What are moments of change?

Transcription

1

2 What are moments of change? Every company has a few key moments or decisions that makes or breaks the business. It is what you do or don't do in those times that leads to success or failure. Review top lessons that I have gleaned from visiting dozens of plants and talking with many top industry leaders.

3 Classic Bad Examples Coke was rebranded as New Coke in Got over 400,000 complaints and changed back in less than 100 days after market share sunk significantly. (Source: NBC News) In th Century Fox signed over all product merchandising rights for Star Wars to George Lucas for $20,000. The movies have earned more than 3 billion in merchandise sales. (Source: Forbes)

4 Classic Bad Examples Apple co-founder, Ron Wayne, sold his shares in the company for $800 in It would be worth more than 30 billion. (Source: Daily Mail) Eastman Kodak developed the first digital camera in 1975 and sat on the invention for fear of cannibalizing their film business. (Source: Forbes)

5 Worst Business Decision of All time

6 John Rock Situation: Building a new manufacturing plant. Yes or no? Upper management was in upper 30s, did not want to undertake this alone.

7 John Rock Whiteboarded new building. Labor savings paid for new building over time. Will always be 10-25% over budget on project. While we are at it, costs you a lot of money.

8 Harvey Pallets Situation: Tight lumber supplies complicate supply chain.

9 Harvey Pallets Open a sawmill in Missouri and deploy own logging crews. Vertical integration and control of supply chain. Guaranteed supply, ability to better cut to needs.

10 Prime Woodcraft Situation: Differentiate company in the marketplace. Focuses on serving retail and grocery chains, doing a lot more than just pallets. Recycling includes corrugated, plastics, banding and other waste stream products, as well as textile. And add e-scrap and glass recycling.

11 Prime Woodcraft Service centers are more like DCs than typical pallet or lumber facilities. Everybody who uses pallets also has supply and disposal issues and PWC saw these as opportunities... Junaid explained, The pallet is the first entry point for a lot of our customers. One stop shop for recyclables. Open up dedicated facilities near one or two key strategic customers and then expand.

12 WestWind Logistics Situation: Acquired company in One goal growth. Market company as a supply chain facilitator.

13 WestWind Logistics New owners immediately began reinvesting in plant infrastructure. They purchased a site for TPM operations and put in a pallet handling and sorting system. Managers also have added a mill to manufacture wood fuel pellets.

14 Paltech Enterprises Situation: Younger millennials struggle to relate in pallet workforce environment. Changing employee attitudes. Younger workers want more hand holding, less hours, more pay. Clash between management (who are older, more action and goal oriented) and millennials.

15 Paltech Enterprises Are evaluating using outside counselors or a chaplain to connect with workers. This frees up managers to focus on production. Difficulty of wanting to be more emotionally considerate of employees and yet do not want to compromise focus on customer service and profitability.

16 L&R Pallet Situation: Labor woes limited growth. End revolving door of employees by rethinking how treat employees. Target recruiting and working with Burmese refugees. Hardest thing that the owner ever did, but was worth it.

17 South-East Pallet Situation: Tough lumber markets lead to transition. Company transitioned into sawing pallet cut stock.

18 South-East Pallet Made additional investments in machinery as demand for pallets and pallet lumber grew. Completely re-design the yard process flow.

19 Green Star Pallet Situation: Switch from just pallet recycling to depot services. Customer asked Green Star to help manage its reusable packaging fleet.

20 Green Star Pallet Green Star relieves customers of scrap wood and lumber, cardboard, scrap metal, and a range of plastics and cardboard gaylords. Scrap consolidation has been profitable venture. Offer quality assurance.

21 Northwest Pallet Situation: PECO Pallet refuses to pay for recovery fees associated with the return of stray pallets. Threatens legal action. Northwest Pallet defends itself and files counter lawsuits. Has gotten standing to sue for abandonment of pallets.

22 Falkenhahn AG Situation: Faced lawsuits and tough competition from EPAL. Setup one of the most efficient pallet plants on the planet. One line produces 8,000 pallets on an 8 hour shift. Developed World pallet program because EUR Europallet was too expensive.

23 Interco Situation: Labor costs rising, difficulty finding workers. Saves labor by using robots and automation to feed boards into one of its CAPE Mach 2 lines.

24 Interco First to run a robotic pallet line in Canada and was one of the first in North America. Robotic board feeding. Automation drive efficiency and keeping production running.

25 Berry Pallets Situation: Building a new plant. Took 5 years, paid off equipment first and then building. Hardship government red tape. Hired expert to help navigate the situation. New developments automatic grading/scanning technology.

26 Robotics Opportunities Areas that could most benefit from robotics Percentage Production Function 53.0% 32.0% 30.6% 26.1% Pallet nailing Lumber feeding for automated nailers Resaw line Pallet stacking

27 Robotics Opportunities Areas that could most benefit from robotics Percentage Production Function 24.6% 21.6% 19.4% 15.7% Pallet sortation Pallet dismantling Pallet repairing Primary breakdown sawmill

28 Production Capacity How do you plan to change your production capacity in the future? 51.4% - Add machinery to reduce the number of people needed (not including robotics). 49.3% - Add employees. The average number of employees estimated to add was 8.45.

29 Production Capacity How do you plan to change your production capacity in the future? 18.2% - Add robotics as soon as possible. 14.9% - Keep everything the same. 13.5% - Add another shift. 11.5% - Open a new location.

30 If you want more pallet industry and market information, consider subscribing to the Pallet Profile or Recycle Record.