Good afternoon, everybody. This is Randy Wilson. I'm the director of architectural precast systems at PCI and welcome to our 2nd production management workshop. This production management workshop is sponsored by the architectural precast concrete committee, and we all hope that you guys are safe and and staying busy out there in this crazy world. We all live in, which is another overused term. I guess the crazy world we're living in these days. So we do appreciate your attendance today. So first I want to introduce the committee that's sponsoring this event. It is the architectural precast concrete committee. Brad Williams is the committee chair. He's not available today to attend. He's in other committee meetings. Mr. Steve Schweitzer is here. He'll be the monitor of the of the program. He is the committee vice chair. And Nicole Clow is a PCI marketing coordinator who is helping us facilitate this, this event today. So this is a lot of effort to put these on. So we hope that you do you do get a lot out of these. So far, we've had a lot of positive feedback on the programs. Today's program is actually workshop number 2. So this is this program is how does your culture influence quality and auditors perspective. Our presenter today will be a Mr. Michael Paris of Ross Byron and Associates. And to get things started, we always want to go talk a little bit about some, some opening, some opening remarks, but we also want to follow our PCI antitrust and code of conduct policy. Our PCI antitrust compliance policy is a policy that protects you and protects PCI. Because what it states is that we will not be talking about any type of pricing, any type of market controlling or any type of we are working together to control the markets. The other policy we will be following today is our code of conduct policy. Code of conduct policy is a policy that states that we will all treat each other with respect. The same respect we would expect to be treated with. If anybody finds that there is a, we do breach either one of those policies today, then we ask that you put a message in the chat box and you recluse yourself from the meeting because by being part participating in any PCI event, whether live or virtual, that means that you've agreed to follow both of those those policies. So with that said, I will, we'll talk a little bit about what the process is today. This is a go to webinar. Most people are familiar with the go to webinars. The little difference between the webinar and the, and the go to meeting is that everybody is on mute. So we appreciate you to stay that way. But we do want to try to make this interactive. Best way to do that is to do the chat box. So if you have a question, anytime during the program, please put it, put a message in the chat box, or you can send a question directly to me, Randy Wilson. I'll be monitoring the chat box throughout the program and I'll be writing down all your questions and then we'll be able to have a nice Q&A session at the end. So the goals of this production management workshop, since we are living in this wonderful world of COVID, that when we can't travel, typically a production management workshops are held once a year. They're held at a remote location. Whether you will be able to have a couple of classroom days and a couple of days at a precast plant. One of the biggest advantages of having a production management workshop is the camaraderie between plant managers, being able to have a cocktail together, have a dinner together and share ideas about what's the best way of accomplishing our goals as the precast concrete producers and satisfying our customers and grow the market. Since we're unable to do that face to face these days, the architectural precast committee decided to have these remote or virtual production management workshops. And the format is to typically have 2 or 3 speakers. Each one speak for about 5 plus minutes. So you have a 30 minutes worth of speakers and then we'd have a full 30 minutes of Q&A or open discussion thereafter. So today's a little special because we have 1 speaker that actually can fill the shoes of 3 speakers. So with that, I will turn the program over to Mr. Steve Schweitzer, the co-chair of the committee, and he will introduce our speaker today. Thank you very much, Randy. And I need to get my cocktail. Sounds like I didn't realize we were supposed to have that for the camaraderie, but I'll be getting that after I get done. It's 5 o'clock somewhere. It's 5 o'clock somewhere actually. Our speaker today is Michael Paris, vice president of Roth Brine Associates. Michael is a registered engineer and a proud graduate of North Carolina State University. Go Wolfpack. Like a lot of us, he enjoys remodeling his house and also has a nice wood shop he gets to work in. He also loves soccer, America's Cup sailing, and Formula 1 racing for those out there that have those same interests. He was a member of the first PCI leadership class in 2004 and has been recently honored as a 2020 PCI fellow. Michael chairs the PCI professional members committee and PCI's quality personnel training and certification committee, along with being an active member on several other PCI committees, which I'm fortunate enough to serve with him on some of those. As you know, or many of you know, Roth Brine Associates is the auditing agency for PCI and has been since at the inception of the plant certification program in 1967. I don't think Michael's been there that long, but he's been there a while. RBA audits all 230 plus PCI plants across the U.S., and Michael, along with Steve Qualls of RBA, heads up this monumental task. We're grateful for his expertise, tireless efforts, and continued participation to maintain PCI's body of knowledge, and especially for taking the time today to share his observations regarding our topic, creating a quality culture and auditor's perspective. So with all that buildup, I introduce to you the one, the only, Mr. Michael Parris. Thanks, that was a pretty big buildup. All right, so actually we're going to talk about, or I'm going to talk about a couple of topics. One is how does plant culture affect quality? And obviously this is from an auditor's perspective and somebody who's been involved in a number of committees. But also we thought we might finish off the discussion with discussing challenges with the architectural certification program and remote audits. And that is from our perspective as the auditing agency also. So discussing how the plant culture affects our quality, I'm going to touch on just the quality culture at a plant. I'm going to touch on just the quality culture at a plant. And we do touch this in our quality control school for level one. It is actually the first topic that we cover when we actually start discussing the meat of those classes, when we get the basics out of the way. And it also happens to be the second sentence in the Division I of all of the quality control manuals. And it says that plant management must make a commitment to quality before quality programs can be effectively adopted or implemented. Obviously this commitment helps people. I mean, that's a leadership. You're leading by example. That's making commitments financially to have the right people in the jobs and to have the right equipment and everything else. But that has to do with the culture. You create a strong commitment to quality. And that affects pretty much all aspects of the company from the production personnel to the quality assurance department to the, well, the steel shop and the carpentry shops all fall under production also, but they all have that trickle down effect. And we find that plants with a, we'll call it a high quality centric culture, but they do some of the same things. They have good cooperation between departments, coordination between the departments and communication. So probably more adjectives that we could use to describe there, but three C's really are good ones to remember. Where we aren't at odds with each other. I played sports almost my entire life. And I've always thought for almost everything that I ever worked on, I was working with people as a team. And that's the way we work within our own company. And I like, I see that in most plants we go to. Where they work as a team and they're not in opposition. I would say that those plants that have good focus on their quality also tend to be better organized in their record keeping. And that's production personnel side of things. That's the quality assurance side of things too. And that doesn't mean whether you're a Flintstone or a Jetson, whether you're keeping hard copies or digital copies is any different. But you're organized that people are looking in the future and they're keeping records of everything and people, and you can lay your hands on it. Well, I say lay your hands. You have access to it relatively easy. Something that was discussed as a idea for plants that have high quality culture is that they prioritize training of their employees. And that's not just sending people, quality control personnel to the PCI level one, two, and three QC schools. The plants may also be sending their production personnel, foreman, the production managers may be also going ahead and getting those certifications. Or at least just going to the schools. And that has to do with the fact that in the schools, we do talk about production processes, which include the materials, but we discuss proper batching, sequencing, and times. We talk about casting of the concrete. And then also storage of the products, not to mention proper tensioning procedures and things like that. But in order for quality control personnel to understand how they're supposed to do the work and inspect it, they also are supposed to know what's the proper techniques. And we talk about those in general. We really don't try to get into them in too much detail until we really get into level three. But the basics are there to make sure that people understand what is necessary for good quality. Now, we do find that plants that have this culture of quality are open to constructive criticism. Part of that constructive criticism comes in the form of the plant audits. And during a plant audit, very rarely would we conduct an audit and not find a non-conformance. That actually is very difficult when we're doing in-plant audits. But when we do find the non-conformance, the plants are open to that discussion. And I don't mean that they are accepting the non-conformance blindly. If they don't agree with it, certainly a discussion can be had. And there may be a way that the plant has cleared something up and we get rid of the non-conformance. But generally speaking, the auditor will have done due diligence and is usually correct in their findings. And so the plant does address those and approach those with an open mind. In addition to that, plants that are focused on quality and have that culture will usually ask for input, not just waiting for the non-conformances. They are constantly striving for continuous improvement and they ask for more than just the non-conformances. Now, as auditors, we're not allowed to consult per se. We don't trade or give away trade secrets from one plant to another. But we do see a lot of different things in the industry and we do try to provide, especially those companies that are asking for it, we do try to give them input that can be helpful. But like I said, a company who is focused on culture will usually ask for that feedback from somebody who gets to go around. You know, as an auditor, we get to go around and see a lot of different things. A few years ago, we estimated that I'd been in more than a thousand plants conducting audits in my career. And like I said, we don't give away trade secrets, but we do try to help where we are allowed. And then the last bullet point on that slide there really is, what do we see can be a trigger for positive change in a plant? And really, a lot of this comes down to items that you could find in business classes or seminars and things like that. But oftentimes, we get to see, you know, especially if I've been to a plant and conducted an audit and I come back later and find that there have been some significant changes, I'm always a little curious to see how or why that happened. And one of those can be the fact that there was a change in personnel. Obviously, change in personnel could be a negative. You could have had somebody who was excellent and retired and the next person doesn't necessarily meet the previous person's standards. But generally, somebody who's coming into a new position, they are trying to make a name for themselves. And I don't mean that in a false way, but they are trying to make sure that they set a good standard. And so, that change in personnel can be a bump for a company as they are looking at improving things that maybe, especially if this is somebody who was moved up within the company, they see things that might not have necessarily worked in their mind and they try a different program. Another obvious, well, maybe obvious, but within the business side of things is just finding ways to make people feel invested in their work so that they take ownership. I like to think of it as a positive attitude versus a negative attitude about your work where hopefully they're saying, I'll take care of it versus, well, that's not my job. So, because this is everybody in the plant, that's QC and that's production personnel who are being asked to do things. And, you know, I go to lots of plants where the inspectors do not change anything on their own. They always call somebody else over. They're not afraid to do the work, but what they're doing by calling over somebody from the production team before they move something or change it is that they're making sure that they're not changing it to the wrong, because they could be misinterpreting the drawing. So, having somebody there to, on the production side, look at and go, yeah, we missed that. That does belong there. That's fine. So, I'm not saying that QC is not saying that moving a plate an inch or two inches isn't part of their job, but they're doing something that is, they are taking the approach of making sure that there is agreement on what they found. All right. So, let's talk about some of the challenges with architectural certification and the remote audit. So, I'm going to start with just a little bit about the A1 era compared to the new era that we're moving into as we're moving to the new A, A, A, B, A, C, and A, D era. We'll talk about a little bit with the drawing submittals that are part of this new program. And not that we are using it yet, but there are some, there's a maintenance, you have to, you're going to have to meet certain requirements to maintain that certification once a plant has earned it. And so we are starting to talk to plants about these to help them understand what's going to be coming up. But, you know, there are some challenges that, well, at least one challenge that we see already and we'll talk about that. And then the last one is remote audits. So with the previous certification program, the criteria wasn't clearly defined that helped delineate between what was an A1 producer and what was a CA or a BA producer. More so a CA. A BA obviously would be a bridge producer, but really the main difference in the manuals had to do with the tolerances of the pieces. Not so much anything else clearly defined. Quite a few people in the industry really felt like the difference between A1 and CA was uniformity of the appearance of the pieces. And that's actually one of the things that the architectural certification committee really decided was not the decider between the different levels of the plants being what they were certified in. What it should be is their capabilities. How complex a product or detailed a product can they make? And so that became the new program. And having more clearly defined criteria definitely will help everybody, hopefully. We're talking about everybody being the owners, the specifiers, the producers, yourselves, and us as the auditing agency. Having something there that we can all agree upon. That being said, uniformity of appearance is still somewhat subjective. So there's always going to be some difficulty in that, but the quality across the categories is supposed to be the same. And we do have a picture up on the screen. This was a panel that was produced for the new program, and it was an AD product. And the AD certification program does not require that piece to be finished. It's allowed to come off the form unfinished. And this is just an example we wanted to show was that the expectations, you know, this was from a plant that typically paints their products. They don't usually have unpainted finishes. So they're not as concerned, but with the new program, they're required to have uniforming. So this was a challenge still within the new program of having people understand what the expectation was. And that information has slowly begun. I think plants are understanding that more now. So early in the program, in the certification program, there were no defined mock-up protocols either. And when the recession hit in 2008, a lot of plants started looking at other possibilities to expand their market so that they would have, well, have work in the plant, really. We all know those are some tough times. This was pretty much the largest expansion of architecturally certified plants in the PCI program that Steve and I were aware of. We did try to go back and look at some of our records to see, and this did appear to be the largest. When I say Steve, I mean Steve Qualls. So with that, what, without having a really clear defined criteria, Ross Bryan, that included Ed McDougall and early on Henry Clark, we did develop some criteria. An example of that was that we said that plants had to create or produce three plants, I mean three panels at their plant. One of those panels had to be produced during our audit, unless they were already producing a project that was architectural quality finishes. But what I was saying, if a plant didn't already have a project, then they had to create mock-ups and we developed a program where they had to create three mock-ups, which is very similar to the program we have now. However, what we did not have was any criteria that said that there had to be anything more to that than just three mock-ups. And I think they were 8x8 or 8x10s, I forget exactly what size they were. But what plants were doing, they were making flat panels without reveals or any details to them. So it didn't really require the type of detail work, carpentry and other types of things that we're finding with the new program. So the new program, using sequential returns, changes in the panel profiles, using every one of the AA through AD, has a requirement for using a brick veneer. And the AAs and ABs have requirements for multiple textures or colors in the units. So you can see that there were significant improvements to the original attempt that we had developed for helping define what plants were producing. This was right, what you see on the screen here are some photographs of a type A, AA type 1 panel that really, this was what a plant put forward as their finished piece. And you can see that there are large bug holes, and so we just wanted to show some of the, they made good, crisp, sharp form corners and everything else, but the casting and finishing techniques or repairs, if you will, just weren't met during that initial audit. And so the plant did go about and attempt to repair that piece before they, before it'll get accepted again. And then just some challenges that we've experienced. For example, the drawing submittals, and we do have a picture over there, and I'll talk about that in just a moment, but what we found when the drawing submittal process began was that plants didn't initially understand that they had to make one unit of each of the three types. What they originally were interpreting was that they had to make three versions of the same type of panel, which was not the intent, not what the program stated. So that's been cleared up with almost every plant now, because with the exception of a few areas of the country or Canada, most of the plants have been audited now in person, and they understand these requirements. We also, some plants did not understand that the drawings needed to match the dimensions and the shapes of the pieces that were provided in the supplemental program that every plant was provided. For example, bullnose dimensions weren't, or the bullnose dimensions were changed or pieces were modified so that the profile changes didn't occur, and that's the photograph or the image of the two pieces that we have up on the screen right now was to help illustrate. For example, on the left-hand side there, the required section, that's what the supplemental program required for an AA type three panel, I'm sorry, this is the type one panel, this is the curved panel for the AA, and on the right was what was presented, and you can see the bullnose doesn't exist, and then those two projections or changes in the plane of the form finish don't exist down there. So that was just the plant not understanding that they had to meet any dimension that was given on the drawings. We also have had experience with plants using special codes in their drawings to identify, for example, finishes, is one example, where a plant may give a special code rather than just calling it an acid etch, and as reviewers, as auditors, we look at that and don't have any reference to understand what they intend with that, so drawings would be kicked back to the plants and asked for clarification of what those are. And then something else that we've run into is that plants submit their drawings, those drawings are approved, and then our auditors show up for the audit and find that the plant has modified their drawings and did not submit those revisions, and those revisions impacted, or maybe not, impact isn't necessarily the word. The change they made meant that the product did not meet the requirements of the supplement. For example, in the AC program, the Type 3 mock-up requires that the panel have a minimum width of 8 foot. Unlike the AA and AB programs where they were given exact dimensions, in the AC they were given a dimensional requirement of 8 foot minimum. And then because of the form liner that the plant was using, they modified the panel to 7 foot 11 and 5 eighths to accommodate that form liner. The problem is that making that panel now, it doesn't meet the requirement, it's supposed to be 8 foot minimum. If you said, well, okay, if we made it exactly right, would we still be in tolerance? And the problem is no, because if you're given a 1 quarter inch tolerance on that dimension, then they would be, they would have been 3 eighths out, they would have been, are 3 eighths short of the dimension, so 1 eighth out of tolerance. So you can see where making these changes without getting approval caused this, a plant to have their piece not approved or not accepted, if you will. Now there are some plants that have already achieved the, getting recommended for the certification in the group or category that they were seeking. And those particular plants this round, our auditors are going through and trying to evaluate because we need, we need practice and we are also using this opportunity to talk to the plant and educate, but just making sure that they understand what the requirements for maintenance are. Well, the, each of the categories has a section in the, in the manual and the supplement that talks about having a certain number of points that are obtained and within a 2 year period to maintain that, that, to maintain their certification. So if you've already been recommended for certification, I do encourage you to make sure that you, our auditors are supposed to be talking to you, but just be sure that you talk to them and find out where you stand, you know, how, how you guys as a plant would and how the auditor is evaluating your products to, to see where you're going to, where you're going to fall. What we're finding, some plants don't, their markets don't have brick in the market. So those points that come from the brick veneer maintenance portion, those plants are not going to get those points. So they're going to be looking at other options. Some of the challenges we observed during our remote audits have been that the plant personnel that primarily the QC personnel that we're working with during this are not comfortable with IT. For example, we've had some people who barely, barely used even their cell phones well. So sharing files through cloud storage or having these online meetings through Zoom or Teams or FaceTime or anything else like that has been difficult. We do try or we do recommend that plants test out their programs or test the robustness. Because when we have to do an in-depth audit, it does require going out and having video. We want live streaming of being out in the storage yard or observing production, casting and testing. So streaming can be difficult at some plants because of that. They just don't have the infrastructure and that could be that they don't, they don't have Wi-Fi far enough into the plant or they're in a bad area for cell phone coverage. There are a couple of plants in the country that I go to that as soon as I am there, they usually point out that most carriers don't get coverage in their plant. I would point out that some plants have expressed concerns with how much time an in-depth audit takes and we understand this. We appreciate it, the concern that a plant has and we try to work with them to mitigate that as well as we can. There are certain things that we have to see, but we try to be as flexible as possible. It does take probably more time for an in-depth audit like this than it for QC personnel than it does when we do an in-plant audit. So just something to be aware of. And then we do have scheduling difficulties with plants wanting to reschedule at the last minute. We understand that schedules have to change for special occasions. I mean, for a lot of the country right now, a lot of plants were experiencing problems with the weather. We as auditors experienced problems with the weather. I think we were supposed to have five of our team out traveling and doing audits this week. Two of them made it out, two of them did not make it out, and one of them barely finished up and actually got home about two days late. So things do happen. I'm talking about in-plant audits there, but if we can't get to the plants, then we also understand that quality personnel may not be able to get to the plant and conduct remote audits also. So that was the end of the topics that I was ready to present. I was going to ask on that kind of a curiosity question to start off. I know you said 18 to 20 auditors, are they all out of Nashville or you have them kind of around the nation for, you know, are they all flying out of Nashville? We operate out of one office in Nashville, correct? Being in Nashville, Nashville's airport does provide us good access across the country. Usually not too tedious or difficult to get somewhere. Okay. Yeah, I know they try to plan to be in a certain area for a week or so to get multiple plants once they fly out west or up in the northeast or something like that. That's right. That's the economy of the program where we are able to do that. Right. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm going to switch it back over to Randy. I know we've got some questions that came in, so I'll let him ask a few of those. Perfect. No, that's a great job, Michael. I think it was really good information. Hopefully everybody got a few nuggets and helped them with their plants and their processes. The first question I got was, who does the site auditor see driving the quality culture at a specific plant? Is it more of a quality control manager, production manager, management team, or somebody else? That is different across plants, to be honest. It can be a plant manager, general manager, could be a quality control manager depending on their experience and how easy it is for them to convince other people to see their viewpoints. Oftentimes, it's the top. It's not an inspector. It's not a foreman. Although they have good, good impact. But yeah, it's usually up top, the general managers, and the plant managers, and the QC managers. Another question was, what's the difference between product quality and process quality? How do they relate to each other? Are they completely different? Are they one better than the other? I know you used a couple of sports analogies. I think we all can relate, being team members, but also having a good process or a good team strategy also. So what would you say is the difference between product quality and process quality? Process quality is important. However, I would point out that you can do something the same, and it could be wrong, but you're still doing it the same way. You still have to have that focus of the end product. And if you keep in mind the end result, which is your product quality, when you're developing and maintaining your process quality, I think they go hand in hand. But without process quality, getting to the product quality is difficult. Yeah, that's a really good observation. I think most people see that, is that you've got to have both, but one drives the other. Another question is, have auditors seen the quality culture increase or decrease in the last five years? That's a tough one. Well, we're not going to throw you softballs. Yeah. Since you say five years, I would say that they probably have improved. I was thinking even farther back, trying to think back, let's say, 2008, when the recession hit, plants were, as I said, plants were trying to expand their market and pick up work wherever they could. And in that, sometimes they were overstepping what their true capabilities were. However, what they found was that they had to step up their game to meet those requirements. But in the past five years, I don't know if I could really say that they've improved or just stayed the same. Let me follow up on that, Michael, talking about the 2008, 2009 recession. I know with the slowdown at work, we actually lost quite a few employees, some long-term ones, too. Did you see a dip in quality that we're finally back from? In other words, prior to 2008, was quality at a higher level than it is just a few years back, or because of the personnel in place, or not? Yeah, that definitely occurred. People lost long-term or good quality personnel. And once they're gone, it's really difficult to get them back. And so people then had to learn from scratch again. They weren't there to train their replacements, essentially. So yes, when companies slowed down or shut down temporarily and laid off personnel, there was a pretty big drain on the knowledge within plants. Some plants were very fortunate and were able to keep their key people on, doing whatever they could just to keep them employed. But yes, I think it took a while for the industry to get back to the standard of quality that we had before the recession. Just in personnel knowledge and experience. I think that kind of leads into this next question that we got, which is, what are some of the challenges plants face when expanding to produce either new products or increasing their volume on their current products? So it kind of plays into that following the market, right? You have X number of employees when the market's hot. You have to reduce staff when market goes south. But we've been in a nice growth mode for the last several years. And I'm sure most plants are doing some expansion up until COVID. So what do you see the challenges are when plants do expand up? Always an education issue, an experience issue goes hand in hand there, really. You have to learn what are the issues with whatever new product you're doing. Whether it's changing, back in the day when plants were changing over from conventional mixes to SCC mixes are now primarily most plants are really using more of a high flow mix more than true SCC. But we had learning curves. We had to learn what was right, establish those controls. An analogy I use when I'm training some of our auditors about things is especially something I learned really early on about driving a car. Industry people with cars used to say it would take a year of driving a new car for someone to become familiar with it, to understand everything about the car because you had to drive it in all of the different seasons. And that's kind of where I look at this as I may be expanding my product line or doing something different. And I started in the spring where it's nice, call it warm enough. We get into the summer and all of a sudden the temperatures spike. So it's going to change my mix, but it's also going to change possibly how that mix reacts and what I'm doing with it in my form depending on how complex my form work is in my inside or outside. And then I started going back into the cold weather. That learning process for something that you're an expanded line could take more than just a short period to learn everything about it. And then I would also point out that we think we make small changes to something. And we don't think about, well, it's difficult. It's difficult for us to think about all of the ramifications of any decision we make. We can try, but we may not get them all. But you make one small change to something and whether you're making pretty heavy pre-stressed beams, when you change from like, well, let's say it's a double T and you are using steel forms for your daps or whether you're using wood forms for your daps. When you start getting camber, does one of those materials deflect a little bit more and you start getting cracks in your product that you weren't getting cracks before? But you started using wood because it was cheaper than the steel forms. I went on a long about that. I don't know if I really covered everything you asked. I was going to ask one thing kind of tying to that same question. More on just the busyness of the plant. With precast plants, we have some weeks we're working 40 hours and some weeks we're working 60 hours or 70. Do you see in plants that have a high quality culture, does that make a difference on the actual outcome of the quality, how busy they are? And vice versa for those that have a low quality culture. When you guys are in there auditing, I guess they can kind of tell if everyone's running around with their heads chopped off or if they're just kind of going along on a normal pace. But the actual number of hours they're working during the day, how does that affect the quality culture and the end result of the quality of the panels? Yeah. Yes, there are plants that we show up to that are extremely busy. And because of their culture, they've invested the time in training people. And what I find is those plants tend to be the most efficient also. And so, yes, they're busy. But they know what they're supposed to do. They know why they're doing it. And they know how to do it efficiently. And so there's a focus. You use the term running around. Yeah, they're not running around like chickens with their head cut off. Now, I do see people get burned out when you work at those high levels for too long. And that is difficult. When you get a project that's going to last for, I mean, some plants have had projects last for a year or more. And they work at really high numbers, hours. And it does wear. But the quality at those plants that are focused, they'll have the right amount of personnel there too. That they're not overstressed, if you will, for too long. Right. I don't know if Randy's got another one. And this one may not be one that you can answer. Do you notice that the ones with the higher quality culture seem to be more profitable plants or less profitable plants? Well, I can't answer that because we don't know what. Yeah. We don't know what plants report in their due statements or anything else like that. The only time I ever might see numbers is that if I'm looking at a mill certificate and your delivery or your contract for how much you pay for your cement or something like that is on there. That's all we ever see. As it relates to infrastructure, the type of equipment, the upkeep, how does that tie into the quality culture? Yeah. The companies with a focus on quality will try to instill. Well, first of all, they will have tried to purchase good equipment to begin with. Or you might have to update every so often. But what I see is that, and sometimes it comes down to personnel, just how personnel think about it. But they take care of their equipment. I go to plants who use ready mix trucks. And the guys, there are certain truck drivers that they take care of that truck like it's theirs. And it's a 10-year-old truck, and it looks like it's brand new. And you go to other plants, and there's hardened concrete, and things are all messed up all over it. I don't know how you instill that ownership in somebody to protect the equipment. But generally speaking, back to the original question though, good equipment. And that's not just QC equipment. That's batching equipment. That's the forms you use. I see plants that their forms are all bent up. Now, their forms are, they're meeting the requirements for the tolerances of the finished product. But they are just, somebody's beat them with sledgehammers and other things like that. If they had used form oil properly, they probably would have been able to strip the product a little bit easier without having to bang on it with a two-handed sledgehammer, or something like that, to break the form loose. So part of that quality of the product also goes back to the culture from the very beginning. How do we get good equipment? And then how do we maintain it? How do we keep it in good condition? In the quality control department, I look at the air content container, and the meter, and then also the slump cone. And I can tell how good those things, what kind of condition those are usually, of how well they're taken care of. And what do I expect it to, is it going to perform properly? And you can see a relationship of that to the end product. You're right. Because they're taking ownership of what they're responsible for. Now, I've got one more quick question for you, then we'll wrap up. Since this is a program that's sponsored by the Architectural Precast Committee, I'll come back to something that's architectural specific. Are you seeing the complexity of architectural precast, especially architects pushing the envelope? Are you seeing that incrementally growing? Are you seeing that just growing leaps and bounds? And are you seeing it any specific area of the country? And if you are, is it driven by the architect? Or is it driven by the producer? Or is it driven more of a collaboration between the two? I know that's a long-ass question for a short answer, since we only got like five minutes left. But what's your thoughts on seeing the growth and complexity of the products that are being requested by our customers? I don't know that I'm seeing large changes now. A few years back, I started seeing things that I hadn't expected to really see in our industry. I, for one, enjoy the PCI Foundation, the schools, and getting this into the architectural students and engineers also. But for the architectural students, because I think we could start to see some bigger changes as those students become more prominent as they graduate and become architects and design. But we've already had some pretty, I call them cool projects out there. And they've won awards, and whether they're just architectural or whether they're structural also. But well, I appreciate it, Michael. I thought this was excellent. I think you hit a lot of the points that kind of back up for the audience, is that when this is created, we ask, the architectural committee ask precast producers what they want to learn about. And the number one thing that they talked about was, how do you create a quality-focused culture? And that's why the first three of these workshops are focused on that topic. So our next topic will be on March 18. And it's going to be how to build a quality-focused culture. And I didn't put this part on the screen just because it's a cool teaser from a quality control manager's perspective. What does a quality control manager need to do their job? What does a quality control manager see as a high-quality process? So it's going to be, we've got a couple of really good speakers lined up, people that have been in the industry for many years have seen both sides of the plant far as coming up from the ranks through quality control and into management. So they can see things from different perspectives. These gentlemen are definitely part of that A team that we always talk about, right, as far as quality people. So before we sign off, I did want to do a quick thank you to Michael Qualls and to Steve Schweitzer for helping out with this. I also wanted to put a plug in for the Sid Friedman Awards. I personally think the Sid Friedman Award is the best award that PCI gives out. The main reason I love it is because it goes, it's for your plant people. It's an award, we're awarding the craftsmen, craftswomen in your plant who resolve a very difficult request from an architect. It could be a small project, it could be one panel, it could be an entrance or it could be a whole building. But to win the award, we're looking for photographs of in-plant process, the form building, the pouring, the reinforcement challenges, the stripping, the finishing, handling, all the way through the process. We ideally want to see photographs and shop drawings and a little dissertation of what the challenge was. And a lot of the awards that have won, and you can go back to a PCI website to see, are those things that you look at and go, how in the world are we going to do it? And the people out in your plants figure it out. And that's what that award is for. So we'd really like to see as many as 20 or more submissions so we can get that rewards out to people in your plants. So with that, if you have any topics or any thoughts, my email address is rwilson at pci.org. Email it to me. Look for topics, look for speakers, but we also are looking for good feedback from these programs. So with that, I appreciate everyone's attendance today and have a great day.

production management workshop

architectural precast concrete committee

quality culture

architectural certification

remote audits

cooperation

equipment maintenance

collaboration

precast industry