David brings 35+ years of manufacturing experience in computer, automotive, aerospace, furniture, and chemical industries. He has worked for General Motors and Chrysler, as well as Foxconn and Jabil. Build and managed several automotive plants in North America. Successfully turned around Foxconn’s Mexico plant in the middle of the swine flu crisis 2009-2010. And for the last 10 years, he has been living in China.
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David brings 35+ years of manufacturing experience in computer, automotive, aerospace, furniture, and chemical industries. He has worked for General Motors and Chrysler, as well as Foxconn and Jabil. Build and managed several automotive plants in North America. Successfully turned around Foxconn’s Mexico plant in the middle of the swine flu crisis 2009-2010. And for the last 10 years, he has been living in China.
Discover more details here.
Some of the highlights of the episode:
Follow us on:
Instagram: http://bit.ly/2Wba8v7
Twitter: http://bit.ly/2WeulzX
Linkedin: http://bit.ly/2w9YSQX
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2HtryLd
Radu Palamariu : 0:00
Hello and welcome to the leaders and supply chain focused I am your host. Brought upon, um, are you managing director of Elkin Global? Our mission is to connect the supply chain ecosystem by bringing forward the most interesting leaders in the industry. And it's my pleasure to have with us today. David Collins is the CEO of China Manufacturing Consultants. David brings 35 years of manufacturing experience across computer, automotive, aerospace, furniture and chemical industries. He has worked for General Motors and Chrysler as well as folks Gone and Jabil. He built and managed several automotive plants in North America successfully turned around a Foxconn, Mexico plant in the middle of the swine flu crisis in 11,010 as well as for the last 10 years has been living and working in China. This company, the China Manufacturing Consultants, is ah, manufacturing consulting firm that advises and executes on manufacturing initiatives from the board room all the way to the shop floor and works extensively with clients across industries including Shell, Kia Group or David. Thanks a lot for making the time and joining us today. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here and wanted to kind of frame the conversation. In the perspective of this Corona virus crisis, that pretty much is not to be ignored by anybody because it's affecting all the planet at the moment. And I wanted to get your perspective specifically from a manufacturing sign because in the last couple of months we have seen first the supply chain crisis supplying crisis in China because there was a lot down after the Chinese New Year for 3 to 6 weeks. Now there is a demand crisis also in China, because the virus situation has been put under control. But at the same time, it's not under control in the in the markets of demand, like Europe or us or Canada. Um, so basically, there's bean to there's been two situations, one not supply than demand crisis. Uh, what are you seeing from a manufacturing perspective, What has happened from your clients and what have you seen happening across this last couple of months? Well, in
David Collins: 2:15
China, China, I see three different things happening. I mean, if you're in the medical fields, you're going like crazy, um, to the point where people who aren't even in the medical field are popping up, um, and trying to build medical products that you know, they don't They don't even know really how to build. I'm sure you've seen some of the problems. Was some of that on the Chinese government's now trying to control that so that, you know, they're only really good products are getting made. So the people I know that are in the in the medical field. In fact, that was on one of the owners of a company's with From yesterday. Yesterday night his business is going going like crazy. They're selling, um, there even asking to see if they can find more suppliers. And they're looking in other parts of the world. Um, for suppliers. Also, you have the second group of people who started up, did sort of fulfilled orders, but now are starting to have some issues. Um, with demand and and those people, I would say, would be more than the consumer industries. You don't, because a lot of consumer goods stores are closed clothing stores, shoe stores in many countries that considered non essentials. So they they closed all stores and in the demand is down and and also we have some clients in in the the sport sporting goods space that really have a lot of problems because, you know, almost all sports have been ceased. And so, you know, the sales of hockey sticks of baseball bats of, you know, gloves and things like that, Anything. Anything going with that that have gone down And then And so you see those kinds of companies starting to shut down and those kind of companies, I think some of them are going to go bankrupt. In fact, there was one estimate from 11 person in China saying that that they estimate maybe 20% of those companies are going to go bankrupt. Um, leaving just maybe some of the bigger, stronger companies left that continue to continue going. Then you see, the third group in the third group is sort of like in the automotive aerospace space, uh, basic chemicals, things like that that are starting to come back up as the automotive industry will start to start building cars again. Um, of course, in the automobile industry supply chain is so important because they used mostly just in time. So the questions will be, you know, have the Chinese suppliers that air there or any suppliers from around the world been affected because the problem with automobiles, if sometimes if you have just one supplier that isn't isn't up. There's not a second supplier for they. They partner with the suppliers very, very closely to save costs. And so you'll see some issues in the automobile industry and the aerospace industry, because again you have a very, very unique set of suppliers and are very specifically set for for those kinds of products. So and they're starting to start up again. Wuhan was a big area for those kinds of people who have just started opening up 100% last week. Um, gradually. So I think you'll start to see those kind of products start to get back onto the market, and hopefully you'll see the automotive, aerospace and some of the other big ticket items start start producing again in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Um, in the United States, it looks like General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are already talking about starting up. Uh, the German automaker's in Germany will probably start up in the next week or two. Is Germany starting to open its economy so those is pretty much the three types of of things were seen. Um, we also see a problem with clients who need help. Ah, a lot of people would have sent people to China to go help start up after Chinese New Year, and now that would those a couple of months ago. But they can't. So people from clients in in the West or in Australia, Japan or whatever would normally would have sent people to China to start up. They can't get their people there, so this is causing some quality issues. Um, people are are not there for maybe some new production, that the new product introduction parts aren't going as well as they should. We're seeing so actually, for us, we're getting a little bit of business. People are calling us and asking us to go in and help them with their MP I and work like that, which is which is good for my company. But but it's not necessarily good for the manufactures themselves because, you know, sometimes you need your own engineers there to make sure that what you engineered is good. So there's some problems with that. Now that China's shut down. I
Radu Palamariu : 7:14
wanted to really little bit deeper from from the third big bucket that you mentioned the automotive. You have aerospace industrial equipment, I guess would fall under. That is, um I guess on the one side, production is resuming on the other side. Just that just as we've seen with demand in the consumer goods is just basically is not there. I mean, I I on a personal note, I don't necessarily see somebody buying a car. Let's take it as an example in the next 6 to 12 I'm a I don't know. Maybe I'm a little bit pessimistic, but I don't see a lot of people going to the auto shop to buy a car in the next 6 to 12 months because I think we are yet to have seen the full extent of this crisis, right? And obviously economically, it has heard a lot of people in hopefully will stop soon. But I see an issue on the demand side. Still for this for this industries that are producing pretty expensive items, right? Do you see this demand hitting, hitting them as well? Or or how do you see from this perspective that I
David Collins: 8:15
think you're totally correct. The Animal Cup automobile companies have been down now a couple months. That's an awful long time for for auto factories that to make that payment products so the real question is, is what they have on their lots. Um, it's sufficient for how long and then new model introductions will start in in This is April. So May June. And then all of a sudden was hitting into the shutdowns to retool for new new automotive production to the new model years that happen in unusually July in early August. And then they start produced in cars, you know, for the next model year. So that will be a big question. Will people start retooling? Um, well, they just shut down because there's no demand and then retool and keep keep it down for another few months. Or will they try to build up some stock of the 2020 models before they before they start going into the 2021 bottles and cars? Um, equipment, heavy equipment, I think, might keep going, because everywhere I go, I still keep see construction still going on. It looks like construction hasn't really slowed down right now. I'm in the in Dubai, and even though we're in total lock down and Dubai right now, the construction of buildings continues to go on. Um, we're doing some factory construction in other parts of Middle East and even China, and most of the people are want to do that. So hopefully the heavy equipment industry will help keep keep that going. And the demand for airlines has to be hurt because the airline industry is is getting crushed. Um, I saw map. You know, there's that map that shows all the planes that are flying at any given time, and they showed before the virus and after the virus and the sky was full of planes. And now this guy is almost empty. A plane. So, um, will people start going after with very little cash? Start going after new planes. I doubt it. I think some of those orders will get hurt so the auto industry obviously will be affected. I agree with you. If you're worried about making your mortgage payment or buying a new car, you're gonna make your mortgage payment first. And so that that is something that could hit. And once these factories start up, Will they all of a sudden then shut down again? They might maybe run two or three weeks and then shut down because there's too many powers on the dealer life and that's a strong possibility.
Radu Palamariu : 10:55
And I think we've seen already. I mean, in the US specifically, I was reading some some studies that they're running out of parking lots because you know, there's there's so much finished goods, finished cars and then they they have nothing to do with it. And nobody's buying, obviously, so that this emissions around their, um, kind of going the slightly to them. I've got in some questions. I got in a lot of questions coming from our audience in Europe, in US, Canada, in Australia that are now slowly coming, you know, are planning to come back to certain activity level to ease the logjam, to go back to more. You know, two more manufacturing more activities in the manufacturing across industries space, and I wanted to ask you, from what you have observed that happened in China, that I have already done that for the last 4 to 8 weeks, that they've come back to some level of normality. Actually, they've done it quite well. What are some positive or good case studies of how to do that properly? How to do that? Well, um, that you could share that maybe might benefit people that are listening to this
David Collins: 11:59
I n the good and the bad. Um, so I sort of put him together, sort of the dues in the don't. The people that came up well were people that had a plant, people who didn't have much machinery in China. And as one of the advantages of China, there's not a lot of machinery, so to speak is an awful lot of still manual labor. People were able to come up faster with the manual labor as long as labour was able to be there for a while. In China, If you came from a different province, you had to do 14 days a lock down, um, quarantine and things like that. So, you know, maybe you had 30 30 to 40% from your local province, and then people from another province came in and they had to wait. Um, and that's still happening in different parts of the world. We have clients, clients here. Um in the Middle East as well as in China that are looking for labor. But they have some labor is coming back slowly, you know, because, for example, a lot of labour was in Hebei Province and they had to get back. So you have to plan that, see what's gonna happen. The people who had more local labor started up quickly. That was very good people who so So if you were more in the center of the country of China, you started off well. But if you're in a place like Shenzhen, um, which almost all its labor is from outside, you know Shenzhen it is. There's no real Shenzen residences. They say Christians and was the town of maybe 60,000 people just in the 19 eighties. Now it's a town of 11 million, so everybody's on the outside engines, and it took a little longer just because they had to wait for the people to come. If you have a lot of equipment, machinery coming back might not be easy, because your machinery hasn't been cycle in a long time. So you know companies that are successful when coming back with a lot of machinery or ones who get the maintenance people in. They do the lubrication. They do some of the preventative maintenance. They check things out. They make sure everything set up properly so that it it works like it's supposed to. The cycle, the equipment that make sure the equipment meets the statistical process, control goals and and conduce do what it's gonna do. I mean, that's one of the big parts of the auto industry when they go down, retool and then bring things up something I was used to, you know, just always getting your machinery ready. Your maintenance guys were extremely important during that time. One of the issues in China's. There's not a really good maintenance culture there, so if you have a lot of equipment, usually your equipment is maintained by the supplier of the equipment. There. People come and they only have a certain amount of people. So you know you have to plan in advance. T get those people in there, too. Cycle your equipment, make sure everything's right. Make sure everything is going properly, so that would be one of the biggest. Thing is is maintenance and maintenance of the equipment it, especially if you're in a heavily automated or, you know you need riel specific things. And
Radu Palamariu : 15:06
the other thing is, this is what we've talked about already. Is your
David Collins: 15:11
supply chain ready? It's one thing for you to start up, and maybe your management has done the greatest job in the world of starting up. But one of the parts doesn't come and you can't feel, um um, so people, people who are smart, in my opinion, not only work on their own factory, but take some of their supplier quality people and and send them or purchasing people ever and send them to the fact that their supplier factories go and see if the supplier factories ready. Help them. A lot of times, the end user factory is the richer factory, and they have some extra engineers and things like that, and they consent. One of the company's that's great at that is Toyota. Put a consul, people you know to help help the suppliers and and the rest of the automotive industry has started to do that. Also, um, because again, if you can't get your seats from your supplier, your car, you're not making cars. You can't get the left front tire, you're not going to make a car. And so and that's the same with other industries. That's what in consumer goods and anything, you know, we're very integrated world right now. Very few people are vertically integrated. Most people are horizontally integrated. In other words, they have a lot of suppliers instead of making everything like by themselves. And so that factory that supplies you important parts is Justus. Important is your own factory. I don't think a lot of people consider that.
Radu Palamariu : 16:47
And I wanted to bring in the element off the fine the financial element as well, because on the one side, you're absolutely right on the engineering side and on the manufacturing side. And on the other side, where personally and I've had a couple of conversation recent recently, I see a potential issue, and big companies that I've spoken to have actually started to mitigate this by giving credit lines to their uh, providers and vendors. And in tier one tier two on and so on is on the financing side because some of this company's depending on the size when you shut down for 1 to 3 months, or whatever it may be you end up in a pretty serious cash flow problem, Um, and and that can lead to some, um, some serious consequences as well. Um, so I think that financial element can play a very important part. Also, in the whole scheme of things, I don't know how you view this. This this Well, that's a fact. Um, and he saw
David Collins: 17:45
that you saw that in a couple different times in the 2000 and eight financial crisis. You saw large, even large and small. For example, automotive suppliers going bankrupt. And Mercedes, General Motors, Toyota didn't matter. Whoever you know really had to go in and rescue these people. Um, sometimes they took over the factory themselves and and paid the paid the employees. Teoh, keep the factory running while, well, the company reorganized. Um,
Radu Palamariu : 18:21
this is this is
David Collins: 18:22
something that that that constantly happens. And, um, you know, big companies have a tendency toe, have financial people go in and make sure the books and things like that of their suppliers are good. This is a big disaster, like like what happened in the late two thousands. But if you're a medium size factory, let's say you're doing it somewhere between, you know, 80 to $400 million U S. Dollars worth of worth of work. You know, you do have some smaller suppliers, and the smaller suppliers could just disappear. And what happens if they disappear? Sometimes they disappear with your tool. You know, your your your punches, your your molds and things like that. So, again, this is part of Ah, a long term, Um, I guess. What? It's CMC. We call it the Extent extended supply chain. And I've done some talks on that in China because a lot of people don't think about their extended supply chain. They just think about the fact that we have a supply chain and, uh, that's that suppliers job. No, it's not that suppliers goes down financial, Any goes bankrupt, you you can't get apart, and maybe you have to spend another whole bunch of money on tooling and everything else there's the bank owns you doing now, uh, the financial aspect of this is critical, and it's something that people constantly should be able to to go. People need to understand that the supply chain, and especially the extended supply chain, is you. They're parts of your parts. Their parts go into your product, their finances of your finances. You know, you see bad companies constantly trying to cut the price of their supplier without helping them learn how to save money. And they bankrupt their own suppliers. Sometimes, you know, looking at the financial thing, I need a 5% reduction, but they don't help them with maybe better engineering or better ways to manufacture. Um, there's a lot of these small people don't have the capabilities to learn how to manufacture better or engineer better. So, you know, this is this is this is this partnership that's really critical in long term, excellent manufacturing. It includes finance, quality costs, the delivery, the entire situation coming together. Um, back in the day, Chrysler did a really good process called score. So the score thing worked very well. And and a long time ago, the Dodge Durango factory, which was one of the first factories to you, score in Christ. So there was a factory before us that did it, too. But because we involve the supplier so closely together, the suppliers help this safe like more than 1/2 a $1,000,000,000 in costs. Just by their ideas and our ideas and working together because the suppliers had engineers, we had engineers and we work together as a team. And it was amazing. The amount of money, the amount of waste and reduction and benefit that working together as a team. And, you know, we helped the suppliers. Just having the cheapest cost wasn't the cheapest price. Wasn't the wasn't what we were looking for. So, on the financial size, I would suggest that people that in China people have a problem of only thinking about price instead of cost. The total cost is different than the price you can buy a widget for. Maybe you know, 10 R and B, but the costs might cost you 15 because you have quality issues and everything else. But maybe you buy a widget for 12 R and B, but the overall cost is less because you have no quality product problems. You don't have to rework it and things, so the price doesn't always equal the cost, and a lot of people don't pay attention. That's one of the things that bankrupt companies and hurt him in financial situations like this. So yeah, the finance part is extremely important in companies need to go back and seed. It does. My supplier had the financial fortitude to go through this, and maybe your accounting company or finance group have to go over there and check do to make sure they can start up. They might not be able to start up financially as well as manufacturing wise. You're right about that. That's a good point
Radu Palamariu : 22:47
on the specific ah, the specific news that have been popping up very specifically. Actually. Japan, for example, a located $2 billion for companies to relocate out of China to relocate the manufacturing over the China back into Japan, would they have seen more and more articles being written? And I read something on Forbes throughout the day on the U. S. Companies leaving China or accelerating the departure of their manufacturing from China. How do you see this? How do you see this angle? Because obviously we've also had before this crisis we had the trade war right, which was pretty, pretty intense. It's still not clear how that will go after the crisis passes, but do you see this accelerating the ships of manufacturing out of China are what's What's your take on it? So there's two things
David Collins: 23:36
about China. There are some people who are just constantly chasing cheap labor with shoe industries like that. You know, they went to China. They first went Taiwan or in Mexico. Then they went to Taiwan and they would China. Now they want to go to Africa and body or something just to find cheap labor. Because a lot of these people don't want to change how they do business. Um, And for me, this makes no sense just to pick up a whole factory and move it somewhere else to your labor's cheaper because you don't wanna You don't want to do the hard work of, um, engineering, better manufacturing processes and things like that Make no sense to me, China is a gigantic country. I mean, probably somebody estimates well, Standard Chartered Bank estimated that this
Radu Palamariu : 24:26
was a few years ago,
David Collins: 24:27
but they said in the next 15 years, 360,000,400 million people are going to join the middle class. Well, that's the size of the European Union or the United States. That's a lot of people to do work with. So if you're leaving China because you're only an export Onley group. And that's all you're thinking about. You're not thinking about potentially selling to the Chinese internal market. Yeah, I guess it's OK to leave, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me just to leave a market that could grow by 360 million people in the next 10 years than 12 years. Um, and a lot of people are finding out as they leave China. China has a pretty darn good infrastructure, you know, they have good ports, they have good roads, electrical grid works. And people are going to some of these other countries where they don't have good ports. Good grids. And if you're an electron ICS industry, there's nobody like China for the Elektronik side, some supply chain. So, you know, if you want to leave China, do it for the right business reasons. Um, you know, I have a growth potential in Vietnam and Aiken supply to Southeast Asia from Vietnam. Better nights and supplies from China. Okay, this makes a lot of sense to me. Um, if I want to go toe, I want to go to the Middle East because I can supply to Africa in Europe and laborer and energies inexpensive in the Middle East. Let's go there. That makes sense to me. But just to leave to leave, Does it make sense now, the Chinese government, you know, can do things like the U. S government did for a while, with too many regulations into higher taxes. Um, that, you know, was really the biggest reason people left the U. S. Now the taxes are getting lower and regulations are getting more intelligent. People are starting to go back to the U. S. Um, Europe will probably be the same people going to Eastern Europe, though, because the low low prices And, you know, a lot of a lot of companies are like lemmings. They here something Oh, let's go to Vietnam. Everybody goes to Vietnam. They don't really pay attention. They just think the board of directors wants him to do that. That's a little sad to me, too, but I still think China is going to be a strong, viable country. Um, the people there are hard workers. They're not stupid. Um, the question will be I p protection. The Chinese have to start doing. I p protection. They don't do it very well. That was Trump's biggest thing in the train ward was I P protection because if you remember, since you're being offered a lot of money, the EU has to say, OK, we'll help you set up the, you know, fix up the trade deficit. But the trade benefits that wasn't the issue is I beat protection and the Europeans were involved in that, too. If China can get involved, the good I p protection so that that people don't lose their I p. You know, then I think I think China is going to continue to grow and my company is betting on it. We are biggest piece of our operations air there, although we're in North America, Southeast Asian in the Middle East now. But but nonetheless, you know, we still think China's China's going to be important to us. And so we're staying there for that reason and especially manufacturing manufacturer will continue to be big. Um, so yeah, I see people leaving. Um, some people leave again. Like I say because of the they don't wanna They don't want to work hard. It's easy. Just, you know, some of them just have really simple processes, and it's cheaper just to go to Vietnam and do it or goto Cambodia to do it. But, you know, if you're really going to get into real life manufacturing, you know, and as people go to industry 4.0, and other things like that, you're gonna have to have strong infrastructure, good people who know what they're doing. I would say China's biggest weakness on getting the manufacturing going better. It is this lack of maintenance, lack of technicians and things like that know how to run robots. It's easy to put in robots, but it's not easy to keep them going. It's like a jet airplane. If you didn't fix the jet airplane, it would crash, you know? So, um, you have to have preventive predictive and very strong making systems, and I see that is the weakest piece of China's, so that's gotta fix. But I think China is going to stay. I think China is going to be around for a while. I don't see it growing in India is going to do the same thing. They're growing now.
Radu Palamariu : 29:01
No, I think this will be good for for sure I mean, ultimately, their internal market this huge, uh, you know, 1.34 billion people. I guess we're where the discussion and there's been quite a few, I guess there's been quite a few pointers in terms of the crisis making supply chains reevaluate the globalization aspect of it and the term global right, where there's a lot of talk about moving the supply chain in the manufacturing closer to the market. So exactly what you mentioned about, you know, maybe China or Vietnam or whatever for Southeast Asia, maybe Mexico for us, Canada, maybe, you know, Middle East for Africa. That could potentially happen in terms of parts of the manufacturing, but for sure, manufacturing for China, I I also personally dealt that that will happen somewhere for sure you will happen in China. It's up now. I wanted to ask you specifically that you've been part of Ah, you've managed a plant. Basically, when the swine flu hit Mexico 10 years ago, 11 years ago, it was a big thing back then, um, and you had to keep it running, and that's exactly the situation that the little people will be in in the next couple of weeks in, you know, in the Western world and all over the world. Maybe. Can you share some tips and tricks of what to do? What not to do to keep it running? Of course, you don't want people getting infected you don't want, You know there's a lot of crisis management and and safety and and all of that that you need to look after in terms of maybe give us your top 34 tips and tricks.
David Collins: 30:28
Let me give you a couple examples, and one of my best customers in in in the World is the company called Early Key. There they're out of France and they have, ah, big factory in China and a big factory here in in the Middle East. And it's the reason I started coming to Middle East. We've been working with him since 2014. Start talking about what they're doing currently, which is really quite interesting. Um, and then I'll talk about what we did in Mexico. We we were we were a 3.5 $1,000,000,000 P nl, um, factory for Foxconn in Mexico. We were the largest in in the, uh in the Western Hemisphere. What are the kids done? Which is quite interesting, is is they divided up? Holiday do lunch is divided up. How they do shifts a little bit differently. They cut the ships down the 6.5 hours so that they have more distance between the shifts so people don't get sick. They're constantly checking there, making sure everybody's healthy. Everybody wears mask everywhere, gloves. They've staggered lunches. So people are all bunched together at lunch is people are sitting one person per table and things like that, so that so that people are distanced from themselves. And they did a fantastic job in my opinion. And I was really, really quite proud to see see how they did the work, um, to make things go. It was it was a global effort from their whole team, and I have to say they did a nice job, and we did a similar job in 2009 and 10 when the swine flu hit, which was actually more infectious. That didn't go worldwide. It was just mainly in Mexico, the United States a little bit in Canada, um, and then actually had killed many more people than it's been killed right now by Cove in 19. But we We had people coming in with masks, way supplied mass. We supplied gloves. We checked temperatures of all our employees and post two dozen employees. So So we had Teoh. You know, we had a lot of people coming in. We had two shifts. We made sure each shift was set up the same way. Um, we we spaced out the lines a little bit better. We could do that because we had a little bit of we had a tad bit of overcapacity. Not a lot, but we were able to keep the people from interacting with each other closely. The other thing, we did a good job, and I get Fox done a lot of credit for this week. They were quite up about it. They they actually made us record. Any anybody who got sick, anything that was going on, how we're handling it. We had to send that to the office, um, in Taiwan on a daily basis. And they helped us if there was an issue. Um, we fortunately didn't have anybody gets sick with the disease that we knew off. Um, and we also sent home instructions to families. We way help the families. That was the other thing. That was kind of nice because, you know, there's this extended families and people have quite close together in Mexico, just like they do in China. And, you know, giving information of families and how toe how to treat it. And how did. Because your employee is part of part of a family that lives back back home when they go home, and if they get sick, everybody gets sick. So we did an awful lot of work with making sure that the families were were, were healthy, teaching them what to do, making sure that they got medical checks and then, um, making sure that inside we disinfected doors, we disinfected tooling on a regular basis. We had people walking around doing that. We we also again the whole mask and gloves thing was, was big. We put people at home who didn't have to be there, which a lot of people are doing in China and the rest of the world. And I'll tell you something anecdotal that happened out of that, um, an awful lot of the people that we kept them at home. After a while, we found out that we were getting higher productivity in some functions from people at home. Like we had a lot of people in purchasing because we had quite an extended supply chain and the the people who were staying at home, they would work during the day a little bit. And then, you know, they would eat. They would take care of their kids and then at night, because Taiwan was on, they would get on the they would get on the ah, it would get on the phone with Taiwan and the computer with Taiwan in real time, instead of, you know, not doing it in real time. And so we actually got Ah, we actually got some quite a bit more work out of the people, and they seem to enjoy it. So we let him stay home, and then we would have every two weeks we would have a meeting of our purchasing or finance people that would come into the office or we'd rent a hotel, um, place and have donuts and coffee and things like that. So that was something incidental that we learned from that that actually helped us B'more more productive. And I've used that in the I've used that since then with different with different places, especially since we have Ah, the worldwide, uh, supply chain. Now, you know, you give the people the opportunity, given the goals and objectives will do the work. So that's that's basically what we did. I mean, we just really tried to take care of the people. Um, people were feeling ill. Way brought a doctor on site on a regular basis to take a look at the people and things like that. So the doctor would come and check. So we got through it and and really didn't have any any problems. And it worked out for us pretty well. We didn't We didn't shut down for anything.
Radu Palamariu : 36:31
No. Useful to know. I mean, I wasn't I wasn't as deeply involved in supply chain at that point, but I do. I do remember that that was a very significant crisis for the Northern North America. So, um, quite a lot of lessons that can be very well applied for what we're experiencing today. And, um, yeah. Still applicable to this day? Sure. Um, David, thank you very much for all the share Great case studies and very practical on, I think. And I hope that the audience will will take away quite a few things that they can do a look at from a manufacturing and very pragmatic standpoint. And thanks for for joining us today. And hopefully you know, this crisis goes away sooner rather than later, and we can go back to some level of normality and you can also leave to buy and go back toe, Thank you very much. And I really appreciate your time, and I enjoyed myself super. Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, we should to go to www dot l called global dot com and treat the podcast button for all the show Notes of the interview Also subscribe to our mailing list to get our latest updates First, if you're listening through streaming platforms like iTunes, Spotify else teacher, we would appreciate a kind of you five star works best to keep us going and our production team happy and, of course, share it with your friends. I most active on Lincoln's so do feel free to follow me. And if you have any suggestions on what what to do and hooting by next. Don't hesitate to drop me a note. And if you're looking to hire top executives and supply chain or transform your business, of course, contact us as well to find out how we can help.