Special Products & Mfg., Inc.

and make it work.” That advantage extends to customers and suppliers, as well. “We’re dealing with the Caterpillars and the GEs of the world,” Grand- Lienard notes. “They come in and look at this culture and go ‘This is like the culture we have,’ or ‘We would love to have this culture inside of our building.’ So, absolutely, it’s a differentiator. You still have to compete on price, delivery, and quality, but that change in culture calls forth what we call ‘discretionary effort.’ So, a team member can come in, every day, and choose to give that extra 10, 20, 30 percent. In building and defining a culture that engages employees like that, we’re after that discretionary effort. If you don’t have it, they clock in, they go to work at their work station, and they produce what they can for the day; that’s what we call the 100 percent. We’re after that extra 10, 20, or 30, whereby they’re getting more efficient, they know their ideas are being heard, so they’re more engaged. Bring your brain to work with you – don’t check it at the door!” Another big change that came about over the last decade is the creation of SPM University. “We started SPM University ten years ago,” Grand-Lienard recalls. “We have no industrial training programs within reach that we can send our people to. And there are no shop classes anymore in high school; there are no tech vocational schools around. So, we started this on our own. It was a blank piece of paper when we started it, and what we have done is build a grassroots training program for onboarding and internal training.” “What we try to do is give everybody in our organization three tools in the tool belt,” Grand- Lienard continues. “They have their main job, and then we cross-train them in at least two other skills. Whatever their skill level is, and whatever they’re doing, we can train them in two other skills that are equal, or just slightly less valuable, to our organization. That way, as a job shop, as a contract manufacturer, as the egg goes through the garden house, if you will - and the backlog could be in various different areas within our SPEC I AL PRODUCTS & MFG. , INC .