Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by PGTI University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherry Connor and I am your host.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, good afternoon. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and we are in a series called Windows and Doors 301. So we're doing a little bit of a deep dive on some product and process and introducing some folks that are really, truly integral to our operations here. And today in studio, we have with us Jason Anderson. Welcome.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, glad you could make some time and I appreciate you coming in. And so we're just going to be talking about the glass operation and the teamwork and all of that magic that happens that you're kind of in the middle of all that. But before we dive into our questions, tell us a little bit about you.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: So I am originally from Connecticut. PGT is my second job. So I'm 47 years old. I've been with PGT for 28 years. I was a dairy farmer in Connecticut for a year.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Ooh, that's hard work.
[00:01:13] Speaker C: Yeah, it's very hard work. Also, I don't think a lot of people out there want to be a dairy farmer. I was one of them.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: I lived on a farm for about 15 years that my dad did it and just realized it wasn't for me. So I began dating my now wife, had family members down here in Northport, and this was the first job I put in for when we moved down here. I started out in Easy Breeze, just rolling vinyl into windows. Easy Breeze Window obviously doesn't get glass and worked there four years and then did pretty much several positions. PGT worked in feeders, worked in glass, worked on window lines, worked in material handling. You name it, I've worked in that area. I try and reinvent myself every four or five years just to learn something else of the business.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Okay, nice. And so what is your current role and responsibilities?
[00:01:55] Speaker C: My current role and responsibilities, I am the production manager for glass plant A shift. So Monday through Thursday. The responsibilities of of pretty much every department there is in glass. The cutting, the tempering, the lamy, the ig, the shipping, and I assist in material handling. I used to be the material handling assistant for a while, so kind of transitioned from that into all of production.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Pretty exciting.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: So that's our A shift. About how many people are in that building on an A shift, I'd probably.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: Say when we're fully staffed, it's about 114. I'd probably say we're about 90, 95 people somewhere in that area. Right at the moment.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Okay. That's a pretty good sized crew, though.
[00:02:30] Speaker C: It is. It's exciting. I mean, no day is the same.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So I love going over to the glass plant. I think it's one of the coolest things that we have here. I love glass anyway, and stained glass. And I've played around with those spaces, but just watching the sheer volumes. And we've had some conversations with Bobby Jo and also Chris Kerwood around the glass volumes. And I've seen the new view from the mezzanine. And so it's so exciting around here these days. And so I guess one of the things that you do is kind of. I was trying to figure out an analogy. You're kind of like the conductor, right. And you've got this giant orchestra of all these different moving parts and pieces and work in progress and work that's coming and work that needs to be redone. You've got all these different things happening. Is that a pretty good analogy of what your job is?
[00:03:13] Speaker C: I'd say that's a great analogy of what my job is. You think about what a conductor has to do. They have to keep everybody in tune. They have to keep everybody in time. They have to train the people, make sure that everybody does really good job with whatever they're doing, whether it be the brass or whether it be the percussion or whatever. Then they have to work with the composer or try and get what the composer was trying to do with the message and then communicate that out to the entire orchestra. And then the last thing is just provide leadership. I would have to say that's what our position really does during the day, is provide leadership. This is what we do when an issue arises. You have to make sure that your people are trained and doing the job correctly. Some people will fit into a position, some won't. Doesn't mean that they're not good for the company. It just means they're not good at that position. You got to determine that. But the probably the biggest thing is making sure you have everything done timely in glass. Everything has to be done right as the customer needs it. If you have too much whip, it's a bad thing. You can have quality issues or stuff sitting around, things get lost or whatever. You want to make sure it's timely.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: So when the assembly plant's looking for glass, at least make sure it's ready to deliver within an hour or two of the time they request it. But ultimately be 24 hours ahead of the assembly plant.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: And that can be tricky.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Because you're waiting on your glass supply and then you've got all these different processes to go through. And so I would imagine like just coordinating all the different efforts. So do you have like a morning meeting with all of your people or like what does the process look like?
[00:04:39] Speaker C: So for me personally, I've only got about four or five weekly meetings. So if you were to ask me a number of how many meetings I have, I actually can't put a number on it. My scheduled meetings, I meet with my supervisors first thing in the morning, first thing I get in. Okay, what's the state of the business? Do we have any hiccups, any machine downtime, any man, any material? You always want to look at the 3Ms. We'll go over that and then just discuss what their plans are through the day and just, you know, kind of poke holes through it, make sure everybody's good to go. I've got a pretty experienced team, so that goes pretty well. Then we proceed off into a plant wide meeting where we have just a department head from purchasing material handling maintenance, just how their departments are going and just go from there. We have about three other meetings throughout the week that discuss what we call corrective actions. Another one where we talk about rolling action items, which is something to improve or make the area look a lot better, something 5s. And then we have a maintenance scheduling. Every other meeting I have would be what I call impromptu on the floor if an issue arises. Let's go over here, let's take a look at it. The best thing you can do is take an operator or a quality administrator and if you have or a quality technician if you have a bad piece of glass or if you have a quality issue, let's look at it and figure it out. Right there on the floor.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense to just be like hands on, right?
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Keep everything going. And then of course we're running 24 hours a day. So you're taking some handoff from the B shift.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: And then handing it back off to them.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Correct. In my position and what I've done, I've actually used to be the B shift administrator. So I've got a great relationship with all the guys from our B shift. Know them probably 10 years or so longer. I mean this is a great group. I mean we've got a really good group over in glass.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: We are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window indoor industry. Whether you are a customer selling our products or a homeowner doing research. The Clear Impact podcast provides helpful content that makes an impact subscribe today wherever you listen to podcasts.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: That's awesome. What are some of your secrets in maintaining all of these solid working relationships?
[00:06:41] Speaker C: Being with the company for 28 years, I'd say that's where your experience comes in. You always have to learn something new. You can never rely on. This is the way we've always done it, or this is somebody that's been set in their ways or whatever. You can't rely on something like that because things are always evolving. So 28 years doesn't really matter for me with experience on the lines because things are changing and I have to change and I get that. I don't want to be a person stuck in my ways. Solid relationships is where your 28 years comes in. There's a gentleman that works over in the assembly plant named Jim. The first guy I met when I moved down here. I've known him before he's had his kids. He's known me before I had my kids. We call each other up. This is what I'm going through on my line. Give me some advice. I'll shoot things off of him. Give me some advice. What are you guys really going through? There's things you just have to communicate in person or over the phone, and you have to have that comfort level. So getting to know people is where my experience comes in. And I consider myself an extrovert. I'm really more open to chat with or in chatting with people and just finding out about them, I really don't feel like it's ever about me. It's always about the person. So just my secrets is finding out about the other person.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Well, that's good leadership, right? Is empowering the people that you work alongside and giving them the room to make decisions and the room to do what they need to do.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: I do. I like to empower. I also try and make it a little bit fun to. When I'm talking to people, I always ask, you know, what's my wife's name? I have three kids. What are their names? Because I always make it about the other person. Nobody ever asked me, so I'll leave with that quite a bit. What's my family's names? Tell me about them. But I'll never give them the answer. They have to find out some other people. So it just kind of gets a little banter going. It's pretty good, right?
[00:08:15] Speaker B: That's fun. And so one of the things that you've been super helpful with is customer tours. And I bet you probably have on any given month, you probably have 10 emails from me with calendar invitations because I've been helping coordinate the campus tours for our customer base. And so how has this been for you and your team?
[00:08:36] Speaker C: Very helpful for us. Just this week, we've actually been taking our own customer care group through the glass plant, who's never been there, and they've had great questions about glass. But I went to a conference this one time. This will always stand out to me in Miami with another gentleman. And I had somebody walk up to me and said, I know you from somewhere. And I was like, all right, where? And he said, do you work at pgt? I said, yeah, you gave me a tour about six months ago. I'm from Seattle. I, you know, work at this company. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was so impressed with your tour that I went and bought one of your guys machines you use. And I try and mimic the same thing you guys do. And this was in Seattle. It's in the other side of the country. It was just crazy.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: So, you know, I didn't realize how much of a outreach our tours had.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: But that really brought it home for me. I love meeting our customers and talking about some of the defects they might have. You know, distortion could be caused by a natural element. You know, if we have a fingerprint, I can show them how or why and what to do when talking to their sales rep, but also showing them what we do. And I don't think I've had anybody come back to me with any negative comments about our tours. Yeah, I did do an exciting one last year with the sniper unit from the Sarasota Sheriffs. That was pretty fun.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, those guys were intense, man.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: Yeah, it was good. It was really good. They gave me one of their little. Their coins at the end. It was. It was pretty exciting. I still have it. I cherish it.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very interesting. You know, here we are in the business of making products to protect our homes so that big, bad storms can't come in. And then these guys are trying to figure out how to take out bad guys through the windows. And we're like, sorry, we're not very helpful.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: I know. We're not helpful at all. We're designed to keep them safe.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yes. We're, you know, if it's fire and rescue, they can make a lot of noise, but when it's the sniper team or the SWAT team, they want to be very stealth and quiet. And it's like, we can give you some product to practice on, but we can't really tell you Much.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: And that's what we focused on is we can give you some product to practice on light heartedly, try and get the person to open the window, you know, if you have an issue or whatever. I mean, just. No, it was an interesting tour.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Really enjoyed it.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Well, I know our customers love it. They love being able to get to go see the glass plant. And when people start to understand, and this is one of the beauties of the tours, is that it gives everybody perspective. Right. So if I'm a dealer, I'm a salesperson working for a dealer and I've maybe sold, I don't know, two or three hundred units that month. That's probably a really big month for me.
[00:10:57] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: And then I come to this location and I hear, oh, we cut 100,000 square feet of glass every single day.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: And we produce 4,000 units every single day.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: I try and relate it over to like it's seven football fields worth of glass a day is how much we cut. 24, seven.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: That's a pretty significant amount.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: It's. It's staggering. So I love being able to provide that. And you've got a nice bench of people now that can jump in and do the tours. So it's not just one or two people that has that responsibility. It's a nice bench. And that's just great, you know, because nothing should ever rise and fall on just one person.
[00:11:37] Speaker C: No, we're blessed with a very talented group.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, they're very engaged and AP1 has been doing the same thing. They've got a bunch of their group leaders down on the floor who've, you know, veterans. Some of these guys have been around since the mid-80s or mid-90s. So these guys, they know what's up down there. So they've been able to talk really much more in depth on the tours than I can. So it's been really fun. So if you've not come and done a tour at the Venice campus at pgt, talk to your rep and get it going. Come on over.
[00:12:04] Speaker C: We've got line it up.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: I know. And the glass plant is just being finished, so you got the sign off today, so that's going to be an exciting thing to see.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Yeah. So I encourage anybody that's done the tours in the past come back because it's completely different, for sure.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: All right. Is there anything else we need to talk about?
[00:12:18] Speaker C: No. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. I enjoyed this.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah, this has been fun. Thank you so much, Jason, and appreciate you.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: All right. Thank you, Sherry.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: All right. Take care.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: The Clear Impact Podcast is brought to you by PGTI University. We are a part of Mitre Brands, a family of leading window and door brands united by our passion for quality and relentless pursuit of 100%. One of the missions of Mitre Brands is to unite and deliver the finest customer experience possible across the nation. Our Window indoor brands deliver regionalized expertise and products. Backed by a national company. PGTI University is here to educate you, our listener, so that you can be a more informed consumer of window indoor products.
