Sustainable Packaging
Industry Experts discuss all the new materials and ways that packaging can be more sustainable and how we can do our parts to help recycle and reuse. Sustainable Packaging is and will continue to affect us all in our daily lives. We have lots of fun and get down to the real data of what's working to help our planet!
Sustainable Packaging
Specright BOD member Mike Crowe / How a CIO from Colgate-Palmolive spent his career
https://specright.com/get-started
Mike Crowe has had an amazing career with Colgate-Palmolive as their CIO it was an honor and a pleasure to speak with him.
What is important from the CIO perspective?
How does Specright impact all aspects of a company?
What can Specright do to help your company save money and efficiently report your sustainability data?
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/packaging-today-show/id1656906367
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Packaging Today Podcast
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/
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Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Mr. Mike Crow. It's the newest board member for Specright. Mike Crowe: How are you, Mike? I'm doing well, Corey, thanks for having me. It's really an honor to have you on the show. Your history, your background is incredibly impressive. I'm excited to talk about spec right, and all of that's going on. But let's talk about your background a little bit first and get, catch people up to how you got here.
Mike Crowe:Yeah, sure. So I'm a a whole degree in computer and information scientist from the University of Delaware. And from the combination of my senior year as well as my first few years after school, I worked in both the defense as well as the healthcare software industries. And after that I joined Colgate Palm Company and I was at Colgate for nearly 34 years. And the last nine years at Colgate, I was the chief information.
Cory Connors:It's a big company and you had a big role there. I'm excited to hear about your thoughts on their sustainable packaging. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, did you have any influence there or was that not really part of your role?
Mike Crowe:So, as the CIO of a big company, you get exposed to just about everything inside the company because everyone is looking for solutions to support their part of the business. Whether it be in the creation of packaging itself or in the case of reporting when it comes to sustainability. So, in, in that function, you do get exposed to a broad set of initiatives going on throughout the company. Of course, not limited to packaging, but certainly involved with. Excellent.
Cory Connors:And I think when we talked before, you talked a little bit about how Specright influenced your company and how you think it, it could be used in many different departments, but I wanna talk about a little bit about how your time at Colgate Palm prepared you for a board seat at.
Mike Crowe:Yeah. So in that 34 years at Colgate, it was all in the IT organization by the way. And it, I had a, both a broad and a deep background in enterprise IT as well as enterprise software. And as part of that, I could point to a lot of things from my time there that prepared me for this board role. But what I would concentrate on is in, in implementing many different pieces of enterprise software. It's really about the combination of people, process, and technology. And in that combination of people processing technology it's about seeing what can be done better, seeing what can be done differently and then seeing it through the implementation, from the start to the finish to be able to accomplish those goals. I think that sets me up well for being on the board of this private software company.
Cory Connors:Such an interesting point and so valuable to this whole thing. I think of Spec Rite and I think of packaging specs, but it is so much more than that because it can be used with ingredients. It can be used with equipment. you mentioned some of your packaging machinery had, it was specked out, well using speck. Right. Can you speak to that a little?
Mike Crowe:Yeah, so I completely agree with you. I think inside of large companies you often hear the packaging engineers talking about specifications. Yeah. You, I think you hear the engineering teams and the machinery needed for producing product, talking about specifications and using that specific language of specifications. I think a lot of other people around big companies also talk specifications. They just don't use the language. They're talking about, they're talking about master data or they're talking about bills of material. But when it comes to specifications, it's really specifications for everything. It's the packaging materials, it's the raw materials, it's the machinery needed to create products. It's the specifications for the finished goods, the. It's the bill of material and the specifications related to, to the bill of material. So I think big companies have always talked broadly about specs, even though they may not have in each of those cases, used the language of specification.
Cory Connors:Right. One of my favorite examples that Laura Foti gave at one of the Specright conventions was about assembly. And how they visited a company and they literally had the instructions of assembly written on the corrugated that was covering the surface area. So the people assembling whatever part knew. Okay, step one, this goes on that step two. And she said, now they've upgraded them to iPads with Spec Rite and anybody in the whole world can access this exact requirement. So there's no confusion and there's pictures and there's videos, and to me, you go from here to the moon with this innovation. It's absolutely in. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. Now, when you would spec in a new piece of equipment would it go so far as to say the temperature settings and the details of the settings of the machine after it was purchased?
Mike Crowe:So it would be certainly the specifications related to the equipment and being within certain tolerances. Yep. And I think the important piece around any of the specifications, especially as it comes to spec rite, is the ability to collaborate with your suppliers, with your contract manufacturers. So starting. Maybe starting with expressing the specifications you want to see in equipment, here's my desire, spec specifications, and then suppliers are sharing back, what they can and cannot do. And you're collaborating on things there until you lock in on that spec. But then you lock in on those parameters and then you hold the supplier accountable those parameters, and you make sure that's the right specifications for what you're gonna need for making your.
Cory Connors:Excellent point. Such an important part. Part of all of this is thinking about the future and when it comes time again to buy another machine or to expand to another location, all of a sudden you'll be able to copy it exactly the same. And and or like you said, tweak it a little bit. If maybe this market requires this kind of a setting or a different kind of a thing because the environment's different, the temperature's higher or lower, or might snow here, or we have to go over the paths and, things like that you need to take into account. And I think having the spec dialed in really helps make that easier.
Mike Crowe:Yeah, I think there's so many advantages to managing specifications Well, and to the spec right platform in particular to your point that you made about, you have a spec set and then you're sharing that across your organization or even sharing, as I said before, it's a contract manufacturers, there's the speed. Right. There's, everyone's after speed in terms of, getting up and running getting products to market, getting products developed and being organized around your spec management, including those collaborative capabilities. 1.1, single point of truth for your specs. I think speed of market is one of the benefits. Another benefit Would be savings too. Yeah. Cost initiatives, right? If you're paying attention to your specifications, Then, and you've got them all in the right place. It makes it a lot easier to find those savings opportunities, to find those opportunities for efficiency. And I think spec, right? Customers are most definitely seeing that play out. And I think that, to your earlier questions about sustainable packaging, I think those accurate specs, and especially if you think back to. Specifications around packaging materials and raw materials and how that goes into formulas and the bill of materials. What? Whatever your sustainability goals are, as well as the regulations that are coming. Having all of that together then enables easier reporting to meet those regulations or to meet your objectives.
Cory Connors:Excellent point. Very true. We met Kevin from Dermatologic and he told us a story about how it used to take him three weeks to provide the reports to in regards to all their sustainability and initiatives. And it took half a dozen engineers three weeks to do it, and now it takes two people 30 minutes using spec right data, and that is absolutely incredible.
Mike Crowe:Yeah, and I, if I can add to that, I think you have different companies coming from different places. So, some companies may have a lot of the specification data in, in siloed environments, in different Excel spreadsheets in people's heads. And so that's some low-hanging fruit with, within actually going after specification management platform to organize that. Other more sophisticated companies may have systems in place for this already, but I think that the. Wave of improvements on that is these collaboration capabilities. The, having the network all looking at that same specking again, coming back to, the manufacturer, the suppliers of the materials that come into that manufacturer, the contract manufacturers who may be helping them with capacity and making product. All of that collaboration is just net value add to things that were in place before.
Cory Connors:It's go, it's going to be an incredible network once the supplier, the raw material manufacturer, the supplier the contract manufacturer, the end u, the end assembling facility. When everyone is on the same platform, the spec right platform, they can just report to each other and say, okay, this is the speck we use for this item, so if you need to replace it or whatever the case may be, it becomes an incredible network. And I think it's we often talk about, Opportunities for error. And I think it limits that. And that's something very exciting. Kind of take that human factor out. Or like I said earlier the specs written on the desk or hey, that's in Charlie's computer. Well he doesn't work here anymore. What happened to his laptop? Things like that just should be eliminated. It's a. Agreed. Well, Le let's switch gears a little bit here. I'm very excited to talk about something. I was on the board for Candlelighters for Children with Cancer for six years, and I was looking at your history and you have your own children's Cancer Foundation. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Mike Crowe:Yeah. So Corey thanks for noticing that. So, we lost the child to acute Myeloid Leukemia back in your loss. Thank you for that. And as you can imagine that's a parent's worst nightmare come true. And we've had a bold ambition since then to do what we can in order to prevent any other family or any other child from having to go through, that pain and suffering that we experience. So, over the years we've been. A lot of fundraising with the American Cancer Society, with leukemia and Lymphoma Society and with a outfit called Cure Search. And our most recent pivot in that fundraising is in partnership with Cure Search. And let me pause there to say, I think that partnership with Cure Search is so important because they also have a bold ambition and is simply stated to end childhood. And so we have partnered with them to create what they call a legacy fund. Oh wow. There's only nine to 10 of these legacy funds as part of Cure Search and what we are really excited about, we're excited about that partnership with them. We're excited that we launched the fund in the middle of January and response has been fantastic so far, but probably the thing that excites us the most is that we're gonna be close to where those funds are. So we're gonna, we're gonna be able to help influence what pediatric cancer research projects will be funded. The I'm happy to say that there will be news coming out shortly as to the first research project that is going to be funded. And so far the partnership's off to a great start and we hope to live to see the day that CURE search reaches their ambition and that we do end childhood cancer.
Cory Connors:It's It's an honor to be a part of the solution. And I think that's how I felt working with Candlelighters for so many years. And just to do a small part, ran a golf tournament called Golf to Give and all of that money went to Candlelighters for children with cancer and. Like you said, it's it, you're gonna identify where the money's going. Sometimes these national charities you don't really know which percentage of your dollar that you donate goes to the actual people or the research. So it sounds like you've been able to identify a very good charity partner.
Mike Crowe:Yeah. We're very happy with cure Search. The partnership, as I said before, it's off to a great start. We couldn't be happier a about that. And you know, Corey, thanks for what you have done. Oh, it it's important and and really appreciate what you have done for the cause as well. Thank
Cory Connors:you, sir. And I'd like to donate to your charity as well. What's a website we can reach out to for.
Mike Crowe:So it's cure search.org. And the the name of the Legacy fund is Team Steve, the Stephen Crow Legacy Fund. I think that the total URL for that then would be Cure search.org/team Steve. To get to our page,
Cory Connors:I'll put a link in the notes so people can just click on it if they'd like to donate. Okay, great. Cause that is such a wonderful cause we appreciate that. And like you said let's put this whole thing out of business, right? Let's not even make it something that can happen anymore. With the right research and funding, I think it's possible to eliminate.
Mike Crowe:Yeah. And that's what I think is so important about that ambitious goal that cure search has. Yeah. It might seem, we might sit here and think it's unrealistic, but you've gotta have that goal that you're reaching for if we're gonna get there. Yeah.
Cory Connors:Well said. And great way to end the show. Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate all you're doing. What's the best way to get in touch with you and the team over at.
Mike Crowe:So, so I would say the best way to get in touch with me is probably look me up on LinkedIn. Pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. I'm sure if you just put in the search Mike Crow and spec right. That should come right up to the top. And I'm active on LinkedIn, so always checking for connections and invitations. Look forward to
Cory Connors:it. Right? Thank you sir. And this show is presented by LinkedIn. Now I can just announce starting today. We we're part of the LinkedIn podcast academy, one of 19 podcasts in the world that they chose to do that. So just honored to be a part of LinkedIn that academy. Well,
Mike Crowe:congratulations on that, Corey.
Cory Connors:Thank you, sir. And if you're listening, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And thank you to Landsberg Orora for your sponsorship. We appreciate it so much.
