Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by Mitre Brands University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sheri Conner, and I am your host.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: So, good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast, and. And we are recording from Tacoma, Washington, this week.
And somehow, as a miracle happens, I was able to convince Mark Wenfeld to come and chat with me this morning. So welcome to the podcast, Mark.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Thanks. And so, Mark, we're just kind of introducing some folks here and talking about how their role and responsibilities fit into the MITRE acronym. And so tell us a little bit about your role and responsibilities here and then maybe touch on your background as well.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. So right now I'm operations manager for internal supply. So that includes the pultrusion division, fiberglass, and then also the vinyl division, vinyl extrusion, and then our DC Warehouse that we have up here in Tacoma, Washington. And my background is I started 31 years ago at Milgard.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Started in production and did many different jobs throughout the company from inside sales, service, quality, continuous improvement operations in several different areas, several different divisions as well. Simi Valley, Tacoma Manufacturing, and also the internal supply locations.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Wow. And so I've never been to an extrusion plant or a pultrusion plant, and I get to do both of those this afternoon. So I'm very excited to learn more about that process.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: It's really cool. Both of them are very different and very similar. You know, there's a line that continuously runs the product out for us, but there are different ways that we do it. You know, one is fiberglass and one is final. So the raw materials that go into it is different. The machine looks very similar. What you get on the other side looks similar. It's a stick. You know, one is fiberglass and one is vinyl. And then for the protrusion side, we also do the painting. We also paint the substrate because it comes out raw.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Okay. And so how about how many people are you overseeing in those facilities?
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Right now we have about 190 people.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Okay. Wow. And is it one shift, two shifts, three shifts? Like.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: Yeah. So in vinyl, we're 24, seven.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:24] Speaker C: So four shifts, rotating. And then at the protrusion division, we are 24, five. And we have three shifts, several different departments.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Wow. That's a big deal. Thank you for making time to come chat with me.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: And so obviously, you would be supporting the manufacturing space. Do any of the other letters come into play for your role?
[00:02:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Innovation is a big one. Always looking for different Ways to improve our process. Just in case, in point, we had one of our team members, Dawn, Cat and Batty. She sent out the email for the how this month. And, you know, for us, the improving the process is huge. Our wet paint line is what Don works on, and we spend a couple years really honing in that line. Not only just the process of the materials as well and the training of the people innovating, you know, looking for different paint suppliers and different ways to paint different processes that we put in place. That's a big one for us. To me, it goes back to trust as well, though. We can't innovate unless we have trust, the company, trust of the leadership, which we do. I think going out on a limb and trying to innovate. If you don't feel that your back is taken care of, right. If somebody's behind you and saying, okay, yes, go try that, it's okay to fail without trust. You can't innovate, is what I find.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And so for those that may not be familiar with the how, can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:03:40] Speaker C: Yeah, we highlight certain team members that really stand out and show really superior results of improvement. It could be scrap quality issues, throughput team member engagement. Mitre sends out an email and highlights those folks. It's called the how.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Okay. And that's every week, right? Yeah, somebody from a various plant throughout the country and they get. And then I think on the sales side, it's the wow.
Like the how and the wow. And so that's, you know, hey, we, you know, just landed a contract with a new builder or whatever. So I see those.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Got a good contract.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I see those come through, which is an amazing way of affirming and recognizing people for going above and beyond.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: Yeah, people are happy to see that. It just kind of goes to show that leadership cares. You know, Don got other emails from Mike desoto in the team, other leaders, and saying, hey, thank you. It goes a long way, hands free.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: And so, because we're the learning team, we believe in learning and developing and growing. I like to just throw in a fun question, so what is something cool or weird or interesting that you're learning about these days?
[00:04:44] Speaker C: So I'm really interested in AI and how that incorporates into business and improvement and innovation. And I know recently at mitre, we're starting to use the links program, which is cool. But also I'm interested in ChatGPT and Grok on how, you know, I can do research on different innovation things, different chemicals that will help Our process, both at Pultrusion and at Vinyl, we have different kind of chemicals that we use and processes that we use to develop our product. And looking at AI and how that can help us do the research for us for things, show us different ways to innovate. I think AI really has a lot of potential for us.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm on the links, which is really fun. And as I've been developing course content, because we're actually working on Milk Guard content now, so that'll be launching in the next few weeks, at least for the Tuscany line, we're starting with that one.
So I've been knee deep in course content over that line for the last few weeks. And so I fed the entire product knowledge slide deck into links yesterday and said, hey, write 10 assessment questions for each of the products throughout this thing.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: And it did. And I was like, oh, looky there.
So I'm sure I'll go in and make some edits and some corrections based on my own preference of what we typically test on. But, yeah, it's definitely a time saver, so that's fun. All right. Anything else?
[00:06:03] Speaker C: No, thank you for having me.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for making your way over. I'll be over in the Pultrusion plant and Extrusion plant this afternoon. I'm very excited about seeing that.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you, Mark. It was great meeting you.
[00:06:13] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Have a good day.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Bye.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: All right.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: The Clear Impact podcast is brought to you by Mitre Brands University. We are a part of mitrebrands, a family of leading window and door brands united by our passion for quality and relentless pursuit of 100%. At Mitre Brands, our common purpose is to deliver value by manufacturing the finest products, services and customer experience every day, everywhere. Our window and door brands deliver regionalized expertise, products and services, all backed by a national company.
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