Episode 15: Redefining PLM at Metso: Brian Berger on Innovation, Product Management, and Sustainability

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Brian Berger, the Vice President and Head of the Thickeners and Clarifiers Product Group at Metso. Based in Denver, Colorado, he has been leading this innovative product line since 2020. Prior to his current role, Brian was in charge of the Grinding Mills Product Line, with a global team spanning several locations: Australia, China, Sweden, Peru, Chile, and Finland.

In this episode, we are discussing:

⚉ Introduction to Thickeners and Clarifiers
⚉ Shifting from ETO (Engineering-to-Order) to CTO (Configure-to-Order)
⚉ PLM Benefits and Challenges
⚉ Product Managers and Product Management Evolution
⚉ Modularization and Digital Transformation
⚉ Cultural and Organizational Dynamics in the Company
⚉ Customer-Driven Sustainability and Lifecycle Services for Sustainability
⚉ Personal Challenges and the Driving Change
⚉ Navigating Career Transitions
⚉ Embracing Change and Challenging the Status Quo


CONNECT WITH BRIAN:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-d-berger-p-e-9b455614/ 

CONNECT WITH SHARE PLM:
Website: https://shareplm.com/ 

Join us every month to listen to fascinating interviews, where we cover a wide array of topics, from actionable tips, to personal experiences, to strategies that you can implement into your PLM strategy.

If you have an interesting story to share and want to join the conversation, contact us and let's chat. We can't wait to hear from you!

Transcript

[00:00:12] Beatriz González: 
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the SharePLM podcast. I'm Beatriz González, co founder and CEO of SharePLM. I'll be your host for today's episode, and joining me, as always, we have my co host, Jos Voskuil and we have an exciting guest lineup for today. Hi, Jos, how are you doing, and who is with us today?

[00:00:32] Jos Voskuil: 
Hi Bea. Happy to be in this podcast again. And today we have Brian Berger from Metso in, in the podcast. And I think we both have a history in the past working with Metso or Autotech. So we are curious to pick up with Brian. Brian, please can you introduce yourself and your job to the audience?

[00:00:50] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Brian Berger and I am the current vice president of our thickeners and clarifiers product group, which sits in the minerals business area. So we're responsible for the capital equipment in mining and metallurgy plants.

[00:01:07] Jos Voskuil: 
And you say thickness and clarifiers. What does this mean for a non-expert audience?

[00:01:14] Brian Berger: 
So in minerals processing, most of the processes are wet processes. So you use water to facilitate the separation of the valuable material from the invaluable material. And in later on processes, you don't want that water. You want to re recover it and bring it back into the, the process of have water circularity.

So a thickener allows you to recover that water and have a thicker, let's say, slurry that goes down to, let's say filtration, or in some cases that may be forward for tailings. And that's what the thickeners and clarifiers do is they thinken that material.

[00:01:48] Jos Voskuil: 
Okay, that's clear. And I think on that, I'm thinking about machinery and now I'm asking myself, what are your biggest PLM challenges in that domain?

[00:01:58] Brian Berger: 
Yeah. So this is quite large equipment and  historically it's quite old technology. However, for the most part of the expectations are that it is mostly engineered to order just simply due to the scale. We oftentimes have pieces of equipment that are measured 50 to 100 meters in diameter.

So it's, sort of blends the line between mechanical and structural or civil engineering when you're building this type of equipment. It's fixed in place so the customer is designing the whole civils maybe the groundwork around a specific piece of equipment.

So there's absolutely this push for a highly engineered product and that raises lots of challenges from a PLM standpoint. So one of the things that we have been trying to do is manage this polarity between engineered to order like the customers expect and configured to order or even standard products that obviously unlocks all the benefits of PLM and, and really allows you to be much more nimble and profitable at the end of the day.

[00:03:02] Jos Voskuil: 
Right. So one question I often hear companies talking about their dream moving from ETO to CTO and because of the efficiency challenges but first coming back to the engineering to order process. Personally, I think PLM still has the big benefit of collaboration, even if it's engineering to order. 

Do you see also benefits in that or are you experiencing obstacles with maybe people see it as an overhead to communicate or is it difficult? I mean, because to order companies that I know are usually, they're all artists and they have to create something.

[00:03:40] Brian Berger: 
Yeah. I think a lot of engineers are.I think the engineer to order does absolutely still benefit from PLM. As you said, the collaboration, making sure that everyone is aware of the, what the offering is, or what the project is, everybody has access to the materials, be them drawing specifications standards.

So there's absolutely benefit to PLM in engineer to order equipment. But I think that as you move towards CTO, I think the, a lot of the additional benefits and inefficiencies get unlocked from PLM.

[00:04:15] Jos Voskuil: 
Right. But then you also probably need the the benefits of modularity?

[00:04:20] Brian Berger: 
Yes. Exactly right.

[00:05:56] Beatriz González: 
And how has been the journey going to CTO? Because I remember 10 years ago that in the thickened spot line, it was already some steps taking defining the different models with different sizes of thickness. So, how these 10 years has been what are the, the improvements since then?

[00:04:43] Brian Berger: 
Yeah so I think that some steps had already started sometime ago in various modules of the thickeners. But the they were quite early days and I think that what we have done now is really define the products much better. Even though some of them are still ETO, we have a much more robust product definition. 

In that regard we don't offer every single potential option, right? We have narrowed the selections in some regards and that creates steps that we are then able to move into and then repeat even though it is an engineer to order product those modules can then be repeated more readily. In the past, it was not the case. 

So things like the tank geometry, we have now defined exactly what that tank geometry is for various size increments as opposed to before it would be custom design tank for every every case.

[00:05:38] Beatriz González: 
And how have you been promoting this initiative? You have nominated a group of engineers, or it's an external company helping you, because sometimes it's a lack of time or lack of focus to sit with all the engineers and really agree on what is standard, what is reusable, how have you doing it? Have you done it? Or how are you doing it now?

[00:06:01] Brian Berger: 
When I took over this group, they had some product managers, but their focus was much more on the technical side. So maybe we could call them technical product managers. 

One of my first things that I wanted to do was put in place what I see is a more robust product management team, so I identified personnel who could fill that role. None of them had sort of commercial product management experience at the time. So I was looking more for the mentality of what product manager could do. And then, of course, the technical expertise to be knowledgeable in the product area.

I think to be a successful product manager, you kind of need one or the other. You either need to be an expert or you need to be a really good product manager. And so I was definitely looking for the experts since we didn't have the product management in place. So then, developing that product management, I allowed them to focus on the customer needs, developing that solution from, you know, starting from the customer view and then working backwards to understand how do we move towards CTO in the best way possible?

[00:07:05] Beatriz González:
And also to services and aftermarket, right?

[00:07:08] Brian Berger: 
Yes, absolutely.

[00:07:08] Beatriz González: 
You need to think to have that mindset.

[00:07:11] Brian Berger: 
End to end. Yes.

[00:07:13] Jos Voskuil: 
Exactly. When I hear the word product management, I always have immediately the association with digital transformation and connection to, to service to the customer is, and that is my first question of your PLM. Is your PLM an engineering environment or is it a life cycle environment where you also manage or try to manage the customer environments?

[00:07:33] Brian Berger: 
So the PLM is definitely end to end. We have a specific responsibility for the engineering of the equipment, but we also are strongly focused in supporting our colleagues in our services group to ensure that they have the capabilities to continue to support that customer at the site for the duration of the, of the equipment's lifetime.

So it's definitely a collaborative approach between the two organizations in order to ensure that the decisions we're making on the front end are also supporting them on the back end. And, and it supports that collaboration.

[00:08:08] Jos Voskuil: 
Right, and then in this collaboration, we see the big shift with digital transformation going from documents to data. How well is your service on an environment connected digitally with a digital thread to your engineering environment? Are you working on that?

[00:08:24] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, we, we have a pretty robust connection. The tools that we use support the business, but I think that there's still some ways to improve and in streamlining some of the ways that the engineering documents manage into the PLM software. Those connections, these handshakes between the different systems are always the tripping up points and where you can get some, some issues come up.

So it's, it's a continual sort of, improvement cycle to, to make those handshakes more efficient.

[00:08:51] Jos Voskuil: 
Do you have some examples of those handshake issues?

[00:08:55] Brian Berger: 
Sure. Sometimes the engineering documents, perhaps are, let's say not formatted correctly or there's potentially just some connection that's not necessarily set up correctly, and then it won't move into the PLM or alternately, there's a component within the PLM build that hasn't been fully released or isn't under our jurisdiction, but somebody else's jurisdiction.

So then we can't handshake that over to the ERP system. So those types of things arise and we're constantly improving our, our ways of working and, and sometimes even improving the systems to make that a much more seamless transfer. But I tell you, it's, it's come a long way from, from where we first started 10 plus years ago.

[00:09:36] Jos Voskuil: 
And if you look back at, because you say, uh, we've gone a long way, what are the typical benefits that you would say maybe we didn't think about it in the beginning, but now we are observing them. Is it time quality?

[00:09:49] Brian Berger: 
It's definitely, definitely quality. That's absolutely the case that our quality is improving. One of the things for our engineers is the PLM system requires more effort on the front end from them in order to set everything up properly in the system for again for that life cycle view, but it streamlines the downstream process so much.

If we do the things right on the front end, the benefits they keep coming back year after year as we're ordering spare parts or being able to service this equipment in a much more efficient manner. Sometimes you have to remind the engineering team that, that, hey, this has big benefits, even though you're not necessarily saying your day to day work.

[00:10:29] Jos Voskuil: 
Yeah. And it's interesting you say you have to remind them on the big benefits. I also believe it's part of the management to make this awareness part of the habits. Instead of only time pressure that you have to be fast, but also think about downstream benefits all the time.

[00:10:45] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, exactly. Exactly right.

[00:10:47] Beatriz González: 
And how was the path to train these engineers? And also because your group is very big and it's all around the world. How has, in this way, until you make your engineers working in the PLM system, what challenges did you find?

[00:11:02] Brian Berger: 
Well, I think that the training in particular for like the new product managers, it was learning a whole new role with all new skills. And we're identifying new training suppliers to support them in that transition. And one of the things that I noticed in identifying these, these training providers is that product management training that I could find, and a lot of the material is focused around digital solutions and service solutions.

And so that's obviously a huge part of the global industry and where there's a lot of product management need. But when we were in physical assets or, or industrial equipment, it doesn't necessarily fit our mold. A lot of the, the things that they're trying to train and those, those programs.

So we worked together with a, a training provider to tweak their offering to meet our needs and what we needed this to sort of present to these, these product managers. And thankfully, that's now become a bit of the standard that we're using within Metso and the menu product we're doing this sort of every 6 months, having a cohort of product managers go through this training. 

And that's absolutely helping to harmonize the ways of working, create a common language, so everybody's using the same nomenclature and, and the tools and templates as well, makes everything much more streamlined.

[00:12:22] Jos Voskuil: 
What do you think the top skills a product manager should have?

[00:12:25] Brian Berger: 
I think, as I mentioned, the right mentality, I think is where it all starts, you have to have a customer focus and you need to sort of be willing to be the, the CEO. I see a product manager as the CEO of their own products, and most product managers that I lead, they don't have a direct reporting team.

They're managing the product. And then they, they instead use the functional resources around them and leverage those to achieve their needs for their specific product. So, every day may look very different for product manager, and that's important that they have that right mentality and the right skill set to sort of be willing to jump in and do what needs to be done, just like a CEO for the best of their product that day. So that's that to me is the first thing is the right mentality.

[00:13:12] Jos Voskuil: 
So they need to have great communication skills and motivation skills to motivate others to work for them or to believe in them?

[00:13:19] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, persuasion skills, right? To get other stakeholders to see their vision. Those are all excellent qualities for them to have for sure.

[00:13:28] Beatriz González: 
And we forgot to ask you in the definition of the modular products, let's say, or the way you are going, are you also considering sustainability? 

[00:13:37] Brian Berger: 
Yeah. For sure, So I mean Metso as a company has a huge sustainability vision and we're trying to limit climate change to one and a half degree Celsius and doing out part in what is traditionally seen as quite a non sustainable industry. 

Unfortunately, mining, it is taking materials, minerals out of the ground and the practices are challenging at times. What we recognize is that for a developing world, we need these materials to continue to construct, to build, to anything that isn't grown is mine. And we use a lot of that material. And so, we want to ensure that our clients are able to deliver those end products in the most sustainable way possible.

[00:14:27] Jos Voskuil: 
And I think of course you can do a lot on energy efficiency and resource efficiency as in the sustainability area.

[00:14:35] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, so that's a big focus areas is water and energy efficiencies. Water is a scarce resource and energy is a scarce resource. And so the more efficient we can make our processes, the more efficient we can make the energy consumption and the water consumption, the better off the whole process will be.

And so a lot of our development in R& D, a lot of our products are all based around those concepts of efficiency in energy and water.

[00:15:01] Jos Voskuil: 
Are these separate people that are taking part of the sustainability initiatives or is it fully integrated also in the engineering process? Do you have targets there?

[00:15:10] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, no, it's fully integrated. So we had a mandate many years ago already that our R and D must be focused on sustainable solutions. That's our our vision and mission. So we want high efficiency, high performing solutions that are a step above the, the alternatives. So that's been ingrained in each engineering team as they're doing their, their product or solution development that they need to be focusing on the, the efficient solutions to support the sustainability targets.

[00:15:43] Jos Voskuil: 
Okay. That's great. Because often you hear, there is a willing to be more sustainable, but it's not measurable. It's separate people. So it's, it's great to hear that you already quite on this journey.

[00:15:55] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, absolutely. We have internal metrics that we use to define what qualifies as a sort of a sustainable solution. And those, those metrics need to be independently reviewed by what we call our technology board. But again, the definition of of the product and the measurement of the improvement is all done within the individual engineering teams.

[00:16:15] Jos Voskuil: 
And now I'm talking on behalf of the PLM Global Green Alliance. I'm asking, are your customers also asking for it? Are they pushing you to be more sustainable or is it still also your motivation to be sustained?

[00:16:28] Brian Berger: 
Absolutely our customers are pushing for it. It is a key metric that many of them utilize in their selection of a partner. And we have developed tools to support them in understanding how various solutions, be it, different technologies or differen arrangements of the plant will affect the sustainability of the overall solution.

So those tools we've developed are available to the customers to sort of understand how they can arrange in a more sustainable way.

[00:17:00] Jos Voskuil: 
Oh, that's great. Yeah.

[00:17:02] Beatriz González: 
Are you Brian also offering for thickeners and clarifiers services such as upgrading of the equipment so it keeps working or refurbishment or recycling? I don't know how to call it, this kind of services to make it also more sustainable and not getting rid of it once it's not working properly or what is the direction?

[00:17:28] Brian Berger: 
Absolutely. We do. As we develop new technologies, and as I said, these are sustainable solutions, obviously, they're an improvement over previous generations of technologies. And we, we do absolutely upgrade old equipment, be it ours, or sometimes even competitors equipment depending on certain conditions in order to improve the efficiency or sustainability of that, that piece of equipment.

And we offer not only physical, you know, mechanical solutions to that, but also digital solutions in that space. There can be significant improvements in efficiency, in performance and in sustainability by having expert control systems using AI to sort of do data number crunching and, and understand how to feed forward that data into the system. So it's prepared for changes. 

It's a very dynamic situation in the plant. Lots of changes can happen quite quickly. So the faster that you can react you can make sure that you keep everything running as efficiently as possible. So those digital solutions are also a huge component of improving the sustainability targets of our customers.

[00:18:38] Jos Voskuil: 
I think we have talked now a lot about Metso as a company in the WeForum, but in the podcast, we are also very interested in the YouForum. You, Brian, what is your day in the life? What are your challenges in the job that you currently have?

[00:18:52] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, so I think that for me, we've been on this transition now for for four years or so of moving our equipment to be a bit more, one of the things we talk about is easy to sell, easy to deliver, and easy to service. So within our group, that's kind of the mantra that we have is how can we make this easier for all these different phases.

And a lot of that is back to the CTO that does make things easier. It's back to modularization and it's about getting all of these different pieces of the puzzle put together in a way that everybody's rowing in the same direction. And oftentimes that's my day to day in a large company. 

You know, obviously there's a, a lot of collaboration that's necessary to get that alignment to understand all the stakeholders needs, to sort of, collect all of that together in a way that supports everybody's vision.

[00:19:47] Jos Voskuil: 
Right. So are you really, I would say, in the middle between, I would say, the top management and the people on the floor? Are you the translator of the mission?

[00:19:57] Brian Berger: 
Yeah, I would say that's a good, good description sitting in my position very much as a translator. You get some vision from the top, you have to put that together with the reality from below and marry it all together so that we can start to achieve the, the goals together.

[00:20:11] Jos Voskuil: 
And how is your style in that? Is it focused on arguments on emotions? There are different ways to generate a change in a company. What is your style?

[00:20:20] Brian Berger: 
I feel like I'm quite collaborative. I like to assemble diverse teams to assess different issues or topics. I believe that the more diversity you have in lived experience, or the more robust the solutions you will generate. And so I'm a huge proponent of putting together a good, diverse team to assess various things.

So very collaborative, I would say. I don't think tha argumentative. No. So I, I try to be very, uh, bureaucratic…

[00:20:52] Jos Voskuil: 
Okay.

[00:20:52] Brian Berger:
… and collaborative.

[00:20:53] Jos Voskuil:
Yeah. I mean, uh, culture always plays a big role in organizations. I mean, if you have a very hard hierarchical culture or a very horizontal culture, we discussed in some previous podcasts. And how many people do you need to reach in your span of reach, I would say when you talk about collaborative?

[00:21:12] Brian Berger:
Yeah so I, would say that the, the total span is, you know, it's 100, 150 people that we normally sort of work with, but that that doesn't include let's say, the guys on the ground who are doing service work day in and day out. That's just the reaching across the different organizations of the company and let's say white collar level.

[00:21:31] Beatriz González:
This collaborative approach, the way you kind of use it, is it different depending on the nationalities? Because we know that some nationalities are more pro collaboration. Other ones are more pro hierarchy. And you tell me what to do because you are my boss, for example, what from your experience. Any insight?

[00:21:52] Brian Berger:
Yeah I think I mean I've working with multiple cultures now for 12 to 14 years and as I said earlier, I think that the, the more diverse those viewpoints, the lived experience, and that includes culture the better solutions you can get. And I think that some of the friction that people may feel from working with different cultures actually makes you think differently about how to approach those people.

And even if they're, let's say, internal stakeholders, there's probably similar people who are customers that have the same sort of culture. And if you can understand how to collaborate internally effectively with different cultural norms it absolutely benefits you from the business perspective as well.

[00:22:38] Jos Voskuil:
I think it's a very important observation that diversity is so crucial to move forward where we see some trends now where people are trying to simplify things instead of keeping things diverse. And so I agree with you. Also, my experience is that you learn so much from different cultures and you get such a better understanding.

So coming on that, what is your greatest experience in your career where you say here I had a complete misunderstanding.

[00:23:06] Brian Berger:
Yeah. So I think one of the biggest learnings for me is when we did the merger with Ototec and Metso and I transitioned from leading our grinding business line into our thickens and clarifiers business line. 

In the grinding business, I was one of the technical experts. Most of my career, in the grinding space, I knew the technology inside and out. And so I leaned a lot on my technical expertise in my leadership style. 

When I moved over to Thickness and Clarifiers, I didn't have that expertise. And I had to learn how to lead from a position of not having that, that space. So really leaning into leadership styles and understanding how to lead a team of experts without being an expert myself. So that

[00:23:52] Jos Voskuil:
It's somehow a similar experience that you are a specialist in one vertical and then suddenly you have to work horizontal with a broad different type of people.

[00:24:03] Brian Berger:
So it was definitely a learning curve for me.

[00:24:06] Beatriz González:
Yeah, this is the learning curve for awhile just now because I was like more in the technical part of SharePLM doing the projects and the PLM and with the change management and since last month, I became the CEO and now I need to learn a lot of things that are not technical or PLM, managing teams, managing the company, so I totally feeling that experience that you had.

[00:24:30] Jos Voskuil:
It's called the T-shape. You have to be, uh, both expert in the vertical and horizontal. You need to be a good in communication, connecting and holistic thinking.

[00:24:41] Brian Berger:
Absolutely.

[00:24:41] Jos Voskuil:
Okay.

[00:24:42] Beatriz González:
Okay, so I think we are coming to an end, right Jos? Do you have any more questions for Brian?

[00:24:49] Jos Voskuil:
One final question, Brian. Do you have any advice to the listeners to this podcast? What should they learn from your PLM experience?

[00:24:58] Brian Berger:
Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway that I have is, is to not be afraid of moving away from the status quo, be it an engineer to order shifting towards configured to order products, be it technical product management, sole focus and, and trying to take a more holistic product management view, or adopting some of these new modern tools in what you've maybe are not currently seeing as, as a huge benefit if you've got a project based business, but looking at the bigger, broader scope and understanding the follow on benefits that can come from it.

So, I guess it would be open to change is, is maybe my, my takeaway.

[00:25:36] Jos Voskuil:
Okay. Or the one line that could be get out of your comfort zone.

[00:25:39] Brian Berger:
Yeah, sure.

[00:25:41] Beatriz González:
Brian, thank you very much for joining us today in today's episode. And then for our listeners, if you would like us to discuss any topics, put some comments and we will be happy to answer you. So thank you so much, Jos. Thank you, Brian.

[00:25:55] Jos Voskuil:
Okay. Thank you and success, Brian. See you.