Saint-Gobain (Matt Fitzpatrick) and Specright

How is this 350 year old company on the cutting edge of specification management?
What are they using Specright for and is it improving their system?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-f-8ba80081/
https://www.saint-gobain.com/en

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is my friend Matt Fitzpatrick, the Senior Packaging Engineer and CO2 Sustainability Leader at St. Gobain. How are you,

Matt Fitzpatrick: 0:42

sir? Good. How about you, Corey? And thanks for letting me on your podcast. Really appreciate

Cory Connors: 0:47

it. Really, excited to have you on. It was great to meet you at the SpecRight Summit, or SpecSummit, for SpecRight, annual, customers. Really, that event has grown so much and is so well done by that team. we'll get to that for sure. But first, let's talk a little bit about how did you get into this role at, ThinkObein?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 1:08

my journey started about it's a little over two and a half years ago. Actually, I was looking for a career change. I wanted something more with a little bit more managerial kind of role or strategic, not just your day to day packaging engineer going through. Okay. Let's make sure operations is working stuff like that. More of all right. What is a company thriving at and what are they really struggling at? And how can I help them with the struggles? So, Saint Gobain, they interviewed me, about two and a half years ago, and they moved me down to Texas, and my journey began there. Really, what I identified with them was, their lack of visibility when it came to their specifications and data around their packaging.

Cory Connors: 1:47

Yeah, that's a big challenge, especially with such a large company like Saint Gobain. how big of a company is that?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 1:53

Yes, single Bain is a global company. If you're not too familiar with us, our headquarters is out of Paris, France. Our North American headquarters were split into different divisions being a large company. Half of the business units, they report through Malvern, which is outside Philadelphia. And the other half is out of Worcester, which is outside of Boston. And globally, we're about 170, 000. Employees so massive, we've been around for 350 years. So we're pretty old too. And I think we operate in close to 70, 75 countries. So it's revenue wise, I think, or sales wise, we're about 52 billion.

Cory Connors: 2:31

So just a little company. Wow. And 350 years. Well, that's such a incredible legacy. in Paris, that's not very long, but in, in America, that's, in eternity. Yeah. Right. I, in visiting Europe, everything is, oh, this is 1000 years old. This is 5, it's just such a fascinating difference from us here in the USA. Very cool. And I enjoy that history.

Matt Fitzpatrick: 2:56

Speaking of legacy and people that aren't familiar with Saint Gobain is we are a manufacturer of building materials. So legacy wise we were a glass manufacturer based out of Paris, France or a small company or a small city called Saint Gobain that's just outside of Paris, France. Since then they have obviously developed and now we manufacture roofing, siding, insulation, drywall, fencing, concrete, you name it. Our slogan is really make the world a better home. So, anything that puts together a home or a building, we probably manufacture it one way, shape, or form.

Cory Connors: 3:32

And I believe your division is abrasives. Is that correct? Correct.

Matt Fitzpatrick: 3:36

Yes. And I should talk about what I support is. I'm an abrasives. And so we focus on anything that really alters a surface. so sandpaper, cutting tools, grinding tools, adhesives, coatings, stuff

Cory Connors: 3:47

like that. Which is a huge industry and a huge need, especially for the, repair, side of things in the world of sustainability. I think that's something we need to consider when we're talking about, repair, sanded down, repaint it, sanded down, re, stain it, whatever the case may be, let's, let's talk a little bit about your focus. So you're doing the, abrasives, which is sandpaper. And other things generally, right?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 4:14

Yeah, correct. So if you picture, sandpaper products, I could show you a little bit of an example. these are filing belts that are going into a chipboard sleeve. there's we do a variety of other stuff. Do sponges, we do other larger portable belts and the list goes on. Think discs. and then when we're talking about the different business units within abrasives, there's bonded. So think big bonded wheels or small little instrument tools that you put onto a machine. They're super abrasives, think very expensive, large metal wheels with abrasive built into it. And then there's also the cutting tools, think diamond blades that you're putting onto a power saw thin wheels that you're also putting on power sauce and stuff like that.

Cory Connors: 4:55

It's such a large scope of the world's need of materials. I've personally sanded way more than I'd like to, it's hard work. but, when you're done with the project and you look at the results, it's impressive, but let's talk a little bit about, Specright. So you are a spec, right? Customer user of their amazing platform. Can you tell us how that came to be and how it's going?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 5:22

Yeah, so working with to Specright has been fantastic. it's something when I first interviewed a Saint Gobain is what are we going to do as a company to make ourselves better? How can we service our customer? How can we make sure that we're tracking? how can our change management be better when we're working through a new package, a new product, new packs, buys, etcetera. So coming from a company, that had a very well developed, specification database. Based. Moving to Saint Gobain was a learning curve for me working through shared drives and spreadsheets and going to the supplier and following up with that supplier multiple times to get technical drawings was really creating a headache and you could see it started to create as a bottleneck for projects. So I started to do some investigation. And obviously spec right wasn't the first one we saw on the internet and said, Hey, this is the opportunity. We started to quote out different opportunities, looking at different software programs, thinking, could we build this internally ourselves? Yeah, I can't do that. So I was leaning on some of our more senior SAP leadership and stuff like that on what we can do internally. And I came across Specright, actually, through a LinkedIn ad. Oh, and I, I. Did a demo quick setup and they called me and they walked me through and I was like, all right, all I want to focus on is just packaging and everything that I envisioned from my last company that I've been trying to look and find just fell right into my lap and more, all the added tools. So what we scoped into for a braces for north of America is getting all of our package specs that we are buying into our own manufacturing plants, which is 10 totals. Ranging all the way from Toronto in Canada, all the way down to Tijuana, Reynosa, Northern Mexico and getting all of those package specs into the system. One way is now we can actually control our packaging specs and our artwork assigned with that. On top of that, we'll also own the data. Right now, we don't have a great idea of. Recycle content in each packaging spec. We don't have a great idea of, maybe the verbiage that we're using for sustainability for marketing reasons printed on that packaging. And we want to make sure that we can start to track that to ensure 1. we're not greenwashing 2. we're ready and prepared for those EPR laws that are coming out and the green new deal that obviously has existed in Europe for some time. and then make sure that we're 3. Being proactive instead of reactive.

Cory Connors: 7:50

That's excellent. And like you said, it's a huge task and it's a big, it can be very overwhelming. did you find that at 1st?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 7:59

Yes, and I still do. So we signed a contract with spec right actually about eight months ago, and we went through the build process. How do we want certain fields to be, how we want certain record types to look what fields need to be included what we think is valuable for data and managing a specific spec. And then in December, we hit the ground running. So that's when we went live with the system. We went live and we focused on two plants. Off the bat, it's myself and a very small team leading this. So instead of overwhelming ourself with all these different suppliers and thousands of packaging specs, we focused on 2 of the larger plants that had a large impact. So we could say, all right, what are we going to learn? What do we do? Well, what did we mess up on and what we. What can we fix so we could implement those at the next plants as well? And we've learned a lot. Even at the spec summit recently, I was talking to, I think it was Caterpillar and I forgot the other company's name. And they said, no more text fields, only drop down options. And that's a great example because I already have 1 person that's working on my team and she's uploading specs for our Reynosa Mexico site and she's typing in CCMB. And I'm typing in clay coated news back or a folding card and those will come up as different fields. So it's learning curves like that we've worked.

Cory Connors: 9:17

That is such a good point. when you're working in specifications, you have to be on the same page. And that drop down menu requires you to work within the options available. And all of you to get on the same page. That's really smart. I love that. Let's talk a little bit about, The implementation process. So, did you guys use the spec squad and or did would you did you use internal resources to enter all your data in?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 9:45

So we're using both and I'm glad you brought that up because the spec squad has been a huge help to us actually. So once we got the system built on how we wanted to look. It's really getting all of that data and technical drawings from one RSAP system. What we have may be in shared folders and then also at our supplier. And working with the spec squad was really developing these templates on spreadsheets to ensure that each column is going to be a specific field for a specific record type, whether it's corrugated, folding carton, shrink sleeve, palette, etc. And then those columns we could request that our suppliers fill out based on our. I unique identifier, we call them our packaging part numbers, our 5 1 0 numbers. That's what's in our production bombs and SAP. And with that spreadsheet, they're able to upload to a specific record type and then tie it back to that 5 1 0 number. And that 5 1 0 number, if it's a folding carton or a corrugated piece, it probably has an artwork tied to it. And that's how we're tying it back to, because if you think. If you're thinking, sandpaper, and I wish I had an example at my desk, but we could use this for an example, like this portable belt. So it's going to have the same exact sleeve, and the basic spec that we built is, imagine all of this artwork on here, and it's 50 grit coarse, minus that artwork, that's your basic spec. It's the material, it's the size, shape, the perforation pattern, the tab locks, etc. We do 50 grit, we do 60 grit, we do 80 grit, we do 100 grit, we do 120 grit. So this one sleeve, this basic spec might have 20 different artworks associated with it. So in spec, right, we designed it so it has a basic spec, and then we could tie all those 510 numbers to it, so we know how many artworks are associated with that specific die or structure in our system. Because

Cory Connors: 11:38

when you're quoting that, you need to be able to say these are all the same and you could gang run these on one press using the same tool. Right? that's what's so amazing about what you said. It's so valuable

Matt Fitzpatrick: 11:54

on top of that. We're tying it to our finished goods. So we're utilizing spec squad. So we pulled out all of our production bonds from SAP and spec squads helping us tie those 510 numbers to our UPCs. And then, let's say we wanted to change. Okay. Okay. There's there might be that Norton brand on here, but we might private label as well for specific customers, right? So if we're changing the structure for Norton brand, are we changing also for those private label customers within that system? We'll be able to tie that basic spec to all the UPCs to all the brands that are also tied to it. So if we are changing anything, then we know, okay, we're going to notify this customer as for certain approvals, make sure the change management is actually happening. So one. Okay. Thanks. We don't impact cost because all of a sudden, if that private label customer is super low in volume, and let's say it's corrugated, for example, and we all of a sudden reduce the percentage of that die at the corrugated company by 80 percent because we're moving it to a whole nother die. Also, and that cost of packaging might skyrocket for that private label brand. And now we're eating that cost. So the spec squad has been a huge help with us tying those together, because that's 1 thing that we've struggled with is we have so many. From brands, sub brands, private label brands, we don't tie them to our packaging components. Well,

Cory Connors: 13:09

great point. Can you explain to the audience what spec right is and who maybe they are?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 13:16

So spec, right? and I'm going to explain in my own way, I guess I'm sure they could explain it way better. So they're an SDM system. So a specification data management system. you could tie it to your ERP, whether it's SAP, stuff like that. And what you're really storing inside it is specifications. We have only invested in the packaging module. They offer so much more than that. They have a supply chain module, new product development, sustainability, all these other aspects with tools that I'm not too familiar with. But with packaging, it's a way for us to take all of this data that is. Our artwork on our C drive on our marketing team's computer and our technical drawings all at our suppliers on their own servers and etcetera and store it onto a cloud based database. And this tool is really unique because you could make all those connections that I was just talking about. They also have, a, item finder. So let's say marketing came to me and said, hey, we want a 10 pack of this now. We only sell this in like a 500 pack. I could go in there, type in length, width, and height, put in a couple of tolerances, see all the existing boxes I have for this specific manufacturing site, and say, okay, we could utilize that box. or there's no boxes that we could utilize. We have to create a new cutting die. So who they are, they're an SDM. Some company that provides way more than just packaging. I could promise you that I just don't know off the top of my head, but the Specright system itself is definitely a user friendly tool. I like to call it the social media of a specification database. It's so easy, user friendly. Yeah. It's so user friendly. you could talk to each other on it. You could, real life, historical updates. One thing we struggle with as a company is change management. So if someone went in to change something. And then didn't tell people or they change something, then they decide to leave the company. We don't know why they change it. We don't know when they changed it. And within Specright that's what we could start to manage is. All right. Someone came in at this time in this date, and they changed this specification and they change this material and they added in the comments. They change it because of a customer requirement or so forth. So it's really tying in all these other. Issues that I think companies struggle with and getting in one spot to make sure that it's being done in one area. And I apologize for the noise. I'm in a manufacturing

Cory Connors: 15:35

plant. That's all right. This is a real deal. And, Mr. Matthew, right? The CEO often mentions 1 source of truth and that's what the spec right system is for those companies that use it globally anywhere in the world. You can look at this 1. Area it's 1, website or portal or however you access it and it's going to be the same information for anyone looking and it will all be updated through that system, but the specs squad. I wanted to talk to just speak to a little bit because I think a lot of people like my company. we have a lot of specs. We have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of specifications that we're managing. In our system, and the thought of putting those into spec right is daunting. So can you talk about the spec squad and what it was like working with them?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 16:31

Yeah, so specifically with them. Yeah, it's more of taking the data that you have and getting it into the correct format to get it into the format that you want it in spec right as that's awesome. That's it. There is that learning curve because yes, it depending on what the data is. So for packaging, working with the spec squad on, okay, this is what we think is important. And they came back and said, all right, this is what we've learned from other customers that we've worked with. That is also doing packaging for spec, right? Do you want to do this and this, and it's doing that back and forth, a lot of experience there. Yeah. A lot of experience. and The spec squad team itself, let's be very clear. They're not all packaging engineers. A lot of them might be, data engineers or 4. 0 engineers, stuff like that. That's more revolved around writing code and getting the data into there. Whereas you got to make sure that you have an open mind and be very open to communication with them to say, hey, this is this packaging type and this is the fields that we want. And building those templates is important, and they've been super helpful with that. So if it's corrugated. We'll have a column of flute material. Yeah. Codings, print, et cetera. And that helps them to take that, write the code and get it into the system in a matter of minutes, as they tell me. Again, I'm a packaging engineer. I don't write code, so I don't know how quickly it's actually done. Yeah,

Cory Connors: 17:54

neither. and most of these people on the spec squad are college students, learning about packaging or engineering or, like you said, many of these fields.

Matt Fitzpatrick: 18:05

Yep, exactly. So the spec squads, they're utilizing the Michigan State University. Go green. I'm obviously alumni and for packaging specs, they're utilizing them. And when it's creating a new record type and uploading technical drawings and stuff like that, they're really utilizing those students. Not only is it helping these students brush up on their expert. Or what I want to say their technical knowledge on materials and seeing how the real world works. They're also going out on internships after working in this and then they can apply what they're learning in like a real life. what I want to say relationship and like working with a CPG or something like that to their first internship. So I think it's a great tool and it's a great partnership that they did with Michigan State when it came to, pulling out master spreadsheets from S. A. P. They have their full time employees as well. So it's not a student that's taking those spreadsheets writing code to get it in there. it's a full time person that has done that for years for their career.

Cory Connors: 19:32

they're growing really fast. it's an exciting time at spec, right? I, you did tell a story. I, I don't know if it was while you're on stage or when we were just talking, personally about a time when you had, packaging, you ordered packaging or your company ordered packaging that was incorrect, using the wrong spec or an outdated spec. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 19:54

Yeah, it's one of the favorite stories I like to tell when I was pitching this as a, specright at it. My company is when I first started in two and a half years ago. It was more trying to learn the business before I invested into anything. And there's 1 plan in particular that has had a, and if you've ever seen the spec, right? Video, please go watch it. It's their margarita pizza video. it's this guy running around trying to find packaging specs and there's a person named Barb and Barb is the packaging director. I think she was and she has all the information and files and unposted notes and stuff like that at this 1 plant and embraces. We have a barb and I won't name him, but he has been working for this specific manufacturing plant for 45 years. So he has seen as the packaging expertise, the person. Yeah. Continuous improvement. You name it. He does it. So long story short, he's built kind of a nice. Share drive that has technical drawings, artworks, and we have a lot of automation in this plant. It's about 400, 000 square feet only manufacture sandpaper. So it's a lot of different manufacturing lines, cutting different products. And we have some automatic case packers like that. One of the case packers was having issues, so they called me out on the floor. They were blaming the packaging. We got to do our due diligence. Let's make sure it's not the machine or it's not the boxes. So I took some of the sample boxes that were getting crushed in the machine. I went back to that shared drive to open it up to compare to the technical drawings. Does it have the right perforation pattern? Does it have the right locking tabs cut out? Does it have the right print to make sure this is the right box? Check the 510 number, etc. And I opened up the shared drive and the technical drawing that I actually opened was different and the artwork was different than what we were getting on the plant floor. So to me, that was concern. But again, this technical drawing. This guy holds a bunch of different hats, and this is change management. Maybe someone did it on the fly, maybe someone didn't input the PDF into the shared drive when it was changed. So I went to the artwork team to say, hey, what dye line do you have for this? And what artwork do you have on this? They have the same artwork that was arriving into the plant, but they had a different dye line as well. Again, they don't usually update. There's a break in the process with our company when we do update it. And, what do I want to say? Our work approval processes. Sometimes if we change something at the plant, we know it's supposed to be this artwork. So we'll update it, but we won't send the artwork team the new dial and structure if they're not involved. As long as the supplier can place it on there and we get the product, we don't involve marketing, which in the future, we won't do that with spec, right? so now we have three different specs, and

Cory Connors: 22:39

I bet that's very common. I bet that's very common. Yeah, you get the job done, right?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 22:44

Yeah, exactly. Get the job done. Get the product to the floor. Let's manufacture the product, sell to our customers. So now I'm looking at this and I was like, all right, I have 3 different structures, a couple different artworks. What are we supposed to be getting? So instead of being able to do this myself and all right, let's make sure that the package is supposed to be the package showing up to the plant floor. I call the cross functional team meeting. That took driving people to look through their emails and see what was supposed to be changed, and this was happening years ago. So a week later, we were able to develop, okay, we are receiving the right artwork, but this is not on the right die. The perforation pattern was changed a few years ago and may be lost in communication. This one part number was still being ran on the old die. So a few years ago, they had invested into a case packer. It's basically this flat box, drop it in the perforation on the scores, helps it fold nice and tight. For some reason, this 510 number wasn't changed off that die. So when I say 1, this specific box, so now we added it to the new die and made sure that it was going to be fine and now it's being ran on the same die that's for this case packer that it was really built around. Was that the end all tail all? No, because this case packer does have its own issues. So we started to really investigate like, all right. This box, we reintroduce this pattern, could we shy the flaps? Could we do a couple other different changes? And it really makes you look at. All right, we're going to shy the flaps on this. Let's make sure. Every box on this die is changed at this point, right? And that's the story. Yeah, I didn't go into as much detail when I presented on it, but it caused something 24 hours took us close to 2

Cory Connors: 24:32

weeks. and hundreds of hours of effort and headaches and probably meetings

Matt Fitzpatrick: 24:39

that we probably didn't need stuff like that

Cory Connors: 24:41

did. And you may even had to shut the line down or at least, ran incredibly slow for a while. Yeah, incredible. Well, that's it. I wish that was uncommon. I wish that wasn't a story I've heard before. but it's very common in the industry. specification management is very difficult for companies and, I can prove that, over the many hundreds of customers I've had when they try to quote something out or give us a, an opportunity at something new, the act of getting the specification of the packaging is oftentimes a huge challenge and, it shouldn't be. Right now, let's hope that let's hope more and more people adopt the Specright software and system to make this all a simpler process.

Matt Fitzpatrick: 25:31

Agreed. I think most companies really do need to look at what are their goals with their packaging and with their specs. Do you want to have change management improvement processes? Do you want to manage your sustainability projects better? Do you want to just have access to this? So that. All the teams cross functionally can look at it at the same time. And that's one thing I would say before investing in spec right is map out exactly what you want from the system because there's going to be a lot of oh, we could do this. We could do this. We could do this. Really find the big picture and then say, okay, what is actually going to give us. I guess benefits as a company.

Cory Connors: 26:09

think you're exactly right, though. We, we need to think, together as a group and say, okay, what's priority to you? What's priority to your department and then work with the spec team, the spec right team to develop that. I did want to talk briefly, as this is sustainable packaging podcast, how has this system improved your company's packaging sustainability?

Matt Fitzpatrick: 26:32

So we're working on that. It hasn't improved it off the bat, and that's something that we want to make sure moving forward. It's going to so picturing sandpaper. We use a lot of paper packaging, which is great. It's the fact that we don't manage how much recycle contents in each 1 of these very well. And 1 thing I've come to learn while trying to gather the specifications is our corrugated companies. We usually works with small or box plants. Those box plants are buying the sheets according to the best price that they could get as long as it's meeting whatever the material grade strength that we're, we expect into this product we've come to learn that sometimes they're buying 10 percent recycle content board, sometimes they're buying 70. So, as a company, we reviewed this and said, okay, this is great. At least recycle contents coming through, but. As we watch these EPR laws continue to grow plastic being the focus right now. Papers is going to be next, and I'm sure certain company or certain countries, certain states are going to come and say, you need 30 percent minimum recycle content in your paper materials. If it's single use, if it's package products, et cetera. So, again, going back to instead of being reactive now, we're starting to gather 1 of our suppliers. And then our suppliers like, well, if you want us to manage this, it's going to be impossible. No, we're going to give you guidance. So we'll write the spec and we'll say, all right, these boxes need to have a minimum of 30%. There's a cost impact. We understand that. Just communicate that back to us and we'll work through that as a company being a large global company based out of Europe. Our sustainability efforts are very strict. So, we understand there's might be a cost impact and we'll work together to get through that with you as our supplier. So, right now, it's seeing where are we're seeing where are we with sustainability around packaging and where do we want to be in 5 So, I guess another thing is we're managing, we have a relationship with, how to recycle, and we're starting to manage that. So that basic spec, so if I have already taken that basic spec of this one sleeve and put in the coatings, the material, et cetera, I have now checked that basic spec off inside spec right and said, all right, we already have this one approved in the how to recycle portal. For the specific logo that they have assigned to us. And then we're also all the 510 numbers with the artworks. These are all the ones that we've completed and adding that logo to it. So that's the one sustainability when I guess we can talk about. We've been adding our how to recycle logos onto our DIY products.

Cory Connors: 29:12

Which is a big deal, and a lot of retailers are requiring that. and it was exciting to hear the announcement that Specright and how to recycle are partnering. so the systems are going to work together and, that's such an awesome add on for people like you and customers that are using the system that need that. So they don't have to research it separately.

Matt Fitzpatrick: 29:36

Yeah, it'd be great to have it on one because it's always a hassle having to, you have two screens open and you're looking at one and then you're, there's a lot of manual plugging into how to recycle his website. So, if there's some type of reduction of that'd be great. If you could just say, all right, drag and drop and they could pull off the data from spec, right? It'd be fantastic.

Cory Connors: 29:57

Which is what it seems to be, the future there, or the very near future, which is very exciting. So, yeah, well, thank you, Matt. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate it. Anything else you wanted to say before we call

Matt Fitzpatrick: 30:09

it good here? no, nothing else. I really do appreciate you having me on your podcast. Cory. I've always been a fan, so it's great to be a part of it now. Well,

Cory Connors: 30:18

I'm honored. Thank you, sir. And, look forward to seeing you again soon. Awesome. Thank you.