing that. It’s something that everyone’s doing part time, and as a result, they don’t do it particularly well.

Stone Payton: Well, let’s dive into the work a little bit. The, the process. And maybe it would be helpful if you wanted to use a use case or something. Of course, you may not want to share names just to help us get our arms around. What what this process might look like.

Andrew Van Breugel: So it is different for different businesses in in many respects, but in some ways it’s also very similar. So, so most businesses, um, whether they’re involved in producing a physical good or a service, they have people, they have facilities, they sometimes have materials, they’ve got a bunch of things. And what they’re trying to do is, is, is convert those things into either a physical product or a service. That means there’s a process behind it. In fact, there’s usually several processes behind it. That means to say people have to do certain things with certain things, convert the materials or whatever it might be, whether it’s making a bed in a hotel or producing a piece of ammunition in a factory, you know, um, there’s a process behind that. And if I know what that process is and I put all the steps together properly, and I start to examine and see things from the perspective of waste, um, now I can change my process and reorganize it a little bit, uh, to drive out that waste and to make the thing flow better. To give you a quick example, we do some work with a company out west. Um, they make recreational, um, uh, equipment. High end recreational equipment. Um, now, if you look at how long does it take to make one of these items? It’s around about ten hours. Okay. If I if I have nothing else to do and all I do is work on this thing. Ten hours to make. But when I look at the value stream map, I see it take, uh, 7 or 8 months to get through the plant. So you see the inherent waste there? Uh, seven months to ten hours of work. And that’s very typical. Nothing unusual about that at all, because people think as long as I’m busy, it must be good, right? But no, you can be busy doing the wrong thing, or you can be busy doing things that don’t add value. And that’s what we try to help companies see and then address.

Stone Payton: Well, I have to believe that to have a set of objective eyes that are not weighed down with sentiment and emotion, they’re looking at the processes that has to be incredibly valuable. And I guess I’m, I guess I’m you’re already winning me over to this idea of working with a smaller, focused boutique consultancy that’s going to roll their sleeves up and get in there and see what’s really happening in my business. But there really are some advantages in working with a with a smaller consultancy for this particular constituency in there.

Andrew Van Breugel: I think I think for sure. So first of all, and you know, to get the nitty gritty, but we don’t have any overheads, right. We don’t have an office somewhere. We don’t have uh, you know, a buildings to maintain. There really is just the consultants fee and that’s it. So that means we’re inherently less costly than, than many of the larger consultancies. But more important than that, we can come and see you and interface with you and your managers. We can go to where the work is done and actually see what is happening and how it’s done. And obviously for local, we can do that on a daily basis. And all this travel and accommodation and meals, whatever is all cost, which you don’t have to incur. And you’d be surprised how much that is. For some companies, it could be, um, a half or even more of their total cost, and it’s really doesn’t add value to them. Um, so we can go and see where the work is done. We can go and talk to the operators on the shop floor. Let’s say if it’s a factory, we can map with them the value stream. Uh, and as we’re doing that, we’re teaching them, you see. So all of this is intense and all of it takes time. And if you’re paying one of the big consultancies, you know, the sort of fees they charge, you’re just not going to be able to do it. So it’s a much more affordable and much more, uh, I would say friendly relationship that we create. And I think that’s why we have so much repeat business, because once people see it and experience it, they say, yeah, that works for me. It’s effective. Um, it’s personable. And on top of all that, it’s cost. It would cost me less than if I were to use one of the big companies out of one of the big cities.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So do you ever find yourselves filling or maybe coordinating someone else to fill some sort of fractional management role for a period of time in some of these client systems?

Andrew Van Breugel: Yes, absolutely. Stone. That’s becoming very popular because like we said earlier, a lot of the smaller to medium sized organizations, they don’t have the skills in house. So now they have a choice. Or maybe I should employ somebody, but now I end up having to employ somebody to do more or for more hours than what’s really needed for that skill set. Um, fairly expensive probably. And I may have to get someone from out of state and pay all of their relocation. So there’s a lot of risk there. And then after 6 or 8 months, I find there’s didn’t really work out. You know, we find that a lot. Now, on the other hand, I could do the fractional way and say, here’s a person with 30 years of manufacturing experience, Um, maybe I need them two days a week. Whatever, three days a week. But for the long haul, meaning to say, you know, six, 12, 18, 24 months, we’re not there to do a project. We’re there to be your, for example, operations manager. So we expect a seat at the table, but we don’t need to be there five days a week, and you don’t need to be paying us five days a week.

Andrew Van Breugel: Uh, a lot of smaller companies are finding that really attractive because it’s cost effective. They really don’t have any other way of getting that experience and those capabilities and those skills into their business. Uh, and it’s risk free. Because, you know what? If I don’t like you, after a couple of weeks, I’ll just politely ask you to leave. Um, which is hard to do with an employee, you know? So fractional management or fractional leadership, as we call it, um, becoming very popular. And we have we have some of our consultants working for more than, uh, more than several years in some businesses, um, on the plant side or on the quality management side, uh, or on the financial side. Um, so for small family businesses or even medium sized ones that that that are not family businesses, they know they’re finding this a very, a very suitable alternative to the traditional find an employee, get them in on board them, hope for the best, pay them a lot of money. Find something else for them to do because they don’t really need their skill set for 40 hours a week. So that’s the solution there. Stone.

Stone Payton: You know what? You just you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. The family businesses, I bet they have their own set of challenges above and beyond all the challenges that that a small and medium sized businesses face. I bet there are some unique dynamics when you’re working with a with a family owned business, aren’t there?

Andrew Van Breugel: Very much so. Very much so. And there are quite a few of them around here, uh, in the South. And, uh, you know, some of them are into their first generation of, of, of handover and some of them may be into their second, But you know, the success rate of family businesses beyond the second generation is very, very low. It’s very small. Um, and we find a lot of family businesses are still being run by the founder, who may be in their 60s or even 70s now, and sometimes the children are not interested in the family. So obviously their only choice is to sell. And they find that their business is severely undervalued because they’ve, you know, they’ve never they’ve never bothered to. It’s a bit like if I want to sell my car, I should at least wash it and tune it and get it a little bit fixed before I sell it, you know. But a lot of family businesses aren’t like that. Um, so they’re leaving a lot of value on the table because, as you know, there’s a multiplier on your earnings in terms of what you charge for the business. So every $100,000 of earnings that you can secure might be worth 7 or $800,000 or more to you in terms of the selling price of the business. So a lot of a lot of businesses are asking us to help them with that aspect, I’ll bet.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a consultancy like yours? Is it is it almost all referral based, or do you find yourself having to shake the trees a little bit and do some actual marketing? How do you get the new business man?

Andrew Van Breugel: So honestly, we do both, but I can tell you the relationship based, um, marketing or representation is by far and away the most successful. I mean, probably probably I mean, virtually all of our business comes from referral or repeat from existing clients. It’s very hard to attract. It’s very hard to get the story across in a way like I’m communicating it to you now. You can’t really do it by on a leaflet or you can’t really, you know, put an ad in the, in a, in a periodical. You’ve got to sit down with someone for a good 45 minutes, 60 minutes to convince them that, you know what, you’re hitting all the things that bother me. All the reasons I can’t sleep properly, all the reasons I’m working 65 hours a week. And now finally, someone is coming with a solution that is affordable and plausible. You know, to have that conversation really, really requires you to be face to face and probably have some relationship with that person.

Stone Payton: Well, relationship strikes me as the right word as you’re describing the work and the people that you’re that you’re serving the the level of trust that you must have to cultivate with these people must be incredible. Because, I mean, you’re getting in there with them, rolling your sleeves up, learning about their business, providing counsel, maybe not always telling them exactly what they want to hear initially. So the you must be in your team must be really good at cultivating and sustaining that that trust and that relationship.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yeah, we find, uh, like any business like ours or probably, um, any service oriented business. It’s it’s hard to get the door opened. You know, it’s hard to it’s hard to get people to open the door. But we find that once we once we’re in, it’s really quite easy to, uh, to get the job done and for them to find more things that they want you to help them with. And then they start telling their, um, their friends or their other business associates. And that’s how we get referrals. And being a small boutique consultancy, we’re not looking for a lot of work, to be honest with you. I mean, we’ll take as much as we can find and grow the the bench accordingly. But honestly, and this is going to sound very corny and very hard to believe. But the bottom line is me and my partner, my business partner, we really are just more interested in helping local businesses. Um, you know, we neither of us do this because it’s necessary for income. We do it because, you know what? We’ve got something to offer between the two of us. We’ve probably got, you know, 80 years of work Experience, um, right across the gambit of small to large companies, private, public family. Um, right. Covering everything from leadership development, coaching and support, strategy development, you know, management of information and how to use that in decision making, you know, people and human resource processes, uh, how to define the customer value and drive that through processes to delivery operations and vendor management. You know, there’s a lot of experience there. And we know that most businesses can benefit from that experience. It’s a question of how open they are to it.

Stone Payton: You mentioned a term earlier in the conversation that I would love to learn a little bit more about, if you’re up for it. And look, gang, if you want to learn a lot, meet some brilliant people and get a little bit of free counsel. Get yourself a radio show. You get to talk to some really smart people.

Andrew Van Breugel: Okay, I’ll try that. I hadn’t thought of that.

Stone Payton: But the yeah, the, the term that I think you mentioned a couple of times is this value stream map. Can you speak to that a little more?

Andrew Van Breugel: Certainly, certainly. So, uh, particularly in manufacturing environments, but actually it applies to any environment. Um, what a company is trying to do is assemble. Let’s we’ll use a manufacturing example because it’s easier. Okay. I’m going to buy some materials. Right. And I’m going to get some people and maybe a couple of machines and a building, and I’m going to convert these materials into something else that people find value in. And they’ll pay me more than it cost me to produce. That’s the whole point of of business, correct? Yeah. Now, doing that is a series of processes, as we discussed earlier, and there’s a flow of those materials through that process. It could be through a series of machines, or it could be to different facilities or there’s something coming from my supplier and maybe I send it to somebody else and they do some more processing. Maybe they paint the thing or whatever, and they send it back to me. If I map this process and I take a look at where is the physical item going, how does it move? Right. Not, not not like a geographical map or not like a spatial map, but just conceptually, how does it flow through the process? What’s the capacity utilization of each process? How many people are there? You know, where’s the inventory sitting? Why is there work in progress between the steps and also the information? Where does the information come from? How does it get aggregated, and how does the person on the shop floor know what to do each day? And how does that come from the customer or the distributor or wherever the the end customer is? So if you can imagine on a wall covering it with butcher’s paper, you call it butcher’s paper here.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Covering it with butcher’s paper at brown paper. Having a bunch of people in the room who know the process, or typically going and having a look as well, and starting to measure cycle times, starting to measure downtime, starting to measure defect rates. Having a look at who’s working at this equipment, taking a look at the, you know, the work in progress on either side of the of the work unit. If you if you map that out and draw it on the wall using symbols that we used is a classic lean technique, by the way, our value stream mapping. And then I overlay that with the the information flow. Like how does information come from the customer to the shop floor through who and through what systems. If they’re using any kind of computerized system. And then down the bottom I’ve got this process cycle efficiency sort of diagram that’s going to show me, okay, when am I adding value to this product through this value stream map.

Andrew Van Breugel: When am I adding value. So envisage if you will, stone on this wall inside a large room, a map that shows a bunch of processes and a whole bunch of data around each process. It shows me where the inventory is and down the bottom I have the lead time. Let’s say it’s five days, but how much of that five days was I actually working on the product and how much was it sitting around? Now I’ve got my process cycle efficiency and boom, right there. I have a very valuable piece of information that I can start to assign improvement around. Okay. I can start to see the waste and I can start going attack that waste. I can start to see where the flow is or where the flow is being retarded. And how do I how do I stop that, that that flow from stopping? How do I make it flow better? Um, and this is how you make value flow and how you reduce waste and drive process efficiency that way. That’s a very convoluted answer. I should have just shown you one. If this was if we were doing a video, uh, sort of thing, I could just show show one on the screen. Well, and since radio, I have to try and describe it.

Stone Payton: Well, when we get that studio in Chattanooga that I was telling you about before we come on air. Then you can. You can show it to me. You can show it to me in purpose. But no, I didn’t find it convoluted at all. It makes all the sense in the world. I think it would be incredibly valuable. And I see the use case and application for manufacturing. But, you know, I’ve been in the professional services arena for 35 plus years. I think there’s plenty of application in our world to man, I think that seems powerful.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yes, absolutely. We’ve used it in the healthcare setting as well, um, where we try to expedite the processing of, uh, of of healthcare providers fees from insurers. Um, the only challenge with, with non-production processes is everything is done sitting down at a computer. So, you know, there’s no physical product to follow. There’s no sheet of paper, there’s no, uh, folder. You know, it’s all happening electronically. And so it’s it’s exactly the same concept, though. You’re going to map it out, um, and you’re going to see where does the information stop. So I give Stone something to approve, and he sits on it for five days on the average. Well, there’s five days lost. Okay. Now, if it’s a if it’s a physical item sitting on the shop floor, you can actually see it there. And you can say, why are there ten of these sitting over there? Are they waiting for machine A to be repaired or whatever? You know, it’s harder to see. Or if I’m making beds in a hotel or if I’m servicing animals in a veterinary clinic, you know, a lot of it is, um, it’s harder to map, but the concept is exactly the same.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Hey, I’m going to switch gears on you for a minute, if we could. Hobbies, interests, pursuits, passions outside the scope of this consultancy work. You know, a lot of listeners, uh, for us, anything that I’m producing or hosting or co-hosting, they know I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you kind of nerd out about that is outside the scope of this conversation.

Andrew Van Breugel: You know, that’s the that’s a that’s a that’s not a good question to ask because, uh, I’m really quite boring and I try to figure out why I’ve got no time. But no, look, I’m not into anything that takes time. I don’t do hunting, fishing, golf all off the off the agenda. None of those things are ever going to make it onto my onto my, um, I think although, having said that, you know, I probably spend too much time, uh, watching sport, uh, like, at the moment, uh, you know, my sons go to UTC here in Chattanooga. Oh. So, um, yeah, right now, of course, we go to every home game there for the mocs. Uh, who are doing okay, by the way, if you’re interested. Um, unfortunately, I also watched the Titans. Um, but this year, that’s proving to be a waste of time. Um, so to answer your question, I like, look, I like documentaries, I like movies, I like hanging around at home. I don’t mind doing home repairs, which nobody likes, but I like doing it. Um, trying to figure out why how things work. I’m not a builder, obviously. So, you know, if something’s broken, I like to figure out how to fix it myself, if I can. Uh, so, look, it’s a really boring stone. Uh, that gave me no listeners out there that are going to be enthusiastic about my extracurricular activities. I thought.

Stone Payton: Hey, I would love to leave our listeners if we could, with a couple of actionable items, something to chew on, maybe something to read or do or a don’t. And maybe it has to do with looking, you know, inside their organization. But just, you know, you’ve been at this a long time. You’ve seen it all. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Andrew or somebody on his team. But yeah, Andrew, maybe just to tide him over between now and then, let’s give them a little something to to noodle on and think about. Yeah.

Andrew Van Breugel: Look, the thing I want people to learn to do better is to keep an open mind, uh, to not be afraid of outside. Um. Oh, let’s not call it advice, but just outside experience and outside thoughts. Um, now we we we peddle something called inclusion. I know we’re using inclusion all the time now, and I don’t use it the way that most people are. Inclusion just simply means everybody. Everybody in your factory or at your workplace, whatever it is, nearly all of them are working below their potential. I guarantee it, right? Just about everyone. Now, why is that? Well, it’s because they’re not included in the important stuff of decision making analysis, idea generation, idea assessment, and then finally choosing to do something. So so my my nugget, if I can call it that, is learn how to involve your people in the stuff that you think for some reason is only yours to do, and that is decision making. Learn to teach your people how to be involved, and you open your eyes and you open your mind, and you open your ears and stop trying to be the one who does all the decisions. And I don’t have a book for you to read. There’s probably thousands of books on this. Um, but but, you know, for me, and it has been since I learned it myself back in the early 2000. Inclusion is about including everybody at work. It’s got nothing to do with race or gender or anything else. It has to do with a person is going to have something to offer to your problems, to your and therefore to your solutions and the skill. The one skill that leaders don’t have and never have had is how do I spend my day doing that with my people? Come and tell me. Come and show me. Teach me how to engage my people and to include and involve them in the running of my business in a way that doesn’t threaten me or make me feel as if I’m losing my authority. Teach me. How can I turn that corner?

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked. That feels and sounds like marvelous counsel. Thank you for that. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Andrew Van Breugel: Certainly they can visit our website. It’s think rci.com, or they can write to us at info at think rci.com. Or if they want to reach me directly they can write to a Van Bruegel. That’s a v a n b r e u g.

Speaker4: E l.

Andrew Van Breugel: At think RCA. Com. That’s the way to go about it. Stone.

Stone Payton: Andrew. It has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You and your team are doing such important work and having such an incredible impact on so many. Keep up the good work and know that we appreciate you, man.

Andrew Van Breugel: I appreciate that. Thank you Stone. And again, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Chattanooga Business Radio.