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.
Good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and we are sitting today with one of my favorite people, Chris Kerwood. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for making the drive up. I know you're normally in Fort Myers, but you used to be here on the mezzanine. I would get to see you every now and then and just have great respect and admiration for you as a human being. So thanks for making time to chat with us today. For those that haven't had the privilege of getting to know you or have never interacted with you, tell us a little bit about your history with the company and then we'll about your current role and responsibilities.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: So as you mentioned, I did spend my first 22 years up here in Venice working in the Venice facility. And I'm currently down in Fort Myers. So in total, I've been with the company 24 years.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Started out actually on the production floor running a punch press on the old aluminum horizontal roller line, the non impact line. And then throughout my career I've had a lot of great opportunities within pgt. I spent the first couple years, as I mentioned, on the floor, kind of getting my bearings in the company and learning how to build the product. But from there I had the opportunity to move into our glass operations where I was a team leader over on our lamination line and eventually worked into becoming a supervisor over our IG lines and then moved up to North Carolina to help start that facility up there. Because of the expertise, my aluminum background in building those windows, came back to Florida and became the shift administrator. Ran our overnight shift for the AP1 assembly plant. And then unfortunately the downturn happened where we reduced and I was moved into a role in our quality engineer department and really got to understand a different side of the business from the quality standpoint. From there I moved into leading our field service team, which really opened up my eyes to the other side of the business, which with the dealers and the customers out there and really gained a really good respect for the things that we do internally in the organization and how they affect the end user.
From that standpoint, I moved into what used to be our curtain wall business and our storefront business, which later became the CGI Commercial business.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Right. Which is now PGT Commercial.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Which is now PGT Commercial. And that was a completely different realm than anything I'd ever worked in before, dealing with the commercial side. From there, I moved back into manufacturing and had the opportunity to lead our material handling teams, our warehouse teams as well as many different production lines. Specifically worked on the vinyl wind guard product kind of from inception and growing that into what it is today. From there, I moved back down to Fort Myers where I am at today.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Wow. So is there anything you haven't done here?
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Not really. From the operations side of the business, I've pretty much covered it all at one point or another.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Wow. That is an impressive history with the company.
So you have a full 360 degree experience and you said 24 years?
[00:03:44] Speaker A: 24 years, yes.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Okay, so PGT's celebrating 45 years in business this year.
So you've been here for over half of it?
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Yes, I have.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: That's amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you for serving and being part of the team. You know, we value people who can stay the course and just to bring so much knowledge and experience to the table. So with all of that, you're now the plant manager, right, For Fort Myers. And so tell us just some rough numbers about Fort Myers, like how big of a space is it, how many people work there, like whatever you want to talk about. Okay.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: So the space is about 140,000 square feet. We have about 200 hourly employees working there with about another 20 indirect employees and five salary leaders working down there. Right now we are building the Windguard 770 product and the frames for the vinyl door product that we build up here in Venice.
And really the plant is growing in leaps and bounds from a standpoint of the products that we have there. And some of the accomplishments I wanted to talk about today is first and foremost is talking about the team that is down there and the culture that they have built down there. They actually just hit a milestone about 20 days ago. They achieved one year without having a recordable incident rate.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: For safety.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: For safety, yes.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Wow. That's amazing for 200 people. And you're dealing with glass and metal and really heavy products and machinery, and that's incredible.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Thank you. And it's a mission that we sent out to try to accomplish at the beginning of the year. And it's really taken a lot of effort and focus and training with the team members to be able to accomplish that. So very proud of the team that's been able to do that. The other big things that we've kind of taken on this year is the oversized, narrow style door that came out of the Ilab. We've added that to our portfolio down there. And really, it's something that we hadn't experienced from the size of the product and the weight of the product. So we've been able to reconfigure our entire production line that was originally set up for 10 foot doors. And now we're building the 12 foot doors down there.
And so the weight and the size of that was something that we saw as an opportunity to improve for our team members. And so we reconfigured the line with lift assist and new flip tables to be able to allow the team to have the same ease as they had before to be able to build that product. And that's something we're really seeing starting to grow. Down there is a lot of these larger sized doors throughout the facility, which is a really interesting dynamic for the team. But we love the challenge to be able to do it. And the team is succeeding pretty wildly at that. Some of the other things that we're doing down there is we've seen the growth of vinyl up here in AP1 with the Windows and the doors. And since we build the frames to go with those doors, we've seen a lot of growth. And those products take a good bit of time to kind of run through our facility based on that. They're dedicated to CNC machines to be able to produce those.
And so we've reconfigured and added machinery into that zone of our plant and really are prepped for the growth or the continued growth of that vinyl line there. The next thing that's kind of on the table for us right now is the integration of the 4130 CGI door into our plant. So we've been able to clear some space and add that to our product portfolio down there, which is kind of right in our wheelhouse because that's what we do with the 770 and the aluminum door. I mean, so we're pretty pleased to have the opportunity to take on that product as well as the team members that are transferring up from CGI are coming up to help support it. So we've got a lot of knowledge coming up to go with that as well.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: That's awesome to be able to retain some experienced people building that.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. And then the last thing is we've actually added a continuous improvement engineer and a quality engineer to our staff to kind of help continue the trend that we're driving with the improvements to help support an improved quality and improved overall experience for our customers there.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: We are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window and door industry.
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That's amazing. So just a couple things going on.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Just a few.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: So when you're talking about the size and the weight of the door, what are you talking about for max? Like for the 770, what is that running now?
[00:08:38] Speaker A: For the narrow style 770, the largest size, we can do a 12 foot by 5 foot panel. And if you get the largest glass inside of that, you're in excess of 800 pounds for one panel.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: That's no joke, man.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: No, it's not at all. Wow. We had to come up with some very creative ways to move this product around the facility without relying on the team members to physically pick it up and move it.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Because you would need like 10 people to do that.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yes, indeed.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: I mean, especially if they were me, you know, probably need 15.
So how do you see these production changes helping our customers?
[00:09:16] Speaker A: So I mentioned the quality piece.
The more you can move this heavy product through an automated process or a lift assist, it reduces pretty significantly the opportunity for it to get damaged in transit. So that's one of the things. But really by expanding the line and expanding our capabilities there, it allows us to protect that three week lead time that our customers expect from us there, as well as having the capacity to take on more business maybe during the summer or when we see that seasonality in our business, that we can take on that business, still deliver on time in full at the rate 99% plus is basically kind of where we're at for our delivery out of that facility. But it's really about maintaining those things that our customers have come to expecting rely on us from.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Right. That's amazing.
And so how do you see this overall impacting our Florida business?
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Well, I think, you know, having that footprint down in Fort Myers, a lot of the product that we build gets delivered in that area down there or the southeast market.
So it allows customers to have a voice that's close to them. We have a lot of customers that'll come in, kind of want a tour and show them around what we do. And it really opens up their eyes to the manufacturing process. But I think that it also really impacts them that they can become to rely on us from a delivery standpoint as well as they can order in three weeks and get their product in three weeks for us.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: That's amazing for a custom builder.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: I mean, if it was just A standard off the shelf. Sometimes it's hard to get anything in that kind of a timeframe. That's amazing. And so, Chris, we have this little thing that we're doing. It's the We Are Florida campaign. And there's been a lot of publicity around that, and there will be more coming. And so what does We Are Florida mean to you?
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Well, I've always said over my career that I'm a fourth generation born in Venice, which is pretty rare these days.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: My son is actually a fifth generation born here. And to have a company like pgt that's in my hometown, which was a very small hometown many years ago, and it's grown quite rapidly. But to have that opportunity to be able to live in, you know, where I was raised and have a career that's grown and prospered, that just means a lot to me. And when I think of it, I think of a story that I've told a few times about the recent hurricanes with Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Milton. Both of those were really my first true experience of being in a hurricane, even though I've lived her all my life, Both of those. The eye wall passed over my house, and I always had a pride in the products that we build, but staying in my house and watching how the product performed brought a whole nother level of pride in what we do here.
And really, the products that we build to be able to feel secure in your house, they perform as designed. There's something about that that just really brings a sense of pride. And right here in my backyard, we're the ones that are developing those products. You can get them locally, basically, and you have that safety and security that if you're ever in the same situation that I was in with the hurricanes, that you can feel safe and secure inside your house. So really, it's those two things, to me, that when I think of we are Florida, that really drive it home from a personal standpoint for me.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Well said. Yeah, it's nice to feel like you don't have to evacuate. It's nice to feel like you don't have to figure out where you're gonna go and fight the traffic and disappear. And, I mean, unless you just are craving a couple of weeks in North Carolina or wherever. You know what I mean? It's just a nice thing to be able to stay put and then you're available to help your neighbor if they aren't as fortunate and keep things moving in the community.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: And actually, a couple of my neighbors actually bought our product a couple years back. And after both of these storms, when we went out around the neighborhood, half a mile from my house is the beach, houses were completely destroyed. And you look around, those that had our product were pretty much unscathed from that standpoint. And just my neighbors coming over and saying thank you for turning them onto our products and getting them for them was just heartwarming from that standpoint.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Well done. So one last question. What part of the Mitre DNA speaks to you the most? Because we've got, like, I don't know, 15 or 20 statements that really embody who we are as a company and as individuals in that company. So which one? I'm curious to hear what your answer is. Which one is for you.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So there's so many that hit home with me that it's really hard to pick, but there's one that hits home a little bit more, I think, than the rest of them. And it's. We are comfortable being uncomfortable.
And a lot of people, you know, you might read that one and kind of shy away from it. But I look back on my career here, in every situation that I've ever been in, in which I was uncomfortable was the biggest learning experience for me.
And once you embrace being uncomfortable, you can grow. You can grow the business, you can grow yourself, and you can teach that to other people. And I would have to say if I looked back at my entire career when I was leading field service, that was probably the most uncomfortable I have ever been. I went from the shop floor, you know, just building product, to being out in the field and being in situations where we had something that was wrong. In the field, you had a homeowner that wanted their product fixed or replaced or whatever it might be, and just kind of walking through those situations, on seeing the other side of the coin relating to the homeowner, relating to the dealer, those were a lot of tense and uncomfortable situations.
But it really allowed me to grow and understand the other sides of the coin there. And so being able to bring that back into the facility, as a leader inside the facility was probably worth its weight in gold.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Wow, that makes a great point. Yeah, you don't grow in the comfort zone.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: No, you do not.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, even recording a podcast, that can be a little like, I know I was nervous when we first started doing this, but now it's just second nature, so. Well, you do an amazing job down there. I've had customers that have toured the facility with you, and they were impressed, and it's always impressive, and you take great pride in what you do. Down there. And I'm glad the company's recognized your leadership abilities and given you the reins down there. So keep at it more and more to come, right?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. I appreciate it very much. Thank you for having me.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Have an amazing day. Thanks, Chris.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: All right, take care.
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