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Host Sean Frost is joined by experts in the manufacturing industry to discuss bringing big ideas to life. Join us every episode for a deep dive into manufacturing trends, processes, innovation, and how to be successful in the ever-changing world of manufacturing.
Ep02_BrianWeber_full
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[00:00:00]
Sean Frost: Welcome to the second episode of the Inspiring Innovation Podcast. We're excited to have you back and we are talking to suppliers product development engineers different people from sourcing, from original equipment manufacturers, and we're talking about the industry, the space we're bringing on, our experts and people from across our company and the industry to, to talk to you about what's going on in manufacturing today.
So, we're excited today to have our Chief Operating [00:01:00] Officer, Brian Weber here to discuss Polo Custom Products and, and some insights in, in our industry today. He is somebody that embodies Polo Custom Products. He's been with the company for 27 years. We've recently been on a, a bit of a customer tour and, and so, it's been a lot of fun traveling and, and seeing our customers and going out to plants and seeing how other people are doing things.
And Brian, I'm pretty sure you started with the company right outta school if you've been with the company that long. Yes. So, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey with Polo Custom Products and what it was like to start at Polo right out of the gates?
Brian Weber: Yeah, it's a bit of an interesting story.
My senior year at the University of Iowa, I had already accepted a job with a well-known company outta Chicago called Anderson Consulting. They're now known as Accenture. And I was really just waiting at home after graduation for a month or two, [00:02:00] until I was to move Chicago and start my new job.
And during that time, I received a phone call from the VP of Manufacturing for Polo at the time. And they had received my resume from the University of Iowa, unbeknownst to me. So they called and asked if I would be interested in coming in and interviewing for an engineering position. And I really wasn't looking for a job at the time.
But my grandparents lived in Monticello which was about 30 minutes from my home. So I didn't get a chance to see him often. And I'm always up for a plant tour. You can always learn something when you tour a manufacturing facility. So I thought, you know, I'm not doing anything right now. I'll go into Monticello, I'll take a tour, I'll take my grandparents out to lunch and call it today.
So I went in, I was immediately impressed with what I saw at the polo on a cell manufacturing plant was clean. You could tell they had were already on their lean journey. It was new manufacturing processes. I had come from a background in rotational molding. I had co-opped for a year as a industrial engineer for a ro rotational molding company.[00:03:00]
So it was interesting. And during the tour I was asked a lot about motorcycles and I thought at the time, Scott Lavati, the VP of Manufacturing, was just a motorcycle enthusiast. And we, after the tour, we just chatted about motorcycles for a while, and ultimately I found out Polo was specifically looking for a industrial or mechanical engineer who had a passion for motorcycles.
Just so happened I was racing motorcycles at the time and I had been a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast. And as an Iowa boy, I, I, I have to be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to moving to the big city. So I, I decided after a couple days thought that I would accept Polo's job and forego the opportunity I had in Chicago.
So I started as a manufacturing engineer. We called them plant engineers back then at the Monticello plant. I was the first engineer on the polo division. And I was doing things like typical engineering tech duties. So setting up work [00:04:00] cells, line balancing time studies, eliminating waste optimizing processes kaizen events, 5s, things like that.
And it was during that time that I really learned a lot about. Not only our manufacturing processes, industrial sewing, radiofrequency welding, impulse welding, ultrasonic welding, and then all the ancillary processes. But I also learned what we did really well, and I learned what we had opportunities where we had opportunities to improve.
Mm-hmm. And I learned what we don't do well, for instance, we're a sewing company, but we don't do garments. Mm-hmm. And we wouldn't be good at doing garments. Mm-hmm. So, as a result you know, I, I started visiting customers and suppliers more often. I started traveling with our sales team and our sales reps to visit customers, specifically a, a major motorcycle oem.
And because I knew the [00:05:00] processes, I knew what we could do and what we couldn't do I was able to design for manufacturability or assist the customer with that. And it just so happened polo was pivoting from a build to print custom manufacturer to a really, a full service manufacturing company. So that means we offered not only manufacturing, which is obvious, but design assistance.
We offered warehousing and logistics and import option. We were developing our supply chain to be experts in certain materials and the certain products. So it was fun at that time kind of carrying two business cards, one as a design engineer or sales engineer, and one as a manufacturing engineer and visiting, you know, customers, suppliers traveling, really the world manufacturing partners offshore.
Yeah, so, you know, I did that for the first really 10 years of my career and we added more engineers during that time. Which opened up opportunities for me in the early two [00:06:00] thousands. Polo was interested. We were ISO compliant, but we wanted to get certified. There was a little bit of thought that if we had the certification that would be appreciated by our customers.
And one thing Polo does is we always are looking to improve the customer experience or, or get the customer exactly what they needed. So ISO 9,000 certification was part of that. Mm-hmm. So I became the quality manager for about 18 months, two years while we were prepared and shifted from ISO compliant to ISO certification.
I didn't realize that.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it wasn't, it wasn't very long. It just so happened with my experience at the rotational molder, we were ISO certified and gone through that. So I, I knew a little bit about the process and the auditing and I'd worked for, you know, a custom manufacturer even though it was on the, in the plastics industry.
So it. It really worked out. And we got certified and then we hired somebody to come in and, and take over that job so I could move into the product development. So I became the director of product development, which is really where my passion was and where I was spending a lot of my time with customers because [00:07:00] all during this time I was still traveling to some key customers and helping with design.
So now I'm interacting more with our product development group. We're implementing things like failure mode effects analysis with design and process and control plans, and really integrating world-class quality into our products and as we design 'em working with customers to ensure our design meets their need and that they're testing that design properly.
Mm-hmm. So I did that for a while and then I was promoted to vice president of product development and global supply chain. So now I'm traveling, not as an engineer, but more as a, a department head. To visit our manufacturing partners in Southeast Asia. And really China was where it was at that point.
But I think as a company, we knew that China wasn't the final answer there was already we had moved from Taiwan to coastal China, and then were moving inland China. Mm-hmm. As companies really chased the low labor costs. Mm-hmm. [00:08:00] So we identified Vietnam as a, as a potential. We had some, that was our, our, our really our target.
We also had Cambodia as a, as a backup option. We looked at a lot of places and so we made some trips to Vietnam. We established some relationships. And our relationships with manufacturing partners is such that we don't just go find somebody and start doing business with 'em. We identify 'em, we vet 'em, we watch 'em.
We ensure that they're growing. We ensure that they're stable. We maybe give 'em a project or two here. They're small and make sure they're gonna be able to work out. So the whole time I was involved as a vp. I was doing that and looking else, place, other places too. For instance, I went to Cuba.
We thought perhaps as the, as Cuba opened up to the us there would be some opportunity there. There really wasn't. Now we're looking at Africa, sub-Saharan Africa. Mm-hmm. So I did that for a while and then I became a, a [00:09:00] senior vice president and then COO a few years back. And so now I'm doing more, not only all the things I used to do, which I still enjoy and working across the company with a lot of great people like yourself.
A lot of department heads And just trying to do everything we can to satisfy the customer and improve our value proposition to the customer.
Sean Frost: Yeah, and that's, I love hearing that about the partnerships that we have with our, our import partners. And it does allow us to be agile. And I've seen pictures, I haven't been, I haven't been all over the, the world like you, but I've seen pictures and it's remarkable how similar those plants look to us.
And I know that we're very involved in you know, the design process still, and working with our partners and, and we've got people on the ground and in different areas that, that go and make sure that the processes are as similar to polo as, as they can they can possibly be. So, I also understand that you guys were the the vetting [00:10:00] team for President Obama when you went to Cuba there.
Brian Weber: Yeah, just so happened I was part of the, one of the first trade missions to Cuba. I was with a group. And while we were in Cuba, while we were in Havana it came across the news that president Obama was making his first trip to Cuba. And it had been, you know, I don't know how many decades since president had been to Cuba.
Mm-hmm. So we joked that we were President Obama's advanced team. You know, Cuba's an interesting place, beautiful country, great people just not somewhere where we would be comfortable doing business. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But, but since then we've looked a lot of other places and identified you know, Dominican Republic Puerto Rico, looked all over Mexico.
There may be some options there down the road. And now we're excited about Africa and I'm glad to hear that you have seen a lot of photos and they all kinda look the same because believe me, I've visited factories that run the gambit from nearly a dirt floor and a crumbling building to a world class manufacturing facility.
And what we try [00:11:00] to do when we bet a, a company is make sure that if our customer or one of our executives walked into the place, they would be pressed. And it's not too different than what they would see at our domestic plants. Mm-hmm. That's important. We don't, we, you know, it doesn't have our name, the product doesn't have our name on it, but it's our reputation.
It has our customer's name on it, so that's probably even more critical. Absolutely. So we wanna make sure it's a high quality product, whether it's made at one of our domestic facilities or whether it's made offshore. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sean Frost: And it's it's obvious that. The quality is there that, you know, there's, there's there's inspections and there's customers that we've used at those different locations for years and years and years and, and have done tons of volume across multiple industries. So I'll touch on that. Next I'd, I'd like to discuss a little bit about the longevity of polo.
We celebrated our 75th year last year, so now we're, now we're at the less exciting milestone of 76 years. Right. but what, [00:12:00] what has been the key? To us being around for that long. We, you know, we've been talking about strategy a lot as a company and being in my role, I feel like I, I've come in at such a great time to be at Polo Custom Products, and I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants like yourselves because we are able to be really strategic about the business that we take on.
And, and it's really been an exciting time. So can you tell us how we got here, what's been our success to go through some of the really tough economic times throughout the decades we've been around?
Brian Weber: Yeah. You know, Sean, that's a great question and, and if I had the absolute answer, I'd you know, I'd probably be writing a book.
I think it's something that engineers and scientists and business executives have have chased that answer for 80 years and everybody has their own idea. You know, if I had to say what made Polo successful for the past 75 years, and particularly the past [00:13:00] 25 plus years that I've been involved there's really two things.
One is we are dedicated to our customer and ensuring that our customer is successful. And the other thing is making sure that our associates are, feel appreciated and have a safe place to work. You know, those two things combined are what would make any co company successful in my mind. Now there's all sorts of processes and, you know, lean manufacturing, six Sigma, spc all sorts of things that you could say.
But when it boils down to it is ensuring that our customers are successful. And that means our products are delivered on time at a competitive price with outstanding quality. And if we do that, our customer's products are gonna sell well. As a custom manufacturer, you know, our success is really the result of our customer's success.
Mm-hmm. So we don't have anything that has our name on it. Nobody goes out to the local retail outlet and finds something that says Polo on it. They find things that [00:14:00] have well known OEM manufacturers. And some of those products may have been made by Polo. So if they sell well, our products sell well to our customer, and then we wanna make sure that our people, because our manufacturing processes are somewhat labor intensive, that's why we have an offshore low cost manufacturing op option.
Mm-hmm. And that's why we're striving to automate as much as possible. But we wanna make sure that our people feel appreciated, that they enjoy coming to work, that they feel heard. You know, our, our fantastic HR department has done some great research and surveys about employee engagement, and we've initiated some great training so that our associates feel like they're coming into a career, not a job.
Mm-hmm. No matter what level. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we want motivated intelligent associates that are excited and that's what makes us successful in my mind.
Sean Frost: That's great. And do you think that the [00:15:00] diversification of the industries that we serve also has helped us out?
I know that there's customers that we've talked to that said, you know, there was some of the suppliers that they've worked with have been, had been heavily in automotive and. They suffered a lot during the pandemic, and we serve the medical market, and we saw growth, and we took hits like everybody during the pandemic of course.
But we were able to recover quickly, make good decisions, and, and I kind of feel like it's almost like investing, like we've got, we've got portfolio diversification, if you will. Do you think that's impacted our success and longevity as you know, those different economic struggles have, have impacted the economy?
Brian Weber: Absolutely. And there's no question about it. I, and I've been few through a number of economic downturns, some worse than others, and I've seen it. I've seen for instance, when, let's just look at the, the pandemic, right? There weren't any airplanes [00:16:00] flying, so therefore aerospace was down. Mm-hmm. But because of the pandemic, ICUs were packed, hospitals were packed.
P p e was in demand. And so medical was up. People may not have been buying well, actually people were buying motorcycles. You know, they, they're, they weren't, they didn't have anything to do. They were at home. You know, there was some money coming in from d various programs. And we did see, you know, power sports industries really benefit from that.
So, yeah. When the, when the government's spending money, you fire and safety's up, government defense is up. Mm-hmm. And maybe industrials down. Mm-hmm. So hopefully all of our markets are up, or all of our divisions are up. Mm-hmm. But typically you'll see two or three up and one or two down, and, and we can ride it out.
And we're definitely not dependent on any one market or one customer. Mm-hmm. Because we don't want to be, that would be, that wouldn't be a smart business decision.
Sean Frost: Well the non-smart decision that I made [00:17:00] during the pandemic was not getting a motorcycle. I, well, yeah.
Brian Weber: You gotta get one to get good and yeah.
It's amazing how many people went out and did and, and are now enjoying it. Yeah.
Sean Frost: Yeah. That's that would've really helped with the whole isolation stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I took up running, so. So, what would you say makes Polo different than other suppliers?
Brian Weber: Well, certainly the, the different manufacturing processes.
You could go out and you could find sewing suppliers that have similar capabilities, both domestic and offshore. You could go out and find a company that can do film welding. They may do rf, they may do impulse, they may do thermal contact, ultrasonic, laser. You know, there are all sorts of processes.
What makes us unique is you can walk in and you can find RF welding in, in one area of the plant. You can find ultrasonic welding machines in another area plant, [00:18:00] maybe that ultrasonic welding machine is integrated into a sewing line where we're doing industrial sewing with single needle machines, double needle machines, programmable pattern sewers, bar attackers surges.
Then over in the other area of the plant, you know, we have a large, our plants are pretty large. So in another area of the plant you might find some thermal contact welding. And, and in a separate room you might find some thermal forming of plastics or, or foams. So when our customer, let's say they want to build a backpack and they want that backpack to have a semi rigid shell component and they want a polyurethane section and they want their logo debossed into it.
Well, we can do that. We can, we can sew it, we can thermoform the component. We can emboss the polyurethane panel with RF and we can assemble it and ship it. We can also design it. We can also hold it in inventory manage their [00:19:00] inventory for them. We can ship it all over the world with our logistics capabilities.
So that, I think, is what benefits our customers is that, you know, we can do it all and we have done it all. Even processes that we don't identify as our core competency, we have a lot of knowledge. I'll, I'll stop short of saying expertise, because our expertise really lies with our supply chain.
Mm-hmm. But for instance, if we're developing a seat and that seat has a sewn cover, we can do that in-house. It has a molded. Closed cell polyurethane foam. But we know how to design that. We know how to design the tooling to, to create that. And we have a supplier that can help us if we, if there's some real technical, you know, foam formulation.
Yep. The seat base, maybe it is a, is a ABS or a high molecular weight polyethylene, that's thermoformed. We can do that in-house or we can go to one of our high volume thermoformers. [00:20:00] We can install hardware such as, you know, well, nuts or rib nuts. We can design welded assemblies, forged parts, die cast parts, decorative parts.
So that's what we can do to help our customers. They don't have to have an engineer or a designer or a product team developing four or five different components that all come together. Mm-hmm. We can do it for them. Mm-hmm.
Sean Frost: Yeah. I know that's a huge. Advantage that we have is, I know some of the engineers from our customer base will come to Monticello and feel like, Hey, I accomplished more in two hours, talking across the table with, with our designers, with our engineers than they did in isolation in f in weeks at, at their at their locations.
And that's not a knock against them, it's just people standing around the table and, and troubleshooting and our expertise in those capacities and with those materials coming together around the table. And it is personally, one of my favorite things about the, the job to [00:21:00] watch is people contributing to these ideas and, and getting somewhere in a, in a small amount of time.
So that's, that's really really unique and, and really exciting to be a part of. Can you tell me a little bit as the former quality manager a little bit about our processes, because that's something that I think is important about Polo is that. We design and manufacture and scale products that cannot afford to fail.
So can you talk a little bit about our quality? We'll have Don on at some point to, to go deep, so I don't expect you to
Brian Weber: Yes. I'll give you the 30,000 ft view.
There you go.
Cause it's changed a lot. It's been 15 years, but, you know, we, everybody deals with these regulations. So you have regulations. Mm-hmm. You have requirements, you have.
So whether we're talking about the FDA, whether we're talking about the FAA whether we're talking about automotive, advanced product quality planning, and a p whether we're talking about medical product validation, you know, [00:22:00] FDA Q PMA audits, we've, we've done it all. We have experience with it all, and our processes are such that we can handle whatever our customers need.
You know, recently we launched a class three medical device, a lifesaving device that required the F FDA to come in and audit our quality system. And and we were, frankly, we had never been through it before. We've been FDA registered for many years and we've been through FDA audits, but not this type of QIN and PMA audit.
So it was it was daunting and, and, and we were really well prepared and it went very, very well. That is what polo can do compared to maybe a smaller company. We're still a small business, but maybe a smaller company with fewer associates, fewer resources, fewer departments they may not have been able to do that.
They may, they may not be able to maintain the quality to maintain that certification polo can. And so yeah, there's all sorts of quality requirements from all of our [00:23:00] customers. Mm-hmm. You know, many different ones depending on what market we we're serving at the time. And we've done a great job, in my opinion, preparing ourselves to be able to provide the services our customers need.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Frost: Yeah, it's been amazing to me to see, to the long-term relationships that we have, our quality people have with other people's quality people and supply chain. And, and I think it's, it's definitely given us an edge within the industry and within these difficult times to really recover. Well, stay ahead of trends notify customers early if a resident has changed.
All those things that have been, been fun to deal with the last couple of years, but I think are our normalizing and, and and it's fun for us to have come out even stronger on the other end.
So, it's a good place to transition to polo's growth and the consistent level that we've been doing it. And I know it's healthy to grow and we've had ups and [00:24:00] downs with the last three years. But can you tell us about some of the steps that we took to recover and, and how we've been able to scale that growth accordingly to rebound from, from where we were at?
Brian Weber: Yeah. Going into 2020 we had 20 or 32 fewer associates than we normally do. Typically at year end orders slow down. Our customers don't want to carry inventory into the new year. So we knew that in Q1 of 2020 we were gonna be hiring and adding significantly, both in Iowa and Mississippi, we knew it was gonna be a challenge because the unemployment rate was historically low.
It was sub 3% in Iowa, which is really full employment, and it was think around 5% in Mississippi, which is lower than it had been in most people's memory. Our HR team was ready to, to do it though. They, you know, they, they were confident that they'd be able to get us the people we need. And in January we were hiring people.
We were adding, you [00:25:00] know, two or three at a time at each facility and making sure they got through their training before we brought the next training class in. But during that time, we were hearing these news reports about the novel Coronavirus, and it was getting our attention, but we really didn't think it would have a huge impact on our business.
Our ability to hire was starting to slow down. We weren't. Really getting as many people as we had hoped in February. And now the novel Coronavirus had a name COVID 19. We still didn't think it was gonna have a huge impact on the business, but we were watching it. And in, in late March is when we really knew after a lot of states, not Iowa or Mississippi thankfully, really tightened up and, and, and cracked down on close contact.
And that really impacted a lot of small businesses and manufacturing companies. We continue to operate in Iowa and Mississippi, but then with the legislation, the CARES Act, F F C R A we really started to see our daily absentee rate [00:26:00] increase significantly from, you know, three or four to 5% is what it typically runs at seasonally.
Mm-hmm. It was jumping up to 25, 30%, you know, people were being paid to stay home. Particularly if at kids, and, you know, I'm not, I'm not judging anybody. I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just what was happening. And so we had fewer people at our plants than we did going into 2020. When we expected to grow.
At the same time, we're getting rated government contracts because the government was buying p p E and all sorts of stuff, and those rated contracts have to be given priority over commercial contracts. And so we were, we were having trouble satisfying some of our customers. There were a number of our customers that depending on how we were set up, we had lines dedicated to them.
We had people dedicated to them. We, we had constant production. Those customers tended to be unaffected, but it was the customers where we'd have orders two or three times a year, [00:27:00] and we just simply didn't have the manpower, like most companies, to satisfy those orders. So we had to make some hard decisions.
And certainly we had to satisfy our, our, our government contracts by law. But we wondered if it was sustainable and we didn't know how long the pandemic was gonna last. We had shut down our, both of our plants at different times for about a week when we had our first confirmed cases. Unfortunately, they were in both instances, people that had a lot of contacts throughout the plant and we were worried about how much it would spread.
One thing I learned through that in hindsight now is, is nothing is as bad as it seems and nothing is as good as it seems. You know, in hindsight we really didn't need to do that. But we, as I mentioned earlier, we're very concerned about employee safety and that's always a priority for us. Even if it inconvenienced our customers, our employees are number one.
But by the end of 20 20, we knew we were gonna have to do [00:28:00] something. And we started looking around for a new location. We had two manufacturing plants. I was always an advocate of establishing a third manufacturing plant in Kansas, hopefully in Topeka where our corporate headquarters could have more access to manufacturing or be cohabitated with manufacturing plant.
So we were looking, a number of us were looking, I know our executive team were all part of this search and we were checking out different facilities. Mm-hmm. We ultimately decided to open a facility in Topeka, not associated with the headquarters, keep the two separate. And we, we started out with, I think by the time we identified a site was April.
We had a, a lease signed by, I think the first week in July. And we opened August 16th of 2021 and we started with about 15 people, and a [00:29:00] year later we had about 60 people. And now, a year and a half later we have about 95 people and we Kuhn. And at the same time, we continue to grow Iowa and we continue to grow in Mississippi.
So, adding more manufacturing associates, more team members, adding more equipment, ultimately results in more capacity for our customers. More redundancy. If there was a pandemic, if there was a natural disaster, if there was something that happened where one of our facilities was offline for a short time, hopefully never long term, but a short time, we could make that up.
Either in one of the other facilities or with our offshore manufacturing partners. So that was really the growth that we've seen in the last three years, and we. You know, in total we added about a hundred people to the company.
Sean Frost: Yeah, it's been great to work with customers, try to level load production and, and see volumes increase.
And I think it's something that's [00:30:00] unique for, for our company because a lot of, a lot of people have struggled with labor, right. So, so that was a really key key step in our, our success and definitely something that, that we're proud of at Polo. So, you mentioned some of your history working with some motorcycle OEMs, and so I thought it'd be great to hear a story from your, your product development past and, and talk about some product success stories that you, you may have.
I, well, I know, I know there's been the, there's been many, cuz that was, That was what fueled the growth of our company, probably in the nineties, two thousands of that era for a while. Yeah.
Brian Weber: From about 97 to 2015. We motorcycle products were really a big part of our growth. There's so many products that I was lucky enough to be involved with over the years.
It's hard to pick one one that stands out in my mind was [00:31:00] polo, maybe in 2004 or five, was given an opportunity to buy the manufacturer to do a competitive bid or proposal for a piece of luggage, a bag that fits on the back of a motorcycle in a specific location. And they, they've given us requirements.
It has to be of a certain volume and it has to. Fit certain things and fit on a certain part of the motorcycle, but really we had carte blanche to, to design it. And so I worked with our in-house designers in Monticello, and I worked, we knew to be, because it was gonna be price competitive we were bidding against multiple companies.
We had to have a great design and we had to have a great price. So we were working with, I was working with our domestic design team and our manufacturing partner in Southeast Asia, and we came up with a product that [00:32:00] just had a great look to it, a really, a nice style, nice lines, really fit on the motorcycle well, complimented the motorcycle was secure when it was attached.
Mm-hmm. Because this was really a piece for, for long, long range touring. So it checked all the boxes and I was very proud of it. And we. We obviously, we gave up our customer the proposal and, you know, some prototypes or samples, pre-production samples, and they selected it and we were all happy that they selected it.
And it sold so well that first year that they came back to us and said, we want to design an entire line of motorcycle luggage around this one bag. And we wanted to have similar style, similar look, and they, they added their, you know, their design input. So we were happy to accommodate them. So we kind of went into the second revision of this product.
It didn't change a lot, but there was some voice of customer changes, whether it was the end [00:33:00] user or our customer that wanted the, you know, was, was driving the change. And ultimately that turned into about six or seven different skews and for over a decade. Those sold very, very well. And I, you know, no matter where I was, if I saw a motorcycle, a heavy cruiser it often had at least one of those components on it.
One of 'em was a roller bag, you know, I used it occasionally even when I wasn't on the motorcycle. So, I was really proud of that. And it wasn't just me, it was our product development team as our, a supply chain team was our sales team. It was our manufacturing partner. We all worked together.
We all had a common goal. We accomplished it in a very short time. And our customer was very happy with it. It really went beyond their expectations and resulted in some additional incremental business that we didn't think you know existed. So
Sean Frost: that is so awesome, and it is such a collaborative effort.
I mean, all, [00:34:00] all of our teams in this company are working together so closely with all the teams of. The companies that we, we service too. It's really incredible to see all these bright, amazing people come together to put these products out into the world. And so that's, I'd like to talk about another success that we've had recently in terms of, it was a medical product that's millions of units and, you know, I've, I've come in probably about halfway through the cycle and just been amazed at the scale and the magnitude of the, the increase.
So I thought might be kind of, kind of fun to generically tell that story as well.
Brian Weber: Yeah. Unfortunately our non-disclosure agreements with all of our customers preclude us from really talking and naming names, but I think, I think the listeners understand why we're, we're talking about it this way.
Mm-hmm. Uh, Yeah. A major medical OEM approached us they had a, a product idea. It was a call it a sister part to a, a product. They were already. Manufacturing in-house. It was [00:35:00] it was for urine management. Mm-hmm. And the product they were looking to design was for a, a, a man. And they had already had designed themselves the, the similar product but for the female anatomy they came to us because they were having problems even meeting the demand for the female version.
And they admittedly didn't design it for manufacturability and wasn't, as a result, wasn't able to scale up and automate as quickly as possible. So we were happy to help them. We were happy to have the opportunity. We were glad that they, you know, gave us that backstory. Cause it helped us design it in a way so that not only could we manufacture it quickly, but it could be scaled up.
So they had, they had the concept. They had the, the general idea of what the product looked like, but we helped 'em with things like material selection, you know, what, what should the body material be so that it's comfortable to the patient. So it has biocompatibility so obviously it doesn't leak.
All sorts of design criteria and inputs went into [00:36:00] it. And and once we had that figured out, then we had to figure out how to make it. And we had, how we had to make it in a way that we could do, you know, a million products a year. You know, that was the kind of the bogey I think, at the time. Mm-hmm.
And so we couldn't go full automation and it would take too long. We also had a pretty tight timeline. So we designed what we call a semi-automated manufacturing method. So it still takes a number of machine operators doing some work, but the machine also progressively moves the product and has multiple ceiling heads on it.
And then we automated some cutting processes using lasers and some automated baggers to package it. And yes, so I think we had the design finalized, you know, somewhere around early summer of 2019. Mm-hmm. We had maybe been working on it for nine months or a year prior to that, off and on. It, it really didn't get a lot of traction [00:37:00] until Q2 of 2019.
And once everything was said and done, and, and Polo was selected, I think there was multiple, I know there was multiple companies looking at it and working on this product. Once we had all the design criteria met and knew how we were gonna make this thing and provided the customer with our proposal and our quote, you know, they kicked us off and the big thing was the lead time for the equipment.
You know, six months, but by, I think December we had the machine or machines the main machine that the sealed the product and all, all the. Ancillary machines that did all the secondary operations and we were in production and it just took off from there. Now, unfortunately, our customer we sent 'em, I think the first shipment in late December, maybe early January, 2020.
And this is, this product is used a lot in ICUs. And it was new to the market, so they had to get their salespeople into hospitals and clinics and show 'em to clinicians and gain some market share. There wasn't another [00:38:00] product like it out on the market, so just, you know, convince people to buy it.
Well, what happened in, as we talked about earlier in March of 2020 you know, you couldn't go into a hospital unless you were, you know, a caregiver or a patient. So no family and certainly no salespeople. So it, it, we sold some but it just kind of leveled out for a short time, and then it, it took off like a rocket ship by about the summer of 2020 and.
Now we're making, you know, we have 15 machines. We have, we're making 'em in all of our facilities, Iowa, Mississippi. We're doing secondary operations in Topeka. We're doing about 30% of 'em at our manufacturing partner in Dominican Republic. And you know, we're approaching 6 million units and, and there's, you know, who knows, the sky's the limit, whatever the customer needs.
Mm-hmm. Their demand continues to grow, and they've told us that. And we're talking about a very well known global medical oem, [00:39:00] and they've told us that this is their fastest growing and in, in some ways most successful product launch in their history. Mm-hmm. Which, you know, kudos to them. They, they did it.
Absolutely. You know, I feel like we played a big part of that as well. Mm-hmm. And I'm really appreciative of all the effort that our product development, supply chain, sales, accounting, Hr, you know, it, it was, every department touched this thing because absolutely. We, you know, the customer had so many requirements and, and we need to hire people.
We needed to develop suppliers, we needed to develop systems on our, our site line, our e r P system. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, so accounting needed to be involved because we're talking about a lot of cash in, a lot of cash out. So everybody came together. It was successful and it's really something we're all proud of.
Sean Frost: Yeah. That's what's amazing to me about Polo, is the ability to adapt to our customers' needs and, and to, to meet that scale. And I, [00:40:00] we were talking with that customer not that long ago, and they said, we asked Polo to do the impossible and. You met the challenge over and over again in way in different ways that all, all throughout with all sorts of different collaboration and, and team efforts.
And so it was really, really something special to to jump in, in the middle of and to, to, to see how it's just been an incredible success for both parties. So, yeah. Kudos. So speaking of now we've talked to success. Let's, let's kind of change gears here and talk about what have you seen as some mistakes that have been made and how did we make up for it.
Brian Weber: When I think mistakes as a, as an operations guy, as a manufacturing guy, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is quality issues. And you know, luckily those, I'm gonna knock on wood here, those are not. Huge. We've had, haven't had any real catastrophic quality issues.
And anytime we have a quality issue, one of the things that was implemented when I was the quality manager was [00:41:00] we came up with a quality history sheet. So now anytime there's a quality problem, whether it's a problem that never escaped our, our, our plants or just a call from a customer, you know, that's a complaint, not a return or a return, you know, any of those.
We document it, we record it in perpetuity, and we, we record what our corrective action is. Now, we like to poke, meaning air proof, everything possible, but in our industries, in these somewhat manual processes, that's not always possible. So we document this and our associates read it in their work instructions before they start their job.
And the idea is If you don't know history, you're bound to repeat it. Well, now they know that maybe 12 years ago there was a problem with this operation and here's what we did to solve it. Now they're more attentive. So I think from a, a quality standpoint we, we deal with those really well. And we we have a very low defective parts per million metric, which we're proud of.
So, you know, I don't think we've had a lot of [00:42:00] mistakes there. One big mistake I can think of that, that was a little bit more costly was we identified a, a process issue that allowed some orders on a certain day to come in and not get entered into our system. And that wasn't realized for a number of months.
Mm-hmm. And in a couple of cases, and it wasn't a lot of orders. Mm-hmm. But in a couple of cases it became a big issue because those orders happened to be. Orders for import parts, which is about, historically, about 30% of our business is done offshore, so a few of those orders needed to be entered in and, and raw materials needed to be ordered in Southeast Asia, and then they needed to be produced.
Well, two months later, when we realized the issue and identified the orders, now we start, you know, calling in favors. Luckily we have great relationships with our manufacturing partners and we're expediting raw materials in China, and [00:43:00] we're expediting the production process. And it may upend the most efficient but we weren't sacrificing quality.
Uh, We just were adding more labor to make sure to get it done. Then we had to get it over here quickly, so we absorbed some air freight charges that were fairly expensive because these were some large orders. And, and we didn't wanna disappoint our customer cuz it would've been that they're lying down and there could have been some consequences there.
So it was fairly expensive and we licked our wounds. But the fir, you know, we didn't just move on, we said, okay we identified what was the single point of failure here and how do we keep that from ever happening again. We invested in some software you know, outside of our e R P system that allows the sales team to ensure that these orders that they come in are, are identified and processed timely.
So, you know, HR helped with, or excuse me with it helped with that. Sales obviously really drove that. Supply chain helped with that because it happened to be with offshore manufacturing partners. So those are some examples of mistakes. [00:44:00] I don't like to dwell on mistakes. I like to identify 'em as mistakes or, or opportunities for improvement.
You know, solve the problem, make sure it doesn't happen again. And, and move on.
Sean Frost: Well, and that's a, that's a great overview in some ways that we've been nimble. I know when I got to Polo and we hired some new people on the sales team I think it was Alan who was like, oh my gosh you know, I clicked this button to, and hit submit and it spawns activity all over the world.
It does. People are hiring people here, they're ordering materials there. It's just it's really unique work and, and it's pretty, pretty awesome to hear, hear those stories and how we made it right for the customer, which is what we wanna do at the end of the day. What are some tips for success in, in manufacturing?
What are some things that other manufacturers, other OEMs could learn from from Polo?
Brian Weber: Yeah. I think as I touched on earlier You know, different manufacturing [00:45:00] companies, different types of products have their own challenges and, and strategies for growth. But I think, you know, for Polo one of the things that we need to continue to focus on is just satisfying our customer and getting our customer what they need and offering great value to our customer.
I think the pandemic taught us that a lot of things, you know, it taught us we needed to be just in case, not just in time and, and that we needed to really develop strong relationships with our manufacturing partners. But what it really, really made us realizes the importance of our workforce.
Mm-hmm. And so we're doing a lot of things to ensure that our our turnover rate is low and we monitor that. We, we compare it to turnover data from the department of Labor. And then really in all cases, no matter how you slice it up, if you're looking regionally or our size of company or our type of business or whatever, you know, our turnover rate is lower than the averages that, that are published by the Department of Labor.
So, we feel good about that. [00:46:00] So if we have people that want to come into work or want to come to work for Polo and, and, and can see a career, then we're gonna be able to grow. And I'm doing some things with on a, on a manufacturing board right now, we're trying to convince educators at all levels, starting with, you know, elementary, middle school, high school.
We certainly want everybody who to go to college. Mm-hmm. But there are certain people who don't have an interest in going to college, don't have the means to go to college don't want to go to college right away after high school. Maybe want to go back later, whatever the reason. We want people to identify manufacturing as an, as a, as a career choice.
That is we'll make 'em successful and, and it'd be really beneficial long to, and long term. So we're doing some of that to ensure that we're gonna continue growing. And I know other manufacturers are doing the same thing. I mean, on the board that I'm involved with, we all have the same thoughts and issues.
So it's not just specific to our industry. You know, and then continuing to prospect and, and grow [00:47:00] our markets and grow our customers and go into markets. Maybe we never thought we'd enter Expand our, our capabilities through maybe acquisitions. We did that many years ago. We purchased a thermoforming company out in California and ultimately moved it to Louisville.
We were already doing that process offshore, but it added to our capabilities domestically. Yeah, working with our, with working with our suppliers to offer more manufacturing processes to our customers, like I talked about earlier. You know, we can add all sorts of plastic molding or, or metal work.
So that's, I think that's the key to growth is growing with your customers and, and ensuring that you have a great workforce.
Absolutely. That's great.
And a good company culture. I'll say that about polo. It's for, for as long as I've been there. The, the culture has really been that of doing the right things.
You know, not only for our customers, you know, for our associates, for the communities. Mm-hmm. So we, we say, you know, grow, prosper, and contribute. So, we want our [00:48:00] customers to grow. We want our, our associates to grow. We want 'em to both prosper and we want to contribute to the communities in which we operate.
And I think we have a track record to doing that in a lot of different ways. Yeah, that's great.
Sean Frost: That's great. And I mean, these, this kind of ties into this question, but what do you envision for the future of polo and the industry at large?
Brian Weber: Yeah. Polo will continue to grow. I think what we're gonna see is certain markets or certain market segments grow faster than others.
And also maybe certain markets pivot more towards almost complete import. You know, sewing is a prop manufacturing process that went offshore, you know, in the early eighties, maybe even before that. Mm-hmm. It doesn't cost a lot to outfit an operator with a machine to do sewing work. So there are certain manufacturing processes that need, that need to stay domestic because they have very high, you know, capital intensive where there's a lot of IP [00:49:00] sewing is one that we can move more and more offshore, I think.
But there will always be products that we have to make domestically, whether it's, you know, because it's for the government or, you know, there's a variety of reasons. Also there's certain products that we talked about earlier that have so many requirements or certifications that it would be difficult to achieve those offshore.
So I think what we're gonna see is more focus on certain types of business for our domestic factories and certain types of business for our offshore factories. And as also as I touched on earlier, you know, I, I believe that. There's a big opportunity in, in Africa. Mm-hmm. And it may be 10 years down the road.
Mm-hmm. It may be sooner than that, but I think we'll have some manufacturing somewhere, you know, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Mauritius, somewhere to take advantage of trade agreements and, and you know, in excess of labor. Mm-hmm. And take advantage isn't a great word, but I think, you know what I mean, is, [00:50:00] is mm-hmm.
Is doing things there because our customers really are looking for the lowest possible cost.
Sean Frost: Absolutely. Well, yeah, I appreciate that. And I'm gonna throw you a curve ball and put you on the spot here, but, right, I heard that I heard a story that you once went to China to ensure that we were gonna get an on-time delivery for a customer and that there was machinery involved and some things that you, you did.
So I thought that'd be a fun story to. To put you on the spot for here and, and and capture for the podcast.
Brian Weber: Yeah, well, just like anybody at Polo we're all willing to do what, what's needs to be done at, at any time. And I, I'm not sure exactly which story you may be referring to, but I do know that we received a very large contract for a product that we had never made before.
And it was one of these that we don't often do it, but we we bid on just a, you know, build to print. And [00:51:00] we, we won the contract and we had to quickly, you know, ramp up. And part of that was develop suppliers, which we thought we had a supplier. But that relationship quickly broke down as we were starting to issue pos.
And we knew it wasn't sustainable long term. So what what we did is we started looking where we could buy these components. Now they're metal formed parts and assembled parts. A ratchet assembly for a, a large tie down. And our Asian business manager over in China was doing a lot of sourcing work, trying to find who, who we could use.
And we identified a, a company in Ningbo, China. So I jumped on a plane and I met our Asian business manager, Thomas in Ningbo, and we visited this factory. This is all in like less than a week. And what the idea was, you have to lay eyes on the factory to ensure that they can take an order of, you know, several hundred thousand of these expensive components and [00:52:00] deliver on time.
And it just so happens that we see on their, on their board very similar products. And it, you know, I guess small world, right? We, we found the company that was making the product for the incumbent. So that made me feel a lot better. I'm like, okay. They, they've done it. Ours was just a different color.
The new, the new spec was, it went from, you know, one color to another. So, I figured they could handle the painting pretty easily, the change in paint. So yeah, that was, you know, it was like a four day trip to China. I think I was in the air just as long as I was on the ground. But I was happy to do it.
And that turned out to be a very successful contract that ended up in a long-term multi-year contract. Because of how well we did on the, on the first contract, we offered the customer a, a better value, frankly, than, than they were getting. So, yeah, there's that, but you know, it's not it's not anything anybody else wouldn't do.
We have a group jumping on a plane next week and going to Vietnam because we're doing a a validation [00:53:00] run and it's a critical time. You know, it's, the timeline's tight and it's a critical component to a product that we actually manufacture here. So, mm-hmm. We're, we're having a sub-assembly made by our manufacturing partner, and we wanna make sure it's done right.
And not that we don't think they can do it, but we, we have some experience that we wanna be able to share with them on the fly and as things come up. So we have a team going over there and they were you know, they were happy to do whatever it takes to, to get it done. So I'm really proud of that.
Sean Frost: Yeah, me too. And appreciate your dedication and sharing that story. I know I love. When we get to go out and see customers together, cuz cuz you, you give so much confidence to our customers that we are gonna meet the things that they care about, which is on time delivery quality. That's, that cannot fail.
And, and and you really embody that for polo. And, and I know that our, our sales reps feel the same way. And, and so we really appreciate your time and sharing your expertise today with us.
Brian Weber: I'm glad to be part of the podcast and I'm [00:54:00] excited about what, what you're doing here and what, what it's gonna offer our you know, our customers and, and the suppliers and perspective associates learn more about polo and what we do and what we've done in the past.
So, thank you.
Sean Frost: So thank you for tuning into episode two. I hope you enjoyed Brian Weber getting deep into some of the stories and, and some of the ways that we go above and beyond for our customers and, and work with large OEMs to scale products and, and bring them out into the world.
So, we appreciate you watching. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tune in. We will have another episode on the second Tuesday of the following month. So we're really looking forward to it and appreciate you listening.