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Virtual Town Hall # 2 - Conducting Business in Uncertain Times

CPGs and OEMs offer pain points and solutions amid evolving conditions. Topics hazard pay and employee welfare, facility access during a pandemic, preparing for supply chain disruption, and much more.

Coronovirus Town Hall Series Social Image Final Copy

In PMMI’s second Virtual Town Hall a panel of consumer packaged goods (CPG) professionals from the OpX Leadership Network Executive Council convened with PMMI members to discuss questions regarding remote access, virtual FATs, beneficial sales approaches and CPG recommendations on assistance PMMI members can provide.

Moderator: Tom Egan, vice president, industry services, PMMI

Panelists:
Adam Pawlick, vice president, engineering, Blue Bunny Ice Cream
Greg Flickinger, senior vice president operations, GTI
Tom Ivy, president, F.R. Drake, CV-TEK and RapidPak
Ryan Edginton, president & CEO, All-Fill Inc.

Working From home or office?  Plus, sales and service access to production facilities.

Tom Egan: We see in recent surveys from both OEMs and CPGs that a majority of plants (63% of CPGs) are open, although many non-essential to the production floor are working from home. From a PMMI survey, 76% of the members responding say their plant and offices are both open.

Tom Ivy: We see as the restrictions are going out state-by-state and they're mandating shelter in place or noncritical industries or companies have to shut down, then I would fully expect that they don't have a mandate by the government to stay open, then they're probably shutting down.

Adam Pawlick:  I think similarly, our office closed at the end of March. It's closed to at least May 8th upon the governor of Iowa's recommendations and the president's recommendations. We continue to operate remotely. We are seeing more and more of our suppliers doing similar things where corporate offices are closing. The tech services and everybody is working remotely.

Greg Flickinger:  Yeah, so Tom, we're doing the same. Our office is open but no one is required to come in. We're set up to work remotely. Our sites, we're across a number of different states and depending on the state, there may be some different restrictions but we're primarily in medical markets and deemed essential, so all of our operations have taken allowed protocol to continue to keep the doors open, as many others are.

We're seeing some impacts as well from we work very closely with the state, so we're seeing the offices of the states, Department of Health and other areas closed and work remotely, which has caused some other elements of effort required to continue to keep the operation moving.

Tom Egan:  Greg, that's an interesting point that you bring up because we're concentrated here on the situation as it relates to our own plants and offices, meaning for the CPGs and PMMI members. You're having to deal with some state agencies that may also have offices that are impacted by this.

Greg Flickinger:  Exactly. Many of them are now that ... there was a day or two of darkness while they tried to get themselves set up at home because they weren't equipped for working remotely. Now one of the issues is when we send variances in or items that have to go to regulators, they go to the office address. If no one is at the office, then they don't receive the paperwork. As a result, that's created some additional effort to make sure those items are going through where they need to go through.

Tom Egan: Our PMMI member weekly pulse also reveals that some are being denied access to production facilities.

Ryan Edginton: Yeah. In regard to field service, so far everybody has allowed us to come in, being that it's most critical to get the field service. We're seeing the restrictions on sales for sure but field service, we haven't had anybody deny access yet.

Greg Flickinger:  That I would tell you twofold primarily on our side. We're progressing with an abundance of caution, so we're doing things such as many other companies you've seen. Taking temperatures of people coming in, asking questions about who they've been around. We have a number of construction projects that are going on as well and we're doing the same thing with our contractors. When it comes to service techs, we're going through the same protocol with anybody that does enter the site, so we are trying to limit that.

When we limit the service techs coming on site we've gone to more remote, whether it's Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, some kind of remote video conferencing, to try to do some of those service calls and service work where it's warranted. Obviously, if it's critical then we'll take the protocols and get a service tech in. I would tell you that some companies are also now coming to us with their concerns around having service techs travel. It's really a balance between us being careful and some of our service techs now also wanting to take caution as well.

Tom Ivy:  Most of our customers are in one or two areas. A, they're Ivy either running so hard and so fast that they haven't had a chance to take a break and call in for service, or B they've had an emergency and they've hit the request to us to send a service tech. We've eliminated service visits for say, warranties, installations where possible, and only are addressing the emergency calls at this time.

Adam Pawlick: Yeah. Very similarly to the other guys. All of our facilities are doing temperature checks for anybody that comes into the building. We've actually taken it a step further and it's based upon our employees' feedback in the plant, around what makes them feel safe coming into work. Also, a lot of our OEMs have pushed back and said that they are uncomfortable to travel. If you've been on a commercial airline in the 14 days prior coming to our plant, we're not allowing people in at that point. We're saying there's that 14-day quarantine after commercial air travel.

Sales Teams
When asked how PMMI members are positioning their sales teams during COVID-19,  Edginton said that they are seeing restrictions on sales visits, while Ivy said, “Our sales team is grounded. Everybody has to work from home.”

Implementing a procedure that was in place prior to COVID-19, Ivy said reps are addressing three to five projects or issues that will affect customers in a daily call. “What we're doing is starting our day out with a morning call with all the sales reps…We'll talk about any issues, how we're doing production, can we get things out on time, are all projects scheduled, are things good, or if there's issues you've got to be concerned with and you need to communicate back with your customers. We have that dialogue and we start off in the morning with that update, company-wide, with each company.” He continued, “They run a little bit longer now…There's a lot of follow up after that conference call, whereas we didn't have so much before.”

When asked how All-Fill is handling the sales approach, Edginton said, “We are being delicate with going out and pushing people for sales, but addressing their needs the best that we can…What we're trying to do right now is use our sales team, who has a very diverse skillset, in order to build stock machinery and try to offer people good deals, put deliveries on machines that they would normally buy in abundance from us.”

Supply chain issues are touching OEMs, too, as Edginton also said, “As a manufacturer of liquid fillers, we have seen a huge run on our liquid distant fillers for hand sanitizer recently. We're using it as an opportunity to have these machines primed and ready to go for people, because we are certainly having issues with supplying them (due to supply chain issues and hold backs on critical parts).”

New Orders
When asked if companies are issuing any new orders right now, Ivy said there are two areas of note. One is large food service businesses that are shifting to retail and are placing orders to retool the plants to be able to do so. As to the other area, Ivy said, “We also have a large international presence where we see a lot of currencies are being evaluated very quickly and customers are holding off on that. They told us, ‘We're going to hold off on the order while the US dollar is much stronger. Let everything calm down, let the dollar get closer to our currency before we place your order,’ so we’re getting good news from one side and bad news on the other side.”

Ivy said that they are working with customers when they know an order is coming, however. “We're working with our customers to say, ‘Okay, if you give us the commitment, the purchase order, less money down, and we'll spread out payments so that we can level load the shots for the large capital equipment.’ That is helping now. It's the same thing that you're seeing the car dealers do and what not, to spread out the payments or give you a grace period. Please continue to give us a commitment, the purchase order, the signed documentation that you're going to commit to move order. Then that allows us to level load and keep everything running fairly smoothly right now.”

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