Transcript

Welcome to BLaST the Airwaves with BLaST Intermediate Unit 17. Here at BLaST Intermediate Unit 17, we strive to transform lives and communities through educational services. For this season, we have a special guest co-host who is working to create and sustain pathways to employment in our region by uniting her community around common goals in STEM learning. This season’s guests come from 9 counties total, representing different local industries all across Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania. I’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Konsur-Grushinski, STEM Services Coordinator for NEIU 19 and current lead of NEPA STEM Ecosystem. Alexandra, welcome! Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be able to work with you for our Celebration of STEM in Industry this year. Our STEM Ecosystem is holding a weeklong series of free events and opportunities highlighting industry partners and the benefits they have in our 5 county region. Our hope is that by listening to the wide variety of employment opportunities available in our region from folks in our community who live it every day, we can shed a light on what’s possible for our young people. On this podcast, we will provide you with educational solutions and resources for all, no matter the learning environment. So teachers, administrators, students, caregivers, industry partners, what are you waiting for? What would happen if we started questioning? What if our students and educators got the opportunities to sit down with members of the community? What if we bridged that gap? What connections would we discover? It’s time to blast the airwaves.

Rebecca: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Glenn Poirier. Did I say it right Glenn?

Glenn: Yes.

Rebecca: Awesome! Owner of Metalkraft Industries in Wellsboro Pennsylvania in Tioga County and Alexandra Konsur-Grushinski Stem Services Coordinator at NEIU 19 and current lead of NEPA STEM Ecosystem. Glen, Alexandra thanks so much for joining us today to discuss STEM skills used in your industry. Specifically, we will be discussing how knowledge and different STEM skills are important in your current job position. So are you guys ready to blast the airwaves?

Glenn: We’re ready.

Alexandra: I’m ready.

Rebecca: Alright. So Glenn, why don’t we start if you could share and tell us a little bit more about your role in industry. What is your primary role?

Glenn: Sure, so I’m the Chief Operating Officer of Metalkraft Industries and in that role I pretty much oversee the entire operations, basically soup to nuts operation of the processing of our parts. So we here at Metalcraft are primarily a powdered metal factory, so what we do is we take powdered metal and in powdered form and you know it’s the consistency of talc powder or powder you put on your body it’s kind of that consistency and we press it into shapes using presses that have and our presses go from two tons to five hundred tons. So that process is pretty pretty easy. We then take the parts after they’re pressed and if you look at the parts they look like the shapes but it’s just nothing the the mechanical compact where we’re just pressing that part into a shape or configuration and then we take that part and we put them on what we call centering ovens and that process over a two to three hour period depending on the size of the part, that part will down a conveyer belt through an oven at about 2050 degree and again that will last for about 2 to 3 hours and that part of the processing will at the microscopic level actually get some fusing of the part together they’ll actually begin to fuse together. And during that process we go in through what is called a cooling zone in the centering oven and that’s actually where the magic of our processing occurs. It’s not in the heating it’s more in the cooling where the part while it’s cooled we get a lot of crystallization inside the part. The crystals that we primarily center ourselves around is austenitic crystals so when you hear a lot of times you’ll hear the term austenitic steel. What that means is that is the crystallization that forms inside the part while it’s being cooled. We want that part rich in those crystals because that crystal bonding is the part of the process that gives it all the strength. So when it comes off the oven they drop into containers and that’s pretty much our process that’s done. I mean, but then we can we can then one of two things, they can ship to our customer as they are or we can send them out for further processing, which could involve heat treating, plating, further machining. And then they would be ready to go to the customer. Our primary industry is automotive we’re heavy heavy automotive, about 60% of our product is shipped to the automotive industry. We’ve pretty much have gone the route of going into the structural components inside a vehicle not so much the engine but more so the structural parts that go more on the outside like lift gates for tailgates we make a lot of parts for spare tire carriers that go underneath on trucks you know most trucks have their spare tire underneath that’s a conveyor system that you use a device to lower or raise the spare tire. So that’s primarily what we do here and what my role is. So I basically oversee all that.

Rebecca: That’s fascinating. I would never have known that whole process right there and you just explained it in like two minutes. It’s like so fascinating. Powder, I didn’t even know it comes from powder, that’s so cool.

Glenn: Yep, yep. There’s lots of things people don’t realize come from powdered metal. We can do so much. The beauty of powdered metal is the speed at which we can make parts so if you look a lot of our parts the actual industry has only been around for maybe 100 years, but prior to that everything that we made had to be done by hand you know you did it on a lathe or you know you would and it was very time consuming and hard I mean you know we have parts that run in presses at like 3000 parts per minute and then we have other parts that run you know say in our bigger 500 ton presses at like 500 parts per hour so you know we can really pound out a lot of parts very very quickly.

Rebecca: Well that leads us into our next question Lexie if you wanna.

Alexandra: Yes Glenn let me just say I’m fascinated by what it is that you and your company does and also I’ve never heard the name of that crystal before today so I’m learning things as I go. Austenitic? Austenitic?

Glenn: So people that work with metal when you say oh it’s austenitic steel but I think for the most part people don’t know what austenitic means and what austenitic means is it’s the crystallization that forms inside. So you get that even with molten steel so Ward over in Bloss in Tioga, they melt their steel down and they pour it into molds and while its cooled its the same thing you’re getting that cooling depending on the rate at which you cool it you get this crystallization formed in parts which gives us all the bonds and the strength that goes into metal. So we’re kinda doing it the same way as somebody who is pouring metal versus we’re pressing it and then heating it up so it’s kind of we’re doing that same thing it’s just a different way to get to the end. That’s all.

Alexandra: Utterly fascinating. My question for you is can you describe for us what a typical day at work for you Glen is like. Joining us for a podcast interview probably isn’t part of your typical day right? So what would be the typical for Glen any day of the week? What does that look like?

Glenn: So, so all organizations try to put in processes you know we are a we are a company that the prides itself on putting ourselves putting processes in place that every employee can follow I mean that that’s the goal of every company to move them forward as we have a process we do with the same every single day you know we don’t we don’t try to deviate from that so you know when I walk in the door my first order of business, we’re a 24/5 company we work around the clock, so my first order of business is to go out onto the floor to find out what our problem areas where we having some challenges in our processes that aren’t getting parts to the back of the oven and we have those every day so we might have machine problems on presses we might have an oven problem we might have we might now have parts that didn’t meet spec meaning we didn’t mold them correctly or center them correctly so I have to gather all that information for the day. Some days I come in and we absolutely have no problems so that’s that’s a perfect day and for the most part that is kind of how it is it’s you know we’ll have like little fires we don’t come in and you know everything is shut down and we we’re in a real quagmire so we have to so we take that that information from our walk-arounds I’ll also meet with our supervisors you know we have lead supervisors and I will kind of talk to them about what problems they had over the course of the night some of their challenges and then from that is we have a morning huddle every morning and the morning huddle is all the the folks in our organization that kind of make this engine flow we’ll have somebody from engineering lab we’ll have somebody from production we’ll have somebody from sales we’ll have somebody from finance there so we we all come to that huddle and we come to that huddle with the idea of we’re going to share all this information and then from that from that morning huddle we will kind of describe our mit we call it our most important thing and that’s important thing for an organization is always understanding what is our most important thing that we need to be focused on right now because we might have a customer screaming or we’re holding up a process and something so we try to establish those 4 or 5 things everyday that we know we need to attack right away so then we’ll get we’ll get that ball rolling and then then we get to like busy work so everybody in our you know in management has their busy work they have to look at you know what what got produced the day before you know what can ship that day you know all these things that that keep the processing going and then you know I’m a part of being the COO is i’m also directly responsible for the profit-loss statement so you know I have to be very cognizant of what’s going on with the profit-loss on a daily basis because we do our sales by month so you know we want to I want to make sure that you know is revenue coming in, are our finances our expenses matching what we set out as a goal at the beginning of the month so every month we have a we’ll have like a template P&L that kind of describes what we’re going to do in that month so when we set that on the first of the month we’re constantly comparing ourselves to that P&L you know and and understanding you know what’s going on why why aren’t the revenues there? Did something happen that a customer pushed something out? You know why do we have a line item on an expense so high when we thought we were only going to spend this much? Because the bottom line of every business is at the end of the day, every business can say what they want, what they represent, what they do but at the end of the day they gotta make money and if they don’t make money they don’t exist. We’re not a non-profit, we are a profit organization that has to make money because our excess money is then used for upgrades in the company. You know we we spend it on other equipment or training or or things that are going to make us much more beneficial to make sure that process is getting done every week. So that’s pretty much what my day is. And then you know I’ll start to look to the next day because sometimes you’ve got to get down to the you got to get in the weeds a little bit to say you know what what we like right now we have a real challenge with one of our ovens is shut down we have two main production ovens for the most part we’ve lost one right now because we got it down for some maintenance that’s going to take about a week. So in that we’ve got to almost center our parts in a 24-hour period. You got to say you know I just had a meeting with my centering lead that is in charge of the ovens and I said look these are the five parts in next twenty-four hours we have to center. We can’t put them off. We have to center them because of you know we either have customer issues, we’ve got to get them out to outside secondaries, we got to do all these things so my typical day is is you know to wrap this question up is all about understanding priorities. What are your biggest priorities? Companies that all they do is fight fires all day long, they are usually companies that struggle. We don’t fight fires all day long but we do understand every day what our challenges are and what we need to focus on.

Rebecca: I really like Glenn, your protocols and the huddle and then the MIT I’ve never heard of that, and the organization that Lexie and I work with you know we do talk about what are the most important things. I really like that concept but you mentioned about turning a profit for training and things like that, so can you explain a little bit you know whether it’s career paths or college path or training that students may need if I am a high school student and I’m looking to maybe work for you what are some qualifications, how do I line myself up for that?

Glenn: I love this question because I’ve answered this question a bazillion times to other High School folks that you know we do a lot of usually once a year we’ll have teachers in the workplace, I think the Blast unit is very involved in that. And we always enjoy that. I will sit down with a lot of the teachers and they’ll ask me the same question: “ What are the things that we should be doing with our kids.” And I said it’s really simple and it’s all about problem-solving that’s all it is it’s all about problem-solving. I tell kids all the time you know I’m an engineer by background I’ll have I’ll get a call from the high school Wellsboro here “hey there’s a kid that’s interested in engineering, would you come up and spend some time with them?” Absolutely. So I come up and the kid will start talking to me about it and I’ll say: “do you understand what an engineering degree is?” And they‘ll say I want to become an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer. I’ll say yeah but do you really understand what you are going to gain from becoming an engineer and a lot of times I don’t think they get the simplicity of what an engineer is all about. And I’ll always I’ll write on our we have a blackboard and I’ll write on a blackboard I just write” you’re a problem solver” that’s it, you’re a problem solver and engineering gives you those tools in a toolbox that allow you to dissect problems and come up with solutions. Kids that even kids that don’t want to be engineers but you know might want to go into you know some sort of tech program that very well could be a path in manufacturing but I mean you can go through a program where you become a CNC operator which you’ve got to go to school for that but the thing that I like about all those programs is the crux of it is you’re a problem solver so in school you know they always look at me funny I always have this discussion with my kids I have five kids and we and they would ask me you know I have three of them in college right now and they would ask me what should I do dad what should I do for a living? I’ll say I don’t care I really don’t but I’ll tell you this if you’re not a problem solver that’s not what the world needs, the world needs problem solvers whatever you do you have to understand you need to take courses that make you a problem solver so I think they get frustrated with me when we sit down and look at their curriculum for high school and I always tell them if there’s not a lot of math and there’s not a lot of science we’re going to have a discussion because there needs to be. I remember I had my daughter, she’s a nursing major right now but when she was a senior in high school it came to that question of physics, “should I take physics?” Absolutely because it’s a problem-solving course and I said you need to take it so even kids that are involved in tech courses in high school by definition by the Fall, they’re solving problems. I love what they’re doing here Wellsboro High School I mean they have that they have a house project here where they’re building a home I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about this project and what I like about the instructor is you know I’ve taken tours of that that building and you know they’ll do something and the next day he’ll throw a problem at them and say hey that that door we just put in a customer doesn’t like we got to take it out and we’ve got to come up with a solution on what what’s a better option and he just walks away and he lets them run it out and figure it out. I really think we always have to keep our curriculums in school really all about problem-solving, STEM does that STEM does that by default. Because if you’re taking science, technology, engineering mathematics it’s all about that.

Alexandra: So Glenn, clearly you’ve done a lot of ruminating about this topic right? So if you were to name some skills besides problem-solving we’ve already we’ve heard a lot about that already but besides problem-solving what other skills do you see in your position in your line of work that students learn in school so we’re trying to answer the perennial question of “when am I ever going to need this?” “When am I ever going to use this?” Can you make some connections for us between your industry and what you do every day and what the students learn in school?

Glenn: Well I mean you have to have a solid math background, our workers here have to have a solid background. I’m not saying you have to do differential equations or calculus, what I’m saying is you have to have a good breadth of knowledge of fractions, of decimals, of technical math, geometry, trigonometry. So regardless of what you’re taking in high school at a minimum, I think all kids are taking that I mean whether you’re in a technical curriculum or you’re in a college prep I know what even here Wellsboro they’re pretty strong in fractions decimals technical math, geometry, trig.

Alexandra: Okay so problem-solving, technical math anything else?

Glenn: Understanding financial statements is important. Not that we share a lot of our financial statements with our employees, but understanding revenues and expenses and how they feed into each other and how especially on the expense side if I’m wasting money or wasting how is that expense affecting the revenue side that’s now going to affect the bottom line? I’ve always felt that you have to have the ability to understand the money flow in a business. Money flow in a business is what it’s all about I mean you need to really understand how money flows through a business and how what you do affects the money flow. So we will try to really push that on our employees to understand that. Another one is working groups. You know I’m going to go back to when I was in high school and college, which was a very very long time ago, but what I can tell you is back then everything was individualized. It was very very individualized, it was all about you getting a good grade and you doing this work, and you doing that. Industry has completely changed. Everything today is about working in teams and that team concept is very very important to understand. We focus that on the floor with our business is that you have to be able to work as a team and you have to put personalities aside. I have a lot of personalities here I understand most of those personalities and I understand how to use those personalities but some folks when you’re working in a group don’t understand that and you can alienate yourself or others very quickly if you don’t have that. I can tell you that if you’re not a team player you may not be here very long either because you know it’s all about working together to a common goal to get things accomplished here. So it’s very very important

Rebecca: Glenn you bring up some good points and a lot of themes that we’ve been seeing throughout this whole season you know, problem-solving, teamwork a lot of Industry partners are saying that so you know great skills that you’re saying hey high schoolers, middle schoolers you think about these things as you’re coming through and I just feel like you’re a wealth of knowledge I could listen to your, everything that your group does every day.

Glenn: The other skill I want to throw out there too is just be willing and accepting of learning new things. A lot of times employees are not, you know people don’t like change so I have always believed that our best employees are ones that have a good breadth of knowledge of our entire process. You know when you’re just a centering operator and you’re just loading ovens, you’re not getting an appreciation of what is going on all around you. Our employees that have worked in all the departments, they’re the ones that they are essential to our organization and you make yourself essential to the organization when you’re like that when you have the ability to do multiple multiple activities within an organization I mean it’s very very important. So the ability to learn and accept new skills is also very important. You’re always going to have employees that do not want to do that, they are I mean, I have a centering operator that’s been in that position for over 30 years and that’s what he loves to do day in and day out you know he’s he’s one of those individuals that you know we rely on him extremely well in that position but if you ask him have you ever been interest in being a molding operator? No. You know that presses the parts. No, never. So it’s very very important that you’re willing to because the other thing it does is it makes you very very valuable to the organization. When you just have a finite skill set and things get bad at your organization those are the ones, we’re a non-union shop so you know when we have had layoffs which we have had you know we don’t have to use protocols when we lay off we can lay off anybody we want. So the ones unfortunately that get laid off a lot of times, unfortunately, are the ones that don’t have a lot of skill sets because I have other ones that can do that job. You know we may have to just move people around. But it just makes you valuable when you are willing to learn and develop additional skills that help the organization.

Rebecca: Thank you Glenn so much. I’m so glad we’ve made this connection. It has been a blast, no pun intended, hanging out with you on the podcast, and as well as with Alexandra. We celebrate you and what you do every day in STEM and thank you for your local contribution. Again, thank you also for taking some time today to connect with us and our listeners, it has been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I will definitely connect contact information or website in our footnotes, please take care and hopefully, we’ll get to see each other and talk soon.

Glenn: Ladies thank you for the time and it was great having this discussion.

Alexandra: Thanks Glenn.

We would like to thank you for blasting the airwaves with us today. If you like the show, please subscribe or leave a review. If you want to know more, check out www.iu17.org for further resources and show notes. If you’d like to learn more about NEPA STEM Ecosystem and the work we are doing in STEM and job pathways, please visit them at www.nepastem.org. As always, we want to thank you for what you do every single day. Remember, keep shining. We’ll be back next episode to provide you another educational solutions for all, as we continue to transform lives and communities through educational services.

Additional/Suggested resources mentioned in the episode:

Metalkraft Industries

BLaST Intermediate Unit 17 – www.iu17.org 

Professional Learning Opportunities at BLaST IU 17 – https://www.iu17.org/professional-learning/ 

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Music in this podcast provided by Scott Holmes Music on Tribe of Noise Pro. 

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