Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: 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.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: The best ideas come from those that are actually touching the product and doing the work. And so coming in with a solution can be okay, but it's never great. The best solutions come from listening to those that are actively engaged and leaning in and again, creating value. So if we can pull those voices together and then kind of collectively culminate the ideas, it gets us to a much better place.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: Good morning. We are here on the Claire Impact Podcast, and I am sitting today with Jason Wolfgang. Finally, Jason is here. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Thank you. It's been a long time coming till we could pull this together, so I appreciate you taking the time this morning.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're in Venice here and there and always have a full agenda when you're here, so I appreciate you making time.
So we've been trying to talk to various leaders through the organization and talking about the MITRE acronym. And so M is obviously manufacturing, and that's largely where you hang out in the manufacturing space, right?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: For most of my career, absolutely. I've always kind of been kind of the manufacturing liaison. More recently, though, in my current role, I focus more on the. I on the innovation side, as a lot of my work is done with the engineering and supply chain teams, along with kind of quality and extrusion and other support functions.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Okay, so before we dive into all that, because that is not a small amount of things that you're responsible for, give us a little bit about your background, your history, maybe education, career path, et cetera.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: So as we started, I've kind of always been the manufacturing guy. Growing up, my life's ambition was to go build things. Didn't know what those things were going to be. But as long as we were building, something like that was exciting to me. And so I've had a tremendous career of opportunities with a number of different companies, ultimately kind of joining what was MI at the time, in 2018, to lead our Higgins operation, which was large, our replacement side of the business. Since then, I've had an opportunity to kind of grow with the company, and my role's kind of gone into more regional leadership and more manufacturing responsibilities, and now recently starting to transition.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: Okay, so are you an engineer?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: So, ironically, my education is in welding engineering, so not necessarily adjacent to where most of our processes are, but you can find a lot of parallels in everything we do.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, no, that's interesting. I love hearing how people land where they are, so that's fun. So you live in the Pennsylvania area?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I do. Kind of born and raised. Spent a number of years kind of traveling the country for different roles, but had the opportunity to kind of come back and land literally a couple of miles from kind of where I grew up. So it's kind of been an interesting journey.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: That's awesome.
So we have been integrating with Mitre for just over two years now and there's been a tremendous amount of changes on the PGT side, but also throughout the entire organization as these powerhouses have really come together. From your perspective, how would you say it's going to.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: I would say it's gone exceptionally well. There's always challenges with any type of new relationship and particularly when it's, to use your words, kind of two powerhouses coming together. There's lots of opportunities where it can go wrong, but I think in our case it's gone right so many times that it's gone exceptionally well. I think that we all continue to kind of learn from each other each and every day. And not that there aren't challenges with that, but everybody's been so open to embrace those challenges and say, how do we learn from it and how do we get better and each day try and create a better tomorrow?
[00:03:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that's my perspective too, is that we're really harnessing the best things about each of the individual brands and then saying, oh, you guys do it this way and we've been doing it that way and oh well, maybe your way is better and there doesn't seem to be a lot of ego involved, which is really nice.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll touch, you know, on the DNA later. But the approach of just being humble I think is very much evident in kind of the in Mitre approach. And I think it plays so well as you're bringing together different companies, brands, teams. It's just important to kind of approach with kind of that style and then just kind of embrace the feedback.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah, no, for sure. It's been wonderful actually. Not that it was terrible before. I mean, PTT has been around for a long time and you know, we've had various leadership over the years, but I've been here about five years, just over five years. So I mean, we had multiple acquisitions in the first two years and it was just like, oh my gosh, this is like, hold on, we're still catching up from the last one. So this has been nice to just kind of settle in and have some long term vis and not just putting out the next fire, at least from my perspective. I'm sure manufacturing floor there are probably more urgencies than what I'm feeling. But anyway. So what can you tell us about the new things like the automation and production? Give us a little insight as to what's happening on your side of the world.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think from an automation side there continues to be evolutions to technology. We all hear about AI and the rate of improvement there and equally equipment and processes kind of parallel along with that. I think the way that we're looking at it today, which is really integrating the automation and processing with the product side and trying to design products that enable greater levels of automation, really kind of puts us at a place that we can generate a platform that'll be both sustainable and kind of scalable kind of going forward. So spending a lot of work right now with kind of those teams trying to say how do we work together to kind of harmonize on a strategy that kind of gives us that platform versus I think traditionally most of us in this space would have looked at automation as a tool and trying to apply it to kind of current state. We're trying to be a bit more forward looking and saying how do we apply tools and products together to build kind of that long term strategy.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: We are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window and door 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.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Oh, very nice. You were probably involved in the C700.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great example of like kind of our first really kind of foray into more of a true integrated automation system. Up till that point we've collectively kind of dabbled in automation as a discrete tool. C700 is a great example of all the discrete processes kind of being linked together to improve the reliability of the system, but also greatly improve kind of the experience for the team member of not having to go and look for the product. The product's really kind of coming to the team members. So I think that's a great example of where we're trying to go just at bigger scales.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Yeah, that was such an impressive operation. Getting to be out there in January and touring the facility in Tacoma and just seeing how much of the actual workload was lifted off of the manual labor portion of the manufacturing. Because fiberglass is heavy, the sizes are massive and just having that lift minimized throughout the whole process was really impressive.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And the team has done such a really nice job there of just focusing. Focusing on the work, but then also on the envelope of the building and creating an experience that the team members can continue to kind of be proud of and want to come to work and just make it an enjoyable place to come and just generate value.
[00:07:15] Speaker C: Yeah, no, it's impressive. I hope the floors stay just as shiny and clean as they were in January.
Like, you could eat off of this floor. This is amazing.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really impressive.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: Yeah, no, they did an amazing job. So what is something interesting that you are learning about lately? And this could be professional or personal or both.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So just came back from a trip, really, kind of throughout Europe to look at kind of leading technologies kind of in our space.
So there's a trade show based in Nuremberg that happens every two years. It's kind of the largest in the fenestration industry. But we were able to kind of tailor on a couple of other trips with suppliers to kind of go see where that market's kind of going with products and energy efficiency and different kind of technologies. And I think if you go back in time, many cases, I think we would see that trends kind of start in Europe and then work our way kind of to the west coast and then ultimately kind of to the East Coast.
So being able to kind of go and see what's happening kind of in those European markets in advance was really interesting. And trying to learn about those technologies today and saying, how can we start to think about when they'll hit our space, and how can we be on the front end of that to kind of pull them through?
[00:08:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that there are so many forward thinkers here. That's amazing.
All right, so one last question. Of all the Mitre brands DNA statements, which one or which ones resonate with you the most?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: You know, I think they all resonate in different ways. The one that I'll speak to today would be one that I could almost argue kind of describes me, which is we listen twice as much as what we talk. I'm typically the quiet one in the room that's kind of observing, listening, just trying to interpret, so that when I can comment, it's felt to be insightful or connecting. And so that's my natural style. But I would also say that throughout my career in manufacturing, I've learned to embrace that the best ideas come from those that are actually touching the product and doing the work. And so coming in with a solution can be okay, but it's never great. The best Solutions come from listening to those that are actively engaged and leaning in and again, creating value. And so if we can pull those voices together and kind of collectively culminate the ideas, it gets us to a much better place. And so to me personally, from a manufacturing background, but also from a personal style, that one really kind of resonates with me.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Oh, I like that. Well, that's a sign of a good leader, right. From a 10,000 foot view, it's difficult to know exactly what's happening. But when you're engaged with the people that have their hands on it and are dealing with the day to day, that's wise, you know, But I think
[00:09:38] Speaker B: you'd find that theme throughout the Mitre leadership, like all of us find great enjoyment, excitement, and getting to spend time kind of in our operations and just engaging with the team on a local and personal level.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: And so I think that's woven throughout who we are, our culture and our business and who we aspire to be.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: No, that rings true for sure. All right, well, Jason, thank you so much for your time. Sorry we had to call you out and chase you down and all that,
[00:10:02] Speaker B: but, yeah, sorry for making it that
[00:10:04] Speaker C: difficult, but I had directive a couple years ago from Mike desoto to record with all his leaders and I was like, okay, I'm working on it. So I'll be sure he gets a copy of this.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: We'll try not to make the next one so difficult.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: No, it's all good. But I appreciate learning more about your role and the areas that you oversee and a little bit about your background. So thanks for your time.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: All right, thank you.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: All right, take care.
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