On behalf of the Architectural Precast Concrete Committee here at PCI, I welcome you to the first of our presentations for our 2021 Production Management Workshop series. Thank you for joining us. I'm Bradley Williams, the Chair of the Committee. A little background on these workshops, they started as a brainchild when we did a survey of attendees at our recent committee meeting. In the survey, we asked for input on what topics would interest producer members and their production managers and production workers. This was pre-COVID, and the goal was to try and have an on-site production manager's workshop annually. Can you go over the program number? And approximately six months after a hands-on production workshop was in the plan, which would be for leaders and skilled workers in the plan. The first one planned was a carpenter's workshop, which is still on the books and will be in early 2022 after COVID. May I pause here and invite anyone who's listening and joining to be a volunteer on our committee. We need voting members. Our goal is to have at least two voting members from each of the chapters throughout the United States, in different regions. So we invite you to join. As we know the pandemic has changed much, perhaps one of the positive outtakes is the way that we communicate. And even though we will not be able to meet face-to-face and we miss that opportunity, the idea was born through the committee that we could help producers and thus each other grow and develop through monthly one-hour discussions and get-togethers. We have eight meetings scheduled for 2021, all planned to be virtual. The first three in our series are on quality, starting with today's panel discussion titled How Does Culture Influence Quality, or How Does Your Culture Influence Quality? May I add, as a committee, we're open to suggestions on how to improve this series and would ask for your feedback, even though we don't have a formal survey at the end. So with that, I welcome you. I would like to thank Steve Schweitzer, he's our committee vice chair, and he'll be the mediator of our panel discussion today, Randy Wilson and Nicole Kloh with PCI for their logistical support, and a special thanks to our panel members, John Claussen, Lee Baker, and Chuck Quiney. Once again, welcome. And I'll turn the screen over to Randy, PCI's Director of Architectural Precast Systems. With that, Randy, once again, thank you all for being here. Thanks, Brad. As we get started here, I wanted to follow proper protocol and read our PCI antitrust compliance guidelines, and they read as follows. It is in the interest of PCI and its members to comply with antitrust laws at all times. Because PCI brings competitors together and facilitates dialogue among them, its activities carry, its activities carry inherent antitrust risks. The guidelines are intended to help participants in PCI activities avoid these risks. Their general nature, following them does not guarantee compliance with the law, and deviating from them does not mean that the law was necessarily violated. So in this meeting today, just like every other Precast Concrete Institute meeting, we will not be discussing current or future pricing, factors related to pricing, increases or decreases in pricing, standardizing or stabilizing pricing, pricing procedures, a competitor's pricing, what is a fair profit margin, controlling sales, dividing or allocating markets, refusing to deal with a company because of its pricing or distribution practices, other business-related information that is not reasonably required to conduct PCI business. If a participant in any PCI meeting or other PCI activity feels that this discussion is improper with respect to antitrust laws, the participant should object, object loudly, and if such discussions persist, should leave the room. Any participant who believes that antitrust laws have been violated should immediately notify PCI's president. You can't be guilty by association, so speak up if you feel any antitrust laws are being violated. We also are going to follow PCI's Code of Conduct. The PCI Code of Conduct outlines expectations for all PCI attendees and participants. By registering for this event today and by participating in this event, you have implicitly agreed to follow the Code of Conduct, which basically states, participants shall communicate professionally and constructively in a manner that treats all with dignity, respect, and fairness. If anybody has anything contrary to that, you can obviously leave the room, or you could make a note of it in the chat box, and we will address your concern. I want to go through today's quick agenda. This is the first one, so this will be a little bit more lengthy than hopefully the future ones. We had our opening remarks and some introductions, antitrust and Code of Conduct policy, and here's the process that we're going to follow today. We appreciate everybody staying on mute. We also want you to stay engaged, obviously. But if you have any questions throughout this program, please just address them to me in the chat box. That way the chat box can stay clean. I can monitor those questions throughout the speaker's comments. The goal today is we want to build camaraderie among plant managers. Think about what the past plant management workshops have been like. They've always been a three-day event with a couple of social activities, and the purpose of not only learning a little bit about how to do your jobs better, but it also helps you build some camaraderie and some relationships within the precast community. Maybe somebody does your same job at a plant across the country that you can rely upon and you may run into some issues that precasters don't have another precaster to call. We want to fully engage everybody on this call as much as possible, as we can virtually in an hour. By all means, the best way to communicate is through the chat box. As the speakers are talking and they're answering the question topic today, if you have an answer that you all would like to share or if you have a comment you'd like to share, please text me in the chat box and we'll get to as many of the questions as we possibly can. The other thought process behind this whole program is to create topics so you can discuss within your plant leadership. One of the visions we have is that if this program goes well, is that maybe next session, which will be next month, you may pop this up on your monitor in a conference room and maybe have your plant foreman sitting around the table and listen in. That way, you'd have some opportunity to speak with your plant personnel about the topic at hand. The goal is to enhance your leadership skills, but also enhance the camaraderie within your plant and create some process and protocols that can make your working environment a lot better, but also make your quality of your products a lot better. The format today is we have three speakers. They're going to speak for about five minutes each. It'll be pretty self-explanatory. This will give us an opportunity to have about 25 or 30 minutes of open discussion after the fact. Again, put your comments in the chat box, address them to me. I'll be monitoring it. With that, I'll pass it over to Steve Schweitzer, who will introduce our first speaker. Thank you very much, Randy. Our first speaker today is John Claussen. John is VP General Manager of Coorslab Structures in Paris, California. His plant produces both architectural and structural precasts used in parking structures, stadiums, and bridges. Over his 23 years in the industry, John has enjoyed collaborating with design professionals, contractors, and talented people to build beautiful structures that have a lasting and profound impact on the environment. John's predecessor and past PCI chairman, Bob Konoski, is one of John's mentors. John has been guided over the years by Bob's commitment to quality and to the precast industry. With that, I'll turn it over to John. He can give us a little more background on this plant and give us his insights on how culture affects quality at Coorslab Structures. Thank you, Steve, for the introduction. Can you hear me okay? We can. Okay. Very good. Let me start by thanking the Architectural Committee for the opportunity to participate in this. First, in a series of workshops, I think this is a great idea and they're important and valuable. As well, thank you to the attendees who are taking the time to participate today as well. A little of this will be redundant, but on the slide, as some of you might know, Coorslab LA is one in a family of 17 Coorslab operations across the country and up into eastern Canada. Our operation is approximately 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles in a small town called Paris. We operate here on 35 acres of land, again, producing architectural cladding, parking structure elements, stadium elements, and bridge girders for the market that is formed by a triangle from San Diego to the Los Angeles area out to Las Vegas. We've been producing here at Coorslab LA since 1995, and as the slides shows, we were once a company founded in the 50s by Winthrop Rockefeller, one of the first pre-stressors on the west coast, possibly the country, but been at it for a long time here. As with all plants, volume ebbs and flows, but when we're at capacity, the plant employs about 150 people, and we pour 400 to 500 yards of concrete a week. So we're not necessarily a giant plant, but if the timing's right, we can tackle some pretty good-sized jobs, and one we've just completed recently is one of our biggest. That was the SoFi Stadium for the NFL for the LA Rams. So that's a little bit about us. The topic this month, how does a plant's culture influence quality? I'd like to give you four ideas or themes that we employ to help us define the relationship between the two. First, we like to look at this issue as a two-way street. What I mean by that is that quality product influences a good plant culture, and good plant culture promotes quality product, and the momentum that is created when you join the two, quality and hopefully a rewarding workplace. If you think about and look at the inverse of that idea, bad culture, poor quality, it has the opposite effect, a downward spiral. We know that pride in one's work is going to inspire an employee to produce a quality product, and we try to instill that pride in many different ways and forms, but we found that one of the best ways is by sharing the finished product, and by that I mean the structure, with the employees through either site visits or pictures and images, which is much easier, obviously. We try to do that as much as possible. Each and every time we do that. John, your mic is cut out a little bit. Randy, are you hearing him? No. No, we lost you there, John. Okay. Our first technical difficulty. Steve, why don't we go on to whoever is next, and then we can come back to John. He may have to reboot. Yeah, you might have to jump on your phone or reboot. Yep. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you, John, for that. We'll get back to you and maybe on the wrap up. Our second speaker today is Lee Baker, VP of Operations at Gate Precast in Ashland City, Tennessee. As you can see, Lee has held various production and management positions in his 18 years in the industry. Lee says he did not choose the precast industry, it chose him. He has enjoyed being involved with projects that require a considerable amount of out-of-the-box thinking, whether they are high-profile projects or not. The Gate Precast plant in Ashland City is one of them. They have to respect that they're getting some quality. Hang on. John, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Okay. We lost you for a bit. How's that? I don't know. It was right when you started talking about jobs. I know. I'm asking, can you hear me now? Yeah. We got you now. Well, let's go back and let John finish. Is that cool? Okay. We will do that. John, pick it up from the job site visits. I'm having a hard time hearing you guys. We hear you good. So, just pick it up where we left off about the job site visits and sharing the photographs of projects. Okay. Well, the idea there was that when we do that, we're getting an invested employee, and we try to do that just as much as we can. The second idea or theme is that we believe that our customers view quality in a much more comprehensive way than the traditional good concrete finish benchmark. What I mean by that is that we're delivering a package that starts with a quality sale and ends with a quality closeout. Just to illustrate that, if the pre-con folks that we deal with on the front end of a job only see pre-con activity, they still need to feel that they're being treated properly and fairly, and that they've received what they've asked for. And if we can achieve that, they're seeing quality, even though there's no concrete involved. In kind, subsequent activities, such as coordination, fabrication, installation, all the way to closeout, they all carry the same thing. The folks involved in those activities may only see their slice of the entire pie. So we try to recognize the comprehensive quality perspective and run a quality thread through every aspect of each and every project. We do, however, understand that the quality of the actual precast and the product is of utmost importance, that's obvious, and that a quality product will be the vehicle that the rest of the quality package rides on. Third idea is closely related to the second, and that is that the level of quality will most times be dictated by others, perhaps contractor, architect, or owner. So not forgetting what was discussed in the previous idea relating to the disciplines of quality measurement, these entities will be the ones that determine what the benchmark will be. And we recently experienced this firsthand on a job that had some very large radius, in pink, by the way, precast panels on a high-end department store in Beverly Hills, and we provided some very finely finished sugar cube finished samples, they liked them, and we started immediately hearing a bunch of chatter about the disparity of the quality of the concrete of the precast compared to the cast in place. Our guys had a bit of a tough time dealing with that. And I was telling them, don't worry guys, they're not gonna dumb down the finish of the precast. And guess what? That's exactly what they did. And it was something that our crews struggled with a little bit. And what we ultimately did was applied spray foam insulation to the face of the form and random blobs, if you will, all over the form. And it effectively created giant bug holes on the form face. And the result was a panel finish that to us was downright ugly, but to the architect and the owner was exactly what they were looking for. So the moral of that story is that the people that you're working for are gonna be the ones to define quality. And as we learned in this scenario, it was far from what we deemed to be quality. The fourth and final idea is that you need to have a champion of quality in your plant. And what I mean by that is that every producer has to have an individual or individuals perhaps that set the tone for maintaining something that unraveled naturally. And in the past, I've called this the quality entropy manager. For those unfamiliar with the term entropy, it's the natural tendency for gradual disorder of a system. And for the purposes of this discussion, the quality entropy manager could be a QC manager, might be a general manager, or maybe it doesn't have to be a manager at all. It's simply somebody who consistently keeps the bar at the proper level and doesn't let it fall when the arm gets tired. I learned this from my predecessor, Bob Konofsky, and you heard that name earlier. Bob was that guy in this operation without ever saying or professing that he was that guy. He understood that concept very, very well. And for many years, we got lots and lots of mileage out of it. We applied it to many different things in the plant, but when we were having issues and debating things in the plant and trying to figure out how to deal with this or that, we heard a lot of, what would Bob do? So he carried the day for us for many, many years. That is what the quality culture relationship looks like from our perspective. I hope some of that helps and look forward to hearing some of the other perspectives on the subject from the other speakers. Thank you for listening. Okay, thank you, John. Second speaker, Lee Baker. I won't go through the preview, just to say that the Gate Precast Plant in Ashland City is known for its architectural precast projects like the Glenstone Museum and New York City's Nordstrom, but also produces structure units as well, like the recent Nashville MLS Stadium. So Lee, tell me a little bit more about your plant and how you see culture influencing quality. Thanks, Steve. Can you hear me okay? I can hear you okay. Good. This is a little odd for me talking to my computer, so everybody bear with me here. I'm much better with an audience. This plant was built in 85 by, the original owners were Bluegrass Hardcast. The sister plant was in Lexington, Kentucky. Gate purchased this plant in 97, 98, something along those lines, this plant and the Lexington facility. We are known for architectural predominantly, but obviously as markets change, we also are delving more and more into the structural world right now. We're in the process of pouring risers for the Nashville MLS Stadium. I've got beam molds and columns going up for parking garages now. We're pretty diverse, just do a little bit of everything and anything. Yeah, there's a few pictures of the projects we've done here. The biggest thing I find, and I'm fresh out of the plant. I've been in the operations role for eight, nine months now, but I'm a plant guy through and through. Started off in QC and went into scheduling, and that's where I really embraced the precast industry. I love scheduling architectural precast and trying to fit it through the plant. That was my forte, if you will. Then going up and becoming a plant manager and so on. So I bring this, what I'm gonna talk about from the plant side. For me, culture is attitude. And as we all know, attitudes are what drive us, our guys, positively or negatively. As John mentioned, positive attitude means good quality, negative attitude, bad quality. He's absolutely hit it on the head there. I've learned the hard way. I've made the mistakes. And I've had successes. I've had some stinkers too over the years. The biggest thing I preach, try to convey to my folks here is being proactive versus reactive. Once you start having to be reactive, you just never gain ground. So we have so many opportunities for things in our industry, you know, from contracts, architects, weather, submittals, supply chains, people. There's so many things that if you're not just on top of everything all the time, it can come up and snake bite you. So that's the big thing I really try to push with our guys is make sure we're looking at it, have a plan, and then once you have a plan, go over it again. Another thing that when I came up and we were very, you didn't air your laundry, so to speak. So, you know, Gate has six architectural plants, couple structural plants and a hollow core plant. You know, if you had an issue, boy, you figured it out quick and, you know, you just kept it to yourself. But what I have found, and what I think, you know, everybody's found is that everybody's dealt with the same issues. So definitely, I stress my guys, and I used to do it all the time. I'd wear the other plant managers out, ask them questions. And Randy brought up as well, these PCR, the productivity tours, which hopefully they'll be back soon. Those are great. Send your plant managers on those. Even guys a little further down the totem pole, it's a great opportunity for them to network, you know, and meet people that might be, let's say, outside of your market. But, you know, somebody you can bounce things off because, and share ideas and issues. And that's been helpful to me. Also your vendors, they know a lot. So really rely on your vendors to help you through the issues. Another thing here is making sure the employees, the guys understand your processes. You know, cross-training is so hard to implement on a real structured basis, we've found here, just with the, we're pretty lean manpower-wise, and it's hard to sacrifice the gentleman on one crew and move them to another, because it makes it difficult. It's kind of a chicken and egg. You want everybody cross-trained, but it's hard to cross-train. So what I've found is even if you can't physically have them work with the crews, just make sure everybody just understands your process from beginning to end. You know, why we do the things the way we do and how we do them. You know, those young engineers and drafters, it's so important for those guys to get out in the plants, because they will make a breakout in the field and in the plants. Let's see what else I have down here. Again, back to the attitudes, the not my job guys, everybody's had them. You know, you got to kind of get those folks reprogrammed. You know, it's those, and this is how we always do it. You know, our business is, it changes from job to job. We don't make widgets. Everything is new all the time. So we have to make sure these guys have open minds, open to new ideas, and be prepared to step back a little bit. And just because it's not your idea doesn't mean it's not a good one. So another thing that is, you always have the guys that are great, but you know, the first bit of adversity, we kind of get that chicken little syndrome, the sky's falling. And it's really trying to get these guys to step back and okay, this is what we're dealing with. And normally they can work themselves out of the issue they may be having. And with that, the strong, I brought it up on the notes when we were preparing for this is try to encourage these younger guys, or the strong willed guys, let's say you got a crew leader, you're asking questions, make sure he's asking his employees questions. You know, he knows the answers, but get these guys involved, get them involved in the thinking and the planning process just to make it gives them more ownership of what they're doing every day. So again, I think my biggest thing is attitude is everything. So, okay. Thank you, Lee, appreciate all your comments. Let's move on to wrapping up our speakers today is Chuck Winings, VP and GM of Tyndall Corporation in Virginia's division. Chuck's plant in Petersburg, Virginia, primarily produced precast for parking garage use, correction facilities and mixed use structure. The precast industry has challenged him to grow personally and professionally while offering Chuck the opportunity to see and help others do the same. Chuck had the privilege to work with one of PCI's original Titans, Helm Wilden. He showed Chuck how to be absolutely passionate about the industry. Knowing Helm as a savvy business person and an inspiring and available leader, even now, 30 years after leaving HWA, Chuck often asked himself, what would Helm do? So with that, Chuck, give us your thoughts or a little bit more background on your plant and kind of your thoughts on the subject today of culture affecting quality. Yeah, sure thing. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, it's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk. And you mentioned Helm. I noticed that as the names were popping up, I see Helm's joined us here. So a little shout out to Helm. Thanks for ratcheting up the pressure on me. Appreciate that. So the Tyndall Corporation, I joined Tyndall in 1999, joined Helm in 1986. So 35 years ago, went to work for Helm. And in 99, I found myself at the Tyndall Corporation. Tyndall, here in Virginia, is one of six divisions for the corporation. The overall corporation was started in 1963 by our owner and founder, Bill Lowndes, who I believe this week turns 90 years old. And we've got a focus on all commercial precast construction. We do all manner of total precast structures and have been doing so here in Petersburg since 1988. You could slip to the next slide there. Just a couple examples of the projects that we do, parking garages, of course, like so many commercial precasters, a big part of the diet. But we have moved into other types of construction. The lower right here on the screen is a bachelor enlisted quarters that we've done recently. Do various warehouse facilities, data centers, that type of thing. When I joined Tyndall in 1999, when I interviewed with them, I was struck by the very deliberate way that the company goes about its quality and efficiency. I think every company strives to improve or sustain quality in their operation. But there's always ups and downs. You're constantly hitting the reset button. You're letting old systems go the wayside and pick up new systems with the hope of keeping things fresh. So when I joined Tyndall, I was pretty impressed with the systems that they had in place. And it wasn't only to monitor quality, but also to educate the employees about quality and encourage all levels of the employee base to put forth the best effort. That was done a lot through incentive programs. Employees were urged to develop quarterly goals that they work to, work towards, and then were subsequently rewarded based on their results. And I was also impressed with the company's use of industrial engineers. It was the first place I had ever encountered that used a staff of industrial engineers. And as the incoming engineering manager at the time, it was much to my chagrin that I found out that their task was also to maximize efficiency and output. And it was a very humbling experience to try to keep up with supplying shop cards to a manufacturing facility who had a fleet of people whose primary goal was just to make sure that the maximum amount of product went out the end of the building. And it turned out to be a big number. So that was an interesting experience for me. Because we're steeped in processes in trying to maintain good quality, well, there've been a couple of different approaches. And the most recent one that kind of resonated with me was down in our Mississippi division in Moss Point. That division took on the task of becoming ISO 9000 certified. And for those of you not familiar with ISO 9000 certification, it's a very regimented documentation driven system of quality management. And they were successful in doing that. We've kind of followed behind in lockstep going through the same similar processes in terms of the procedures, having documented procedures. I don't know that we'll necessarily come through with the actual ISO certification, but we're kind of modeling what we're doing presently with that system of documentation and procedures. I liked what both John and Lee said about sharing the successes and building a pride and engagement with employees. And we tried to do the same here. We have a system which is, we refer to it as our DIRTFOOT program, which acronym for do it right the first time. And it's basically catch somebody doing something good, a system of recognition and rewards. And we allow anybody in the operation to nominate another employee for taking an initiative to do something a little bit better. It's usually based on innovation, avoiding non-conformances or just going above and beyond typical duties. We, in urging and rewarding innovation and problem solving, we tried to display project photographs. And so if we do come across a particular tough situation, we show how we ended up conquering that and moving past it. And we'll put pictures up on our monitors around the office. And we also do site visits. That was mentioned also. And a real quick story, going back to my days at H. Wilden & Associates, I had an engineer that told the story of a finisher who was tasked with going out to a job site and working on a column that had a particular problem. And he was shocked when he got out to the job site and found that the column was vertical and not horizontal, as every column had been at the plant that he worked on. So perspective, I think, adds a lot to giving folks engagement and investment in what they're doing in the plant. I think that's about the sense of it. I'm getting the wrap it up signal here. So I'll leave it with that. Okay. Thank you, Chuck. I know we want to leave some time for questions. And hopefully Randy's got some of those. So I'll turn it back over to Randy to see where our questions stand. Excellent. All three of you all hit the nail on the head, I think. So yeah, please send your questions directly to me. And I'll read them. I got a couple here. I didn't get too many, but I got a couple. The first one's for Chuck. Chuck, how do you train your documented procedures? Is your QC department responsible for keeping those procedures up? The documentation for us goes well beyond the QC department. We try to have procedures for everybody throughout the whole operation. And that goes to estimating, engineering, project management. In fact, the quarterly goals that I referred to are everybody's goals, every department's goals. The last quarter of 2020 was to rewrite the procedures for their department. So each department is responsible for maintaining their procedures. And then our next step is going to be to implement an audit system to make sure that we're adhering to them and sustaining them. Excellent. Did either one of you guys, Lee or John, want to comment on that either? Randy, this is John. I actually lost my connection, so I didn't hear any of that, didn't hear the question or the answer. Okay. Well, I got another question for you, John. So when you share pictures, do you gather the plant together and talk about the job or do you just put the pictures up in the lunchroom? We post the pictures in the lunchroom, actually, and in other various places in the plant. But we also have a large monitor screen when the employees walk into the facility, and it's run through pictures of recently closed projects. And we frequently see people gathered around looking at those pictures. Excellent. Well, I'll tell a little story. When I was working for a precast producer in Dayton, Ohio, a couple of summers in a row, the company rented a couple of buses. We put all the employees in on a Saturday and actually took employees and their families up to Columbus, Ohio. We toured five or six projects where we would actually get out and walk around the building and point to things. And I think that was a fantastic opportunity for us to build some camaraderie amongst the office staff with the plant people, but also show the plant people show off their work. So that was one of the things that we did that was worth every penny. I was working for Marvin Hartsfield at that point. So if anybody knows Marvin, you could ask him how that turned out. It turned out really well. It was quite some time ago, though. Another question for you, John, when you talk about quality champion, is that usually somebody that's more of a plant employee, or is it more of a management employee? Or how do you identify your quality champions? It's a little bit informal. I think it can be anybody. As I said, it doesn't necessarily have to be a manager. But those folks, in my opinion, establish themselves and sort of create a vacuum that everybody's got to get in behind them. So, as I said, Bob was that guy. He never ever really stood up on a table and said, I'm going to dictate what the quality is going to be around here. Everybody knew that Bob was a quality driven guy, and they just sort of followed suit. So we like to, for those individuals, it doesn't have to be one person, but we like for that individual to come from all walks of life here. Excellent. And then kind of a question for Lee. My screen scrolled, sorry. So what are some of the examples of how you affect attitude, specifically high quality attitude? Do you pay extra for meeting quality goals, or is it some other type of reward process? Or has it just become just part of the everyday thought process of working at your plant? For here, it's more of a thought process. I mean, there's not a, I don't have a financial reward if a crew has a few NCRs or that. It's more of being able to walk out in a finishing area with these guys and say, this is exactly the right way to do it. And what you guys have done is, this is it. And everybody loves an attaboy. And I'm very guilty of not giving enough of them, but that's, I think, as important as anything. And like you mentioned about going to the job sites, getting these young guys and even experienced guys getting into the job sites, that does more than anything, really, I think. Or the pictures too. We have the TV with pictures going through it. For me, it's more of just acknowledging these guys and I think that helps. Excellent. Yeah, we had a job once, I like telling stories. We had a job once where I couldn't make the mock-up review. And so I had our quality control manager go meet with a flamboyant architect at a very high-profile job. And the architect says, well, can we add a reveal to the back of the panel, which we all know is not very easy to do. Quality control manager says, nope. The architect said, can we stop the back mix at the back edge of the spandrel panel? Quality control guy said, nope. Architect kept asking for more things on the mock-up. Quality control manager kept saying, nope. And the architect says, where's Randy? He sold me this job. He always says, yes. So it was an excellent way for me to build more camaraderie with our quality control guy. But also it's a good fodder for QC guy to make fun of a sales guy. So I'll kind of go back to the kind of the same question to Chuck about that we asked Lee there, and I'll reread it. What are examples of how you affect attitudes, specifically quality attitudes? Do you pay extra for meeting quality goals, or is it just part of the thought process of the job working there at Tyndall? The, well, we do have the two programs that I mentioned there, the quarterly goals and the dirt foot programs, which are meant to recognize initiative. So if somebody takes the time to try to make us better, you know, it doesn't have to be anything big. It's just something that shows taking a few extra steps to do something that's going to make us better on the end, to go ahead and recognize that. From there, it's about engagement. You know, it's, you know, having our employees, all employees be part of the solution finding process. We try to, I think it was, yeah, it was Lee that mentioned about having a plan and communicating and just sharing ideas between departments and getting everybody involved. So as sales comes in and turns it over to project management and is estimating turns it over to engineering, just getting all of our folks involved in it and making them all part of the decision making process, I think is a big part of getting investment in the quality process top to bottom. Out on the floor, it's, you know, the initiatives like having monitors with photographs, I think that's a big thing. They get to see their work and the job site visits are especially effective in getting engagement. So it's similar to what John or Lee was saying, yeah. Excellent. And kind of one last question here, unless a couple more pop up. And I'll just, this is kind of for all of you. So we'll go ahead and start with you, Chuck. Are employees empowered to stop the production line for a quality issue or they approach management directly or as quality changes stops? How do you, how do you, when someone sees something, how do you, how does that affect your overall production day? Does it, everybody have the empowerment to stop and go is what they, based on what they see? You know, I believe they do. And the reason I say that is the dirt foot, all of the dirt foot applications come to me and they describe the situation. And for instance, it'll be somebody that's tying a cage and they'll find that they think that the stirrup spacing on this particular beam is wrong. And they'll bring it up to a supervisor and they'll check it. And sure enough, it's not what it should be. And they'll correct it. Well, then the supervisor will write up the employee for a dirt foot. And so, yes, I think they do have the authority to stop, flag something out, bring it to the supervisor's attention, correct it. And then, and then hopefully on the backend, we, we reward that, reward that employee for taking the initiative to stop and, and get it corrected. Great. What about you, Lee, is you guys got the same opportunity for any employee that might see something that seems it's, it's, it's not up to quality standards or it might be incorrect. Do you have the, how does that have, how does that handle in your plant? Yeah. Unfortunately, there's not a big red button that we can press and just shut her down, but they, the employees definitely, you know, and it's kind of through the chain of command is typically how, how they, how we're structured. And, you know, if, if you're in the rebar shop, let's say, and, and it's just not right, you go to your, you know, that, that supervisor, and then is it, you know, a QC to the plant manager, to drafting engineering or wherever direction you need to go, but absolutely they, they, they are encouraged to, to ask the question, you know, the no dumb question thing gets, gets played a lot, but it, it's the one dumb question that doesn't get asked is that gets you in the end. So it's important. Yeah, I found, I found in most plants that the, the person that ends up getting the best rising is the one who doesn't ask the question versus the one who does. All right. Well, I really do appreciate all of your all's time and effort for, for this, this meeting. Is the Brad, do you have any, any final comments or, or Steve, we'll start with Brad. No, I would like John didn't get a chance. Is he still on or is he still having difficulty? I'm on now, but I'm just because it's really windy here today. Sorry about that, but I'm here now. Yeah, you're in and out John. So no, this is great. Thank you all. This has been very informative and appreciate everybody being on and I'll turn it over to Steve and then when we're done with that, Randy, you could talk about our discussion next month. Yep. Yeah. Thank you, Brad. I do have a question. I sent it to Randy. He didn't, he didn't ask my question, but in your plants, do you feel it's more important to have quality as far as culture go from top down or bottom up? Or do you even look at it that way? And if John, if you're on, I'll let you, I'll give you a first chance at this. And I don't hear him, so let's go, let's go to Chuck. Um, I guess it's, it's all on how you look at it. I, I think that the empowerment is important. So if, um, I think the assurance that it's okay to have quality as your highest priority has to come from the top. And knowing that it's, that it's okay to stop and make something right, rather than push it out the door. I think that that has to, has to come from the top and work its way down. If that's along the line of what you were asking. Yeah. Yep. Lee, anything different or Yeah. Yep. Lee, anything different or how do you see that? Well, I wish it was a bottom up. And I mean, I wish it was just across the board, but I, it's, it to me, it's a top, top down and top being just setting the, that expectation that the bottom knows where they got to be. Um, and, and so if you know where the bar is at and that you got to, you got to set that bar otherwise, um, you know, it becomes a floating, floating target. Yeah. I think, uh, maybe it was John that mentioned, you know, quality is a, uh, relative term because depending on what your customer wants, it may not be the type of quality you expect, but, uh, and then sometimes they expect a higher quality than what, what is being sold. Um, so yeah, it's definitely a relative term. And I think it is top down as far as making sure all your employees understand what your plant's level of quality is. Well, that was my question or one of them, uh, Randy, I'll pass it over to you. I want to thank all the speakers, uh, John Lee and Chuck for, uh, joining us today and, and, uh, taking the time to answer these and putting this together. And Randy, what's coming up next month? What's coming up next month? Um, well, first of all, I want to thank everyone who attended today. And, um, this is a sponsored by the architectural precast concrete committee. Um, we do appreciate, uh, anyone, any participation in our committee. We have a lot of things that we're working on. Um, we are in support of the architectural certification, uh, the new architectural certification rollout, which is going to be October 1st. We are working on some marketing pieces, um, for the designer notebook. We are working on a guide specification for the new architectural certification program. Um, and this is a great time. If you want to see where we're at with all of it, it's all open book for you. Uh, you can send me an email at rwilson.pc at rwilsonatpci.org. Um, if you want to join the committee and get involved in those, those creations of those documents, we would, we'd love to have your input. Um, uh, next month we're going to meet on February 18th. Um, that will be, um, hosted by Michael Paris and Steven Qualls from Ross Bryant Associates. They're the folks that do our, uh, our auditing. And, uh, they're going to, they're going to be talking about how to build a quality focus culture, um, also, and from what, from their perspective, uh, obviously their folks get out in all the plants. Um, they see some consistencies in, in quality issues. They see consistencies in, uh, and, and interpretating, interpreting our quality manuals. And they're going to kind of focus on some of the anomalies that they, that they see. So I think it'll be a great, uh, workshop, uh, in February. So that invitation should be going out in a couple of weeks. So keep an eye out for it, but go ahead and put a, put a little tickler on your file to be looking for that. And, uh, we look forward to seeing everybody next month. And finally, if you have any, uh, comments, um, preferably positive ones, but, uh, any constructive criticism that we can improve on, that would be, that would be great. Uh, this being our first one, we expected a little bit of technical difficulties, but I think we stepped over those pretty easily. Um, and hopefully we'll see everybody next month. So thanks everyone for attending.

precast concrete plants

culture

quality

employees

high-quality work

proactive problem-solving

open communication

documented procedures

employee empowerment