Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by pg t I University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherry Connor and I am your host. Good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and we are in a series around executive updates. So this is like trying to harness a, a bunch of fast moving people who are juggling some really incredible things. And today we have back in our studio Bob Keller. So welcome back. Hi Sherry. It's good to have you. It's nice to
Speaker 2 00:00:37 Be back.
Speaker 1 00:00:38 Yeah, I'm glad you remembered where it was and how to get here. It
Speaker 2 00:00:41 Took a little bit, but I got it.
Speaker 1 00:00:42 Yeah, so there has been a lot happening, a lot of changes. The last time we spoke you were overseeing our sales and marketing business and now you're doing something totally different. So I wanna hear about that. What can you tell us about what's going on with you?
Speaker 2 00:00:58 Yeah, so just recently I did get a title change and so now my new title is Senior Vice President of Research Development and Technology. So it kind of starts with being responsible for the research and development for all of P G T I. So that includes Western and Lynn Martin and everybody here in Florida, which I had research and development for Florida, but this obviously adds the West Coast. But then on top of that, it includes product management, so everything associated with the product direction and pricing and all of that kind of stuff. And then here, just recently we added technology onto it, which means the IT group and everything associated with business systems and those type of activities.
Speaker 1 00:01:37 I don't know how you do that <laugh>. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:01:39 It's a lot. It's a, it's a busy time for sure. But it's great. It's good groups of people and uh, always something to do. Right.
Speaker 1 00:01:45 I was gonna say, you've got a pretty solid team underneath you if you're dealing with IT and development. So Steven Coy reports up to you. Dean Rourke, I'm assuming? Yep.
Speaker 2 00:01:55 Dean Rourke. Kevin Billauer in at Western. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:01:58 I know Kevin.
Speaker 2 00:01:59 He reports to me.
Speaker 1 00:02:00 But yeah, actually Kevin Billauer, I did a podcast with him as well as the rest of the western team when we were out there last fall. And Kevin has been helping our team develop a course for Title 24. Oh nice. Which is a whole cluster of regulations and rules for California. Right. Very special around energy codes. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 2 00:02:20 Kevin's doing a lot of great stuff out there. The work they did with their new products, the very slim line, the 300, sorry. Yeah, the 300, the patio doors, the work they're doing there. He's working with Lin to get up to speed on Lin products and the new Black Black and other things like that that they're doing in Lin. So Kevin's got a lot of great things going on out there.
Speaker 1 00:02:38 Yeah, no, they're a tremendous team. So how much fun is that for you?
Speaker 2 00:02:42 Uh, it's great.
Speaker 1 00:02:43 So what is happening with the new glass? So there's diamond glass and then there's a thin triple. So there's a little confusion and I know we're probably not a hundred percent clear ourselves, but what do we know today that we can share?
Speaker 2 00:02:59 Sure. So we've been working with, uh, Corning for a long time on uh, using their thin glass technologies for ways to improve our products that we sell every day to the home. And so we've gotten to a place where we have a couple of products that we're ready to bring to market. First one being diamond glass, which is using a 0.7 millimeter thick piece of glass and laminating it to our traditional soda lime, three millimeter glass or five millimeter glass. And creating impact products that meet the current codes and meet all of our kind of existing pressures and requirements that we have for our products. That's
Speaker 1 00:03:40 Amazing.
Speaker 2 00:03:41 It is. It does tremendous thing. The Corning products that we're gonna be using, the fusion drawn glass that they produce, it's more clear than traditional soda. Lime glass is three times more scratch resistant than soda lime glass. And because they're able to produce it at I guess a thin thickness, it takes a lot of weight out. So if you think of a traditional laminate, you have a piece of three or five millimeter soda lime glass, you have 90 thousandths of inner layer and then another three or five millimeter piece of glass, you're gonna take one of those three or five millimeter pieces of glass out and replace it with a 0.7 millimeter. And so it basically eliminates the weight of that one piece. So you're taking the weight down depending on if it's a laie only or a laie, I g anywhere from 25 to 40%. So if it's a 400 pound sliding glass door, it's 250 pounds. So it, it basically takes the product weight from an impact product to the weight of a traditional non-impact product.
Speaker 1 00:04:39 Wow.
Speaker 2 00:04:40 Yeah, so it's really exciting. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:42 We've got the samples in our showroom that I guess were used at the IBS show. Yeah. In Vegas. And so you can actually lift it and feel it. And uh, I've been able to show a few people that on tours lately and it's pretty amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:04:56 It is. The samples that we have in there, they're just basically the equivalent of a sash, a traditional sash. And the traditional laminate weighs in that sample weighs 40 pounds. The diamond glass weighs 26 pounds. Wow. So it's pretty significant. And you know, when you think about an installation crew that's gonna go do 10 to 12 windows in a house plus maybe two patio doors, and those patio doors probably have more than two panels, there are three, maybe four panel doors, the amount of total weight that comes out of having to be lifted by those crews is tremendous. You think about our warehouse people, you think about the warehouse associates at our dealer base, you think about the weight on our trucks throughout the entire channel, it dramatically reduces the weight that the entire channel has to manage.
Speaker 1 00:05:41 Wow, that's amazing. I'm really excited to see that. So that's diamond glass, that's diamond glass. And so that will go into our window products.
Speaker 2 00:05:50 Yeah. So we're gonna start with that going into our window and our ILA products. And that will be in the third quarter. We're kind of targeting July, but I'm confident in the third quarter. But we're really pushing to get it going in July. We have our last piece of equipment to be production ready coming in May, and we'll get that up to speed and then we'll be ready to go from there. So we're starting with WinDor and iLab products, but then we'll as quickly as possible start transitioning or adding it as an option into other products. We're looking at potentially P G T as an option in the first quarter of next year. So, you know, again it's, it's a piece of getting the production up and running, getting equipment up and running, getting capacity, all that kind of stuff, getting people used to it here in the plant.
Speaker 2 00:06:33 Cuz you do have to process it differently, but in the end it's still, it's glass, it, it really is glass. A lot of people don't think it is, but it's really glass. It's very similar to what you would see in an iPhone, an iPad. It's similar to what's in the glass on an LCD TV screen, those type of things. It's similar to technology so it, it's real, it's laminates like we're all used to in Florida for impact products and it's just a new technology that allows us to advance our products and produce a product that's easier for the field to use.
Speaker 1 00:07:03 That's amazing. I know last year I did do a conversa, I had a conversation, we did a podcast with Dean and Kenny a little bit about this and I remember Kenny saying, you know, they like to solve problems and everybody was complaining about how heavy everything was and they saw that as a problem, but no one really anticipated it being able to be fixed. And so he was just so excited about this is one that we fixed and people didn't know if we could and no one really was expecting anybody to fix it. So I love that the same spirit of P G T innovations that brought the first impact product to market is now bringing Diamond Glass to market.
Speaker 2 00:07:46 Absolutely. I mean you think about pg t Innovations and innovations being in our name, you know, we innovated the first impact products in Florida and we've been working on this for, like I said, it's been about four or five years now. So this is not something that just popped up last week. We've been working for quite a while. We've just now gotten to the point where okay, we can build it. It meets all the pressures and requirements and to kind of prove that it meets all that we're putting it in in our window product line, which is some of the biggest product that has the highest design pressures in the product offering that we have. And so, you know, we've gotten to the point now where it really is ready for market and um, you know, to be the first one to be able to come to market with something like this.
Speaker 2 00:08:28 When you think about that weight issue that people talk about so often, you know, when you get into these big door panels that weigh hundreds of pounds, the driver behind that is glass. It's not the extrusions or anything like that, it's glass. And so the reason that it's kind of been the holy grail that we've been searching for is because, you know, there's not many options when it comes to glass. I mean there's glass has been around for a while and it's been made the same way for a long time. And so this work with Corning has really been a, a fun project to find a new way of using existing products that are used in other industries to solve problems in our industries.
Speaker 1 00:09:04 Be sure to tune in for upcoming episodes to help you understand the fest station industry, what you need to know when buying windows and doors and other related topics. You can find out more about us@pgtuniversity.com. You can also find us on Facebook and LinkedIn. Yeah, that's so cool. I love just the creative engineering but also business minded spirit that's here. You know, the engineers here are so focused on development and tinkering, but they don't do it blindly. They're very aware of profit and cost and time. You know, hats off to our organization for giving them the space to do that, but also the perspective to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:09:48 Absolutely. I mean, and like I said, this is something we've been working on for a long time and it's not just taking that technology and putting it through our current processes. I mean we've had to design new processes. We bought a new piece of equipment, I'm gonna say it was about two years ago, that's a new lamination technology. We're the first in the United States to bring that in and acquire it. And it was for the sole purpose of getting to use it for diamond glass. So you think about this, two years ago we spent a significant amount of money for a piece of equipment that didn't exist in the United States before. I think we bought the third one in the entire world hoping and betting on the fact that we are gonna be able to figure out this diamond glass and they'd be able to bring it to market.
Speaker 2 00:10:31 And here we are two years later being able to do that. And that's a credit, uh, you know, not only to the engineers and their ability to work through that process to bring it to market, but it's also Jeff and the executive team and our board of directors because it was not a cheap piece of equipment we had to go get approval from the board of directors. So, you know, I give them a lot of credit for allowing us the leeway to explore these type of technologies and believing and trusting in the team that when we get to a point where we're coming to them saying, Hey, we got something here, this is pretty cool. And they're like, yeah, go figure it out and here's some money to do that. I mean you don't get that very often with board of directors and senior leadership. They want more certainty and this group is really fun to work with.
Speaker 1 00:11:11 Yeah. And so is that the Kel machine?
Speaker 2 00:11:13 Yeah, it's the Kel machine.
Speaker 1 00:11:14 Okay. I know I've been over to the glass plant a few times and I knew that there was something over there that we were the first ones to have it in the US and so I was trying to recall like, okay, it is the
Speaker 2 00:11:24 Kel. Yeah, it's the Bergal, it's a new lamination technology, a new way to laminate glass that allows us to process this glass sandwich that includes a traditional piece of soda lime on one side, the laminate in the middle and the fusion drawn thin glass on the inside. So you've got, you know, this three or five millimeter thick piece of glass on one side and this 0.7 millimeter glass on the other side. And so by using this new piece of equipment, we can really vary the heat and temperature, whether it's heating or cooling on either side of the piece of glass to be able to produce this product and have it come out without having big warps or issues with it.
Speaker 1 00:12:02 That's amazing. And so the distortion will be less,
Speaker 2 00:12:05 The distortion will be less, not only because of the lamination process, but think about it, if you are building a wind door door, that window door product has three pieces of heat strengthened glass in it. If it's a laminate IG or it has two, if it's just a laminate, well we're pulling one of those pieces of heat strengthened glass out and so now you only have one or two. And so where you get a lot of the distortion and other stuff is through the tempering process. And so by pulling a piece of tempered glass out and it's a more optically clearer piece of glass you're replacing it with, it'll be significantly different. I'm really excited because we've got glass coming in, I believe it's next week that will replace all of the window samples in our showroom here in Venice and we'll get to really show everybody what the difference is between traditional glass and the new diamond glass.
Speaker 1 00:12:55 Oh, that's fun. Yeah, that's gonna be exciting. That's amazing. Okay, well I'm really excited about that. What else do you wanna talk about? I wanted to hear more about the thin triple or the triple thin or whatever we're calling that
Speaker 2 00:13:04 <laugh>. Yeah, so, so that's the next thing that will be coming out. It'll be a fast follow, I don't know if it'll be July, but it'll be in the third quarter for sure. And we're still working on exactly what we call it. You know, we have diamond glass and now we have what's called the thin triple. And so what the thin triple is, is it's using the similar technology instead of a 0.7 millimeter piece of, uh, fusion drawn glass, we're gonna be using uh, 0.5 millimeter. So even thinner. And to give you an idea, Corning makes this stuff down to like 0.2 millimeter where they can actually roll it in a roll. Right. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 00:13:37 That's the gorilla glass, right?
Speaker 2 00:13:39 Uh, no, that's called willow glass, right?
Speaker 1 00:13:41 Willow, that's right. Gor
Speaker 2 00:13:41 Gorilla Glass is what they use in iPhones and other things like that.
Speaker 1 00:13:45 Okay. The willow glass, I think Kenny mentioned that in the episode that we did last year, where you can like roll it up and carry it on your shoulder. Yeah. Like that's crazy
Speaker 2 00:13:54 <laugh>. It's, it's absolutely crazy when you see this stuff, but, so it's 0.5 millimeter and because it's so thin, what we can do is take a traditional IG and we can put a piece of this thin glass in the middle of it and create a triple without adding any weight to the product or without having to make it bigger. So the challenge when you get into energy efficiency is obviously the glass piece. And a long time ago we went from a single pane of glass to an ig, an insulated glass unit where we have two pieces of glass and we have an airspace in the middle and that creates insulation. Well, they've had in the market in Europe and in Canada and even in the United States, they have, we'll call it a traditional triple, which uses three pieces of soda line glass. Well, the issue is, is you have to have a certain amount of airspace and so when you add a piece in the middle, they have to make the triple wider than a traditional ig. Right.
Speaker 1 00:14:44 Because you have to accommodate for the airspace still. Right. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:14:47 And so a traditional IG is either, let's call it seven eights or one inch. And when you go to a triple, you're going to maybe one and eighth or even wider in some cases. They go up to, I think about an inch and a half, depending more inch and a quarter. And by using this technology we can kind of slip that thin piece of glass in the middle, create the two airspaces without making the unit any wider. The other benefit is we don't add any weight to it. So if you think about it, an IG has two pieces of glass. It's already got weight to it. If you added another piece of soda lime in there, you've just increased the weight of that IG by 50%. And that's the issue with impact. If you think about it, you know you're adding a piece of glass for that laminate.
Speaker 2 00:15:30 Well, with this triple, we're adding a piece of very thin glass that doesn't really weigh anything. And so it can be a direct replacement for a company's ig. So what we're gonna be able to do is we're gonna be launching it first in our energy view vinyl products. We're gonna take the aluminum reinforcement out of it and replace it with a composite reinforcement. We're going to add the thin triple product into it. We don't have to change balances, we don't have to change anything else about the design of the product. And you now have one of the most energy efficient windows in the United States.
Speaker 1 00:16:05 Wow. And that's gonna meet the new Energy Star recommendations as well.
Speaker 2 00:16:10 Absolutely. There's a new energy star coming out. We don't know exactly when, but let's say it's the end of the third quarter or in the fourth quarter, more than likely sometime around maybe October. And yes, it will meet the new Energy Star seven that's gonna be coming out. And so it, it's gonna be really neat. And so our, our energy view products that's gonna be coming out, like I said in the third quarter this year with the Thin triple will be, again, it'll be one of the most energy efficient windows in the United States. It will meet the most efficient criteria for Energy Star today in Energy Star version seven, which allows you to apply for various, uh, tax credits and other things like that in the Inflation Reduction Act. And uh, you know, we'll be the first to market with that technology. Wow.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 That's just wild.
Speaker 2 00:16:52 Yeah, it's fun. Like I said, we don't know exactly what we're gonna call it yet, but for thin triples for now is a good start.
Speaker 1 00:16:57 Okay. And that'll be exclusive to the PPG T line or will that be available? I guess WinDor is gonna have all Diamond Glass.
Speaker 2 00:17:04 Windsor is gonna be Diamond Glass. The thin triple's gonna start in the vinyl window in pg t and we'll be looking at where we expand it from there. So it, and, and it might not just be it more than Likely's not gonna be Florida products, it's gonna be, you know, we'll be looking at Aland products, we'll be looking at Western products because that Title 24 that's going on in California has some pretty strange energy requirements. And these products, uh, this thin triple will allow all of our products in the West to easily meet the Title 24.
Speaker 1 00:17:32 It's just mind blowing to think about all of this. That's crazy. And you were in Korea last week buying equipment and did some crazy trip and
Speaker 2 00:17:40 Yeah, I was in Korea looking at some new equipment that makes the thin triple through an automated piece of equipment using the similar TPS baser that we use today. We're gonna start out in, uh, the third quarter doing it manually. We can make about 300 a day is what we think we can make starting out in the third quarter. This, uh, new piece of equipment will be coming in probably, uh, in the third quarter. It'll be operational we expect by the end of the third quarter, which will include the IG equipment plus a cutting machine to be able to cut the thin glass in a more automated fashion. And when we have that in place, we'll be able to do, call it somewhere around 800 a day, maybe even a little more than that. So yeah, so we'll it'll be ramping up quick.
Speaker 1 00:18:19 Wow. And so that explains the Glass Plant expansion project.
Speaker 2 00:18:22 That's a piece of the glass plant expansion project, but frankly, one of the things I'm doing right now is I'm looking at other buildings not in Florida because as I mentioned, this is an energy place. So Florida is a great climate. We don't have to worry about the cold and heating and all that kind of stuff. Very much so. Where this is gonna be used is gonna be really in the northern climate zones, the northeast, uh, Canada and out west and California and the Northeast. So we'll be looking at bringing another plant online sometime next year. Uh, we're still working on where that's gonna be. Right now we're kind of looking at either the Midwest or out west where it can go with our products out west. So we'll know more about that I would say by the end of the second quarter.
Speaker 1 00:19:03 All right. Well, we'll, I think another update podcast will be in order when that happens and when things are really trucking along and people can start ordering that. So
Speaker 2 00:19:12 Absolutely. Like I said, I expect in the third quarter we'll be selling pg t and we'll expand into other products as well. But look, this is one of those that we would, uh, if we create a plant for it, we would be looking to sell to other people in the window industry as well. Wow.
Speaker 1 00:19:25 Sounds like we're gonna be, uh, taking over some pretty amazing spaces that are ready for some fresh ideas and, and new things. And here we are, we're doing it. So absolutely. Like I had anything to do with it. You guys are all, all the genius ones around here. Anything else we wanna talk about it at all or?
Speaker 2 00:19:41 No, I think you have a podcast coming up with Steven here, uh, in the coming week. And Steven and his team do a great job. We were just at a three day offsite. I unfortunately was only able to be at one of those days, but the team was doing an outstanding job of working through what challenges we have and how can we work better as a team. You know, the IT group is a pretty interesting group because, you know, when it comes to all the acquisitions and everything else that we've done over time, it's a team that frankly is in every location that we have and they're dealing with their unique challenges in each one of those locations. More so than any other group. I would say maybe HR or finances are probably the only other groups that are similar to it in that way because, you know, a lot of times, you know, sales deals with customers out west or customers in Florida marketing, you're dealing with products out west or products in Florida, manufacturing the groups deal with the manufacturing of products in Florida versus out west and it, they've gotta deal with the email system for everybody.
Speaker 2 00:20:38 They've gotta figure out the financial systems and the back ends and front ends and all those kind of things that make it extremely challenging. And so, uh, it was fun talking with the group and working with the group through those challenges, kind of hearing the struggles that they have and listening to the ideas and the thoughts we have on how we can continue to improve. So you should have an exciting discussion with Steven here in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1 00:21:00 Yeah, he did an episode with us early on, which was really centered around helping our dealers know whether or not they needed to hire an IT person or what they needed to have in place to keep their systems running and just hire Geek Squad or like, what do you do? Yeah. Like how do you maneuver that when you're a small business? So it was really leveraging his knowledge in that space to help our dealer audience. So I'm excited to hear from him again. Yeah. So, all right. Well it's Friday. We are outta here. It's only morning, but I got a full day. I know you probably do as well. Awesome. Absolutely. I appreciate your time today, Bob. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing with us about this.
Speaker 2 00:21:33 Yeah, thanks, she, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 00:21:35 All right. Have a great day. You too.
Speaker 1 00:21:37 PG t i University is the customer education team for an entire family of brands. We began with the original Easy Breeze, porch and closure line, then became P G t, America's leading brand of impact resistant windows and doors. We then added cgi, CGI I c Window, Western Windows Systems, new South Windows, echo Windows and doors, and Lynn Windows and doors, and our latest acquisition Martin Garage doors. We create products built to withstand major storms, keeping people safe, secure, and prepared. Our exceptional brands give you the protection you need without compromising design or functionality. PG t i University is here to educate you, our listener, so that you can be a more informed consumer of window and door products.
