Manufacturing the Future: Innovation and Talent at VEGA

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Episode Transcript

[Music Intro]

Brian Trainer, Host: Welcome to Trends + Tensions in Architecture and Design, presented by BHDP, where we discuss Trends in Architectural and Interior design and the competing priorities or Tensions that arise from integrating new ideas into existing organizations, enterprises, and institutions. In this episode, “Manufacturing the Future: Innovation and Talent at VEGA,” we are joined by Scott Rollman, Vice President of Administration at VEGA Americas, Kristin Okhuysen, Manufacturing Consultant at Amplify Accelerate LLC, and Daniel Lessing, Industrial Client Leader at BHDP. I am your host, Brian Trainer, senior strategist for BHDP. Let’s get started.

On today's podcast, we have a couple of special guests. Kristin, I'd like to start with you. Can you tell us who you are and what do you do? 

Kristin Okhuysen: Thank you, Brian. I'm Kristin Okhuysen, a manufacturing consultant and the owner of Amplify Accelerate LLC. I help manufacturers find that extra gear to avoid the frustration, rework, and confusion that often comes from starting to create change in an organization or trying to accelerate change. I worked for 33 years with P&G, all in manufacturing. Now, I'm using that experience to consult other companies and help them accelerate their business. 

Brian: Great. Thank you, Kristin. Thanks for joining us. Scott, tell us who you are and what you do, please. 

Scott Rollman: Hello, Brian. My name is Scott Rollman. I work for a manufacturer named VEGA Americas located in Mason, Ohio. I've been with the company for a little over 17 years. My role at the organization is Vice President of Administration, so I oversee many of the operations-type departments for the company. Before that, I worked in the sales and customer development area of the business for about 15 years. I’ve been in the new role for two years. And at that same time, we built a brand-new factory and moved from Oakley to Mason. So, it's been a really fun ride the last couple of years. And BHDP has been a big part of that. And I'm excited to be here on the podcast. 

Brian: Thank you, Scott, for joining us today. And last but certainly not least, Daniel.

Daniel Lessing: Daniel Lessing. I'm a client leader in our industrial market, and I've been with the firm [BHDP] for five years now. My role is to help connect our clients with our design teams and devise solutions to create brilliant experiences for them and their team members. Prior to that, I worked at Toyota for nearly 17 years in their manufacturing group, doing construction projects for them. So, a lot of times when I'm talking, it's one part from our designer perspective, and it's one part from my background at Toyota. A lot of what we're seeing with a lot of our manufacturing clients is a real concern with attracting and retaining talent into their buildings, and we're really privileged to have VEGA Americas as one of our clients. We like to think that they drank the Kool-Aid, right? They had a lot of it on their own, but then when they partnered with us and really had a conversation about trying to be that employer of choice, that was really a giant concern. There are a lot of statistics out there that manufacturers are saying the number one thing they're worried about is labor. And when we look at Gen Z and now into Gen Alpha, they really don't have manufacturing on their radar as a potential opportunity for employment, right? And how do we as designers and how do manufacturers, how do companies really differentiate themselves in this kind of very diluted work pool and set themselves apart and say, hey, we're a place that you want to work. So, I think as we move from 2024 into 2025, we continue to have these same conversations with many clients about how to get people into the door.

Brian: Gotcha. So, this is the people side of manufacturing. So, how important is the attraction and retention of employees in manufacturing? What is it about it that makes it important? Why is that something that we're talking about today? 

Kristin: The National Association of Manufacturers has shared that for every 1.5 jobs in manufacturing, there's only one person to fill them. So, you're going to have a chronic backlog of gaps. Over the next decade, it'll be 2.5 million workers that we need that we don't have. That's what causes the concern if you look at it at a national level. 

Brian: So, Scott, how are you dealing with these issues, though, in VEGA in real-time? Like, how important is that to you? 

Scott: This is a challenge that a lot of manufacturers are facing. Quite honestly, though, it's not something that keeps me up at night. It's, I think, partly because of, not partly, mostly because of the things we've done with the campus, with the training facility that Kristin brought up, and with the things we do in the community. Some of the things are very little, but we are a very people-first organization, all the way up to our CEO in the Black Forest in Schilthach, Germany. Culture is hugely important to us, and we don't just talk about it. I think the thing that we do that's the most important for attracting talent and retaining talent in the world is we walk the walk after we talk. So, things like our home of values events, where we've sent all our employees to Germany to really get deeply entrenched in the culture of the organization. We encourage people who work here to talk to their friends about Vega. We've had many people come into the organization through personal contacts, so it's very common for there to already be a connection to the organization when we hire someone, and people tend to stay. 

Our retention rate is over 95%. I don't see that changing. In the facility that we built when we originally talked with BHDP, one of the things that really stuck with me from the document that was created, the vision document, was that we wanted to create a stay place. There are employees who will come here early in the morning, get their workout in, and then they'll have breakfast because we have a restaurant that cooks breakfast and lunch for employees who want to participate in that. And then they'll work, they'll have lunch here, they'll work their shift in the afternoon, and a lot of them will even stay after to be a part of one of our clubs. All those things melt together to create the right recipe for retention. It's not as simple as having a training facility or a cool-looking building. It's all the things that happen after that, I think. 

Kristin: The facility is impressive, and I've seen a lot of plants that have been refurbished. VEGA has really exceeded my expectations around just the total community, but what was as impressive was when you go in and how the ecosystem is working within the building, right? So, Scott said earlier, it's not just the building, right? It's like, how do you do both? How do you have a culture that wants you to stay and is inviting? Everything that Scott has said really comes together nicely, so of course, having a wonderful building is super important. You don't want a dirty, messy house. 

Brian: Yeah.

Kristin: But you could also treat employees poorly and have a great facility, right?

Brian: When we talk about, though, attracting the younger generations, one of the things I know from the workplace is, for a long time, the number one reason somebody would stay with a company was if they felt like they had a friend at work. And now I think that's evolved. Another one that comes to the top is whether or not they feel a sense of purpose where they work. Do you know, Scott or Kristin, with the next generation workforce, what it is that they're drawn to?

Scott: A lot of the people are the younger folks, especially those who are commenting on things that they think are attractive about VEGA and care about things like what we're doing in sustainability. And they sign up to participate in things like planting lots of trees. We do lots of other things, from recycling, from cleaning up a forest, from cleaning up beaches, all those kinds of things we do all over the country with our employees in different subsets. They really want to know what the company is doing that way. They want to know what we're doing to be sustainable 20 years from now. They want to know that we are taking care of not just the financial side of the company but also the people side. Work-family balance is very important. People want to have flexibility. So, we have flex hours here, where people can start at a reasonable time and end at a reasonable time that works for their schedules. People want to feel connected to what our product does. So, we've spent a lot of time educating people on this particular device, for example, will help in oil production to make sure that there is not a spill or whatever that thing is that can help them connect to what our product does to make the world a better place is very important. And that's something that a lot of the younger generation has gravitated towards and also shared with their friends and colleagues, and people continue to come in. We get a lot of resumes. It's been a pretty cool thing. 

Kristin: Yeah, so this is an example, Brian. Thank you, Scott, for elaborating on the inside walls of VEGA America, at the Mason facility, and abroad. There's this term, the idealist,  is one of the personas, and the idealist is the 18 to 24-year-old, call it Gen Z and maybe a little bit more than that, but it's at least the Gen Z, and these are people that don't have mortgages, they might be students, they want meaningful work, they want career advancement, and they want to know the purpose of why they're doing this. These are the digital natives. I learned this term from McKinsey Company's research. The other piece is, do you have a digital environment? Imagine: My daughters are digital babies. Every photo of them was taken with an iPhone. Digital babies do digital things. So, if you come into a manufacturing environment and your training is still reading a book in a manual that's a hundred pages, they're going to be like, I don't want to work here. And beyond the purpose and the meaningful work, where are we going, inspirational leaders, all the things that I think we all want, that flexibility is super important.

And I think if you are not in this century with your digitization, that is a negative that you should. It's a blind spot that a lot of people don't think about. Don't underestimate the power of training and being able to communicate to people on how to train in this digital way, right? So, what happens a lot is we don't even have up-to-date books. So, the investment of making training real for people, making it easy, and it's a lot of effort to digitize something in the chunks of things that people need. It doesn't mean just scanning a hundred-page manual and posting it online. It means actually harvesting the important things because our attention spans are not what they used to be, right? And that takes an investment and capability in training systems. 

Brian: From the design side, Daniel, I don't know if you have anything to add to this or Scott; what have we done to the built environment for manufacturing?

Daniel: One of the things that we spent a lot of time talking with folks about and that VEGA was all in on is this right to light. There are so many manufacturing settings where there's not a single window on the manufacturing floor. The access to light is one of the great things when you walk into Vega's manufacturing floor, right? There are windows on the entire perimeter of the building. In addition to that, we had conversations about how tall to make the building to get some feeling of space, to feel like you weren't getting crushed from above, and then we added several clear stories across the roof of the building. So, really, wherever you're on that manufacturing floor, if the sun's up, if it's a cloudy day, you will know. There's a multitude of research out there about folks who have access to daylight, how it affects their productivity, and how it affects their overall health. And really, that's a conversation all folks can have because we always hear it all the time when we start talking about these, whether it's amenities or building something other than a windowless box. They say I can't afford it. It's not part of the budget. However, the most expensive asset for any manufacturer is their people. So, when you start talking about how it costs anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent of an employee's salary to replace them, whether it's the finding headhunters to find the people or the training process to get someone up to speed, that's real math you can do.

And when people are burnt out, they're three times more likely to be looking for another job. Creating an environment that focuses on the health and wellness of the folks working on the manufacturing floor, as Scott mentioned earlier, means they're really cognizant of what type of equipment they have in their space, so they don't have to wear ear protection. Yeah, it's a comfortable environment to work in. We have access to light, we have a fitness center, and we have a cafeteria. All those things are screaming, and we care about the employee, but it's things that VEGA intentionally did to focus on the health and wellness of their employees because it's a double bang. There are folks who feel like I'm cared for, and oh they’re healthier, more engaged, and absenteeism is less. All those things trigger more productivity, helping VEGAs' bottom line. 

Kristin: One of the things that I thought was just absolutely rockstar was the training facility that you come into, and it's actually, I believe, the training for the people you're selling your products to and how to use them as well as their training for maybe how did you come to that, where you put it, and why you chose to incorporate that into the design of the site because that was also very breakthrough for me.

Scott: As a manufacturer of electronic transmitters, I believe that many of our best customers are well-trained to use our equipment. So that makes a lot of sense in itself. We also take pride in all of our customer-facing people. So, our external salespeople, industry managers, and product managers all know how to work on our devices. So, we also put them through big training on how to work on all our equipment. So, there's always an expert in the field locally, all across the country. No matter where you are, what customer you are, you're probably going to have a service person close, and you're going to have a salesperson or an industry manager or somebody on the business development side who is also very well trained in our equipment and how it works. So that has a couple of things. It positions us very well against our competition. First of all, which is great, but it also gives all of our people an amazing amount of confidence and the feeling of value they bring to our customers when they're out in the field. We find that it may be hard to get the appointment the first time, but the second time we ask the customer for the appointment, they say, wow, yeah, this person is well-trained. They know their stuff. That helps keep people. That's another retention technique, is to really train your people well and have them confident in the field and knowledgeable about what they do, so they feel good having these conversations because we have a hundred and some people out there in the field at any given moment having a conversation with somebody that is about one of our products. So, to give them the confidence to be able to go into the field and take what they've learned here and take that externally is huge.

We do that with internal sales, too, so our internal salespeople go through the same types of products and technical training as well as personal development training. We spend a lot of time on soft skills as well. So, I think building a world-class training facility here at our headquarters in Mason, Ohio, was a really smart move. And we positioned it in such a way that you can see it from the road, too. So, it's cool to drive by at night and see the lab equipment lit up and stuff like that. That's another neat perk that came with doing it the way we're doing it, but it has gone extremely well. In fact, it's gone so well that we built another training facility in our Houston, Texas office so that we can do the same thing down there because there are a lot of heavy instrumentation users in that area that, you know, having an ease of access to a similar training facility made a lot of sense. 

Daniel: Tied back to one of my previous comments about how you have a spec warehouse with no windows and just a logo on the side. How are you differentiating yourself from the company next door? And when we were doing site plan analysis for the VEGA site, that was a big part of the conversation, is what does this building look like from the street? If someone gets an opportunity and you're driving out through Mason, there's a big roundabout and a main thoroughfare, like where the logo is placed, you can see it from; I think there's more than one logo. You can see the big VEGA logo, the training center is at the forefront, it's all glass, all of their technology and equipment sitting there in a well-lit up space. My kids play some sports out in that area of town, and we were driving there. I didn't even say that it was a BHDP design building; they're like, what does that company do? Because they saw this giant training center right on the edge of the street. I'm sure that because it's a very busy street, they have just folks driving down the street thinking, what does VEGA do to have a building like this? It doesn't look like a manufacturing site, so I should probably Google their name. 

Scott: I can think of a number of employees who have told me that the way they found VEGA was driving by it and then looking it up later and saying, wow, yeah, that's a cool place.

Brian: Yeah! Scott, it sounds like VEGA is doing a lot of things, right? Is there anything else you would want listeners to take away from this conversation or any advice you'd like to give to other manufacturing companies out there on what they might do or look into? 

Scott: Leadership knowing their employees is important. We were fortunate enough this year to win the Enquirer Best Place to Work Award for upper management and being in tune with the employees. And I took tremendous pride in that. When I heard that, I couldn't have been happier, but I think it makes sense to walk around and have conversations with people. You never know what somebody's going through, and to ever have their livelihood being threatened because of something that's just happening in life without ever taking the time to know the person and know what they're going through and that kind of thing, I think that would be a huge misstep. So, my advice would be to simply talk to your people. 

Brian: I love it. Thank you, Scott. Kristin, is there anything you'd like people to take away from this?

Kristin: Building on what Scott said and what we talked about earlier, this is more from the lens of what I see as a consultant. Take the time to invest in training. When people feel they can do a good job, then they can be better at it, and they have more ability to make improvements. If you're fighting with: I don't know if this is the right thing, or I fear if I make a mistake, I'll have some repercussions or get fired. Most people want to do well in their jobs, and when they don't have the capability, you only get 50 percent out of them. And so, I see too many different companies that just don't have training systems, don't have accurate documentation, and they don't put emphasis in there because it's not the sexy thing. It's not what's going to get me promoted, right? But it is the core; it is the bread and butter of effective manufacturing efficiency, and what I would call the esprit, which is people feeling like I can do more than that; I know my job so well. Hey, what if we design this or that? We can make it easier. They'll never get there if they're weighed down or not sure if they can operate this piece of equipment. 

Brian: Yeah, but I'd say that training expands not just beyond people using the equipment but even to managers and interpersonal relationships.

Kristin: We shouldn't discount the needs of people, and knowledge is just as important of a need. 

Brian: Knowledge, infrastructure, support, materials, resources. 

Kristin: Exactly. 

Brian: Daniel?

Daniel: There's not one solution, whether we're talking about the built environment and creating a space that folks feel good in or culture management; I think all of it's centered on respect for people. Going back to my Toyota days and focusing on the person in the space and trying to create an experience for that person that makes them just scream that we care about you, and if you have a great building but you don't have the culture, you're going to fail. If you have a great culture, it might be able to hold you out for a while, but eventually, your space is going to cause you to fail. It's really that kind of holistic approach where you're taking a look at all facets of that employee experience and creating a space and a company that screams, we care about you, and we want you here.

Scott: People will give you their best if you put them in an environment where they can do it. I 100 percent believe that. Telling them they have to do it won't work. Put them in an environment where they have the tools to do it, and they're going to give you their best. 

Brian: Scott, thank you very much. Kristin, thank you. Daniel, thank you as well. 

Scott: Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Kristin. Thank you, Daniel. 

Kristin: Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Brian, for hosting us. 

Brian: It was my pleasure. 

[Music Outro]

Brian Trainer, Host: Thank you for joining Trends + Tensions in Architecture and Design, presented by BHDP for this episode, “Manufacturing the Future: Innovation and Talent at VEGA,” with Scott Rollman of VEGA Americas, Kristin Okhuysen of Amplify Accelerate LLC, and Daniel Lessing of BHDP. If you appreciate what you have heard, please rate, subscribe, and give us a review. I am Brian Trainer, your host, and I hope you’ll join us for another episode of Trends + Tensions to see what topics drive design.