Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1437606
DECEMBER 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 49 Matties: How many openings did your presses have previously? Mirshafiei: In our old facility, we had 30-open- ing presses and treaters. Now, we have multiple 10-opening hot presses as well as cold presses to handle the mix. Niziolek: e key here is creating that flexibil- ity and executing on it. It centers on laying up in time and collating that press load where I'm not filling a 30-board press, so I'm turning over press loads faster which, by definition, gives me more flexibility. It's pretty exciting. Matties: As we all know, the world is being hit with the ongoing supply chain issues. How are you managing this? Niziolek: Like other companies, we've been frustrated, and we've frustrated some custom- ers. I've never seen anything like it in almost 40 years of doing this. It's just unparalleled. Everywhere you turn, there's a challenge. But our customers have been good, and they have been steady. It's the insightfulness, the thought- fulness, in how you approach the issue and the flexibility in how you react. We offer a lot of breadth to the customers, and managing that complexity becomes challenging at times, but you need to have contingency sources and plans. It's around that balance and execution against customer expectations. When your offering is performance, there's no substitution. T. Kelly: Force majeure letters have come out from numerous suppliers. It's a challenge every day and everyone is facing it. We read about shipping containers costing $20,000, or con- tainers on ships that can't get into port. We manage this every day, and there are signifi- cant challenges associated with it. Matties: What do you share with your custom- ers these days? ey are very concerned about supply chains. Mirshafiei: Yes, they are concerned about risks to the supply chain. ey see it not just from us as a material supplier, they see it from all ele- ments of their business. e message that our customers and their customers (the OEMs) were looking for is to finally see an investment in North America to support the industry here. We're not just taking an old model of high vol- ume, low mix, but something that's more tai- lored to the industry. at's part of the positive karma that we saw, and that hasn't really abated. What has happened is the pandemic and how this has exposed the dependency of the supply chain. What they want to see is communication; give them visibility, help them understand what they can plan from a supply standpoint, and keep them up to date. As you heard from Walt, Ed, and Travis, as an industry and as a country, we are all faced with the same chal- lenges. T. Kelly: I think the key word is transparency. We've talked about supply chain ad nauseum. at's just not the raw material inputs, it's also shipping constraints, shipping contain- ers, ports being fully congested, and shortages on truck drivers. We can't control that. But we can control transparency. We have hyper- inflation, not only on the raw material but, once again, on the shipping cost. So how do we become more transparent with our cus- tomers to let them know the challenges we're facing? e force majeure letters from numer- ous chemical companies; it's all about trans- parency and over-communicating. is is our focus, and we want to improve. You don't want to be naive and think this is going away soon. ere is nothing that we have seen, read, or As an industry and as a country, we are all faced with the same challenges.