Episode 9: Al Koester & Gary Tujague, Great Lakes Trim

Ruthy (00:52):

Welcome back to Terrapin Small Biz Connection with myself, Ruthy Kirwan and Tim Gillen of Terrapin Networks in Traverse City, Michigan. On this show, we chat with small business owners in Northern Michigan to find out what really makes them and their business tick. It takes a certain kind of grit and resilience to have a successful company here in Northern Michigan, where we deal with seasonality issues, staffing, tourism, bad traffic, amazing weather days where suddenly half your staff calls out, quote unquote “sick”, snowstorms that stop commuting to and from work, not to mention policymakers in Lansing and Washington that put forth measures we might not always agree with or feel are best for our business. Up North living is different from anywhere else in the country and running a business Up North is no different. This week, we’re chatting with Al Koester and Gary Tujague from Great Lakes Trim, a tier one manufacturing plant here in Traverse City that serves as the Big Three and beyond, including John Deere. Al and Gary chat with us about difficulties in staffing, their business, especially when it comes to finding quality employees, keeping up with the quality requirements from the automobile and auto machine manufacturers as well as what they see as innovations that they see coming in the future of automotive manufacturing and more. Plus Tim and I discuss how their technology has changed over the years since they first opened their doors in the early two thousands.

Ruthy (02:02):

And with that, I will hand this over to Tim to welcome Al and Gary from Great Lakes Trim.

Tim (02:13):

Well, hello and thanks for joining us for the Terrapin Small Biz Connection. Tim Gillen here with Terrapin Networks in Traverse City. And we’re joined today with some folks from Great Lakes Trim here in Traverse City, Michigan. Al Koester, who is the quality manager, and Gary Tujague, who’s the operations manager. We’ll do a little bit more of an in-depth intro with them in just a minute here, but Great Lakes Trim is pretty well known in our neck of the woods, and they’ve done everything from auto trim for the Big Three, as well as some of the boat manufacturers and so forth. So without further ado, hello, Al and hello, Gary. Thanks again for joining us.

Great Lakes Trim (02:55):

Good morning. Yeah no, we’re thrilled. It’s fun.

Tim (03:04):

Fellas, tell us about Great Lakes Trim. Give us the quick version of what it is you all do, and a bit of your origin story too.

Great Lakes Trim (03:14):

Yeah, sure. So here at Great Lakes Trim, We are an interior trim supplier for the Big Three and we’re we’re a tier one, tier two Magna seating corporation, Lear seating corporation. We make seatback panels, head rest covers, some interior trim, closeout panels, things like that. So back in in 2001, Great Lakes Trim was in its infancy. It was started by two local entrepreneurs who were actually brothers out of the Kalkaska area. They sought out and were awarded a program for Freightliner Sterling truck. That program was to produce the overhead liners for the big 18 wheeler trucks. It started out with four people here at at our local facility here in in Williamsburg. And it’s grown to- what are we at now? 80, 90 people.

Tim (04:33):

Oh my goodness,

Great Lakes Trim (04:35):

In 19 years, we’ve grown quite a bit and it’ll continue to grow. We have some some great programs here. We’re currently supplying for Ford Explorer, Expedition, Navigator, Excursion seatback panels, and in headrest we supply for John Deere, which is a big program for us. We produce interior cab trim or acoustical panels for all of the corn harvesters combines. And we make those parts for a John Deere Harvester Works in Moline, Illinois. Also, Dodge Charger, we make some parts for that. We do some closeouts. And a new program we’re just launching soon within the next few weeks as a Cadillac XT5 carpet. We’re gonna ship that down to SpringHill Tennessee. So we’re excited, both with what we do and how we’ve grown over the years. We’re really proud of being in this area and getting to do what we do.

Tim (05:48):

That’s an impressive story for Northern Michigan. There’s no doubt about that.

Ruthy (05:53):

It’s crazy to think that somewhere here in Traverse City, a plant is producing this many integral pieces to such icnic machines like John Deere, Cadillac, Dodge, everything else. Very cool.

Great Lakes Trim (06:08):

And, you know, that’s what we hear from a lot of people in the area. When we tell others what we do, they’re very surprised that we’re here in the area, and the volume and the products that we make here. They don’t realize that we’re here, in little small Williamsburg.

Tim (06:28):

Yeah. And that’s something. You’re probably 40 miles from an interstate when you’re up here, and your ability to still do delivery in this area just shows the kind of fortitude we have up here.

Great Lakes Trim (06:56):

Yeah, we actually ship even to Mexico and into Canada, we build parts for sub suppliers that eventually end up coming back and ending up in vehicles, built in the United States

Tim (07:12):

The stuff with John Deere, has that been fairly longterm?

Great Lakes Trim (07:18):

Yeah, it has. We’ve been producing parts for a little over five years now, and that program continues to go on.

Tim (07:26):

Fantastic. What have you found makes things particularly difficult up here in Northern Michigan? Maybe just a particular challenge that being up in our neck of the woods brings. You know, as we like to say, we’ve got to drive 200 miles South before you can even go East or West. So what have you found particularly challenging about growing your company here in Northern Michigan, with this kind of manufacturing that you do?

Great Lakes Trim (08:01):

I recently joined the company about one year ago, I’m originally from Tennessee. So in particular, the challenges I’ve found here in comparison to there, is 1: the traffic. Love Traverse City the area, but the traffic can be challenging, especially with trucking and keeping time schedules. A lot of times we’re staying late to load the trucks because the traffic slowed us down that day. The other issue we have in the community is finding people. It is difficult to find the people to staff our facilities. That is one of the biggest challenges we’re finding. The area is tourist driven. There are a lot of jobs up here that are seasonal, but we go year round.

Tim (09:10):

Do you find that staffing issue both on the clerical and professional, as well as on the shop floor, side delivery, all that kind of thing?

Great Lakes Trim (09:25):

Oh yes, absolutely. Particularly in the local area, we have brought up our materials manager from Indiana, and we did have one of our production supervisors that actually also came up from the Tennessee area. So we had to recruit outside of the state for some of those higher levels.

Tim (09:54):

We’ve got this this terrific community college here in Traverse City, Northwestern Michigan College. And they’ve got a pretty good manufacturing program over at the tech center and so forth. Have you found avenues there to help? Would you like to see them change or add something to their educational side that would help that kind of thing for folks like you?

Great Lakes Trim (10:31):

Actually, we have been in contact with them and there’s two things that we’ve worked with them on this. We have sent people there for lean manufacturing training and touse their programs, to help us with our current employees, to improve them and best practices for production operations. And on the other side, their technical programs tend to be more technical oriented as opposed to lean manufacturing. We have contacted them to help with our website and some of our computer generated items here. But their tech program is heavily technical, which is sometimes more than what we need. Most of our jobs here require a manual dexterity operation.

Tim (11:24):

Al, as the quality manager, what do you see as a challenge on thequality control management side? Is that a particular problem too, on the staffing side for the kind of work that you do?

Great Lakes Trim (11:54):

Well in this area, we struggle trying to find qualified techs and managers. It can be a challenge. You know, we we’ve been here 19 years and we pride ourself on our quality and we do a great job. We feel that we have a staff that can provide that for the company. It can be a challenge being this far North. The automotive industry has their particular requests and requirements, and in some cases demands, and those particular formats are not. There are specific quality oriented steps that have to happen in the automotive industry to be awarded and then sustain business with the customer. Usually people do not have that kind of training, and we would have to send those people to specific locations in this country for that kind of training, which is costly.

Tim (13:14):

I bet it is. That’s one of the overlook ed things. It’s one thing to make a zillion widgets, or a bunch of seatbacks or a bunch of headrests, but man, they’ve gotta be consistent in their output. If you want to acquire the account and especially if you want to sustain it, the automotive companies are not going to keep buying from you, if every fifth one doesn’t quite fit.

Great Lakes Trim (13:40):

In automotive, the expectation is zero defects. So the bar’s raised quite high. Perfection and high quality of standards is their target.The automotive industry in general is extremely demanding. So to continue doing business, we have to continually improve our processes and the skill of our people to be able to maintain the business, to reduce our cost to the customer. Because they’re always looking to reduce the cost to the end user. Believe it or not when you see the price of vehicles.

Tim (14:23):

Yeah. And I can imagine then that the training and retention of that staff after you’ve invested can be a challenge. So the takeaway from an outsider is obviously you guys have a pretty good environment there, because you’re able to keep staff.

Great Lakes Trim (14:39):

We do, yeah. We have very high seniority people. We ave employees who have been here for quite some time. Some from the beginning, from day one.

Ruthy (14:49):

Wow. That says a lot. So those are some of the challenges we’ve touched on. What are some of the best parts about running your company here in Northern Michigan?

Great Lakes Trim (15:00):

Well, the area for one. We love being in Northern Michigan and Traverse City. I’m a transplant, from Las Vegas. So it’s a big adjustment. I love fishing in the cooler weather. I love it up here.

Great Lakes Trim (15:16):

People we have working here are quality minded. They care about what they do and how they do it. And that’s half the battle when you’re dealing with people doing manual production or even running of our equipment.

Tim (15:33):

So they understand their part and keeping your company profitable, and how that helps everybody. And that’s that good Northern Michigan work ethic.

Great Lakes Trim (15:44):

Our hopes are to always be, or have a presence here in the Traverse City area. Great Lakes Trim is currently working on an expansion. We are currently underway right now leasing a building and getting that all prepared for production down in Taylor, Michigan. It’s close to the Detroit Metro airport, another manufacturing facility. So we are growing.

Tim (16:15):

And with this you can now be close to the major East West interstate 80 and all that too. Taylor’s down river, down by Metro. This would help alleviate some of the issues you touched oln earlier, trucking in particular.

Great Lakes Trim (16:30):

The logistics cost of coming up this far in Northern Michigan was a struggle, and our customer basically required us to be closer.

Tim (16:45):

As you noted about working with the automotive group-we’ve referred to it as the Big Three but that means Ford, GM and FCA Fiat Chrysler, but they’re demanding and they need you closer. If you want to do large volumes of business and sustain contracts, sometimes you have to be able to work how they need you to, which makes sense for maybe your Taylor expansion. And then you can still keep everything and the headquarters and the large part of your production and for certain certain types of your production, all here in the Traverse City area. We have a lot of capabilities now on the technology side to be able to tie all that stuff together which makes me, or brings me into my next question for you. I would imagine you guys, since 2001 have seen an awful lot of technology change and improvement. I know even back in 2001, the way you dealt with the Big Three was all through EDI, almost a direct connection that you’d set up to them. Now that’s some of that stuff has changed and is simpler kind of changes.

Great Lakes Trim (17:50):

We’ve been touching on this a lot for this interview, but the demand to improve, do it faster, do it better. Technology has certainly changed from someone with a manual handheld- we call them Sonics- it’s like a heat gun that melts plastic to a machine that automatically does that. Some of the communication changes with the customers. In some cases, we still use good old EDI, but there is a bigger communication effort now than in 2001. For a while there we almost were using everything but smoke signals. We communicated in all sorts of ways.

Ruthy (18:45):

What are the changes that you anticipate coming further, more recyclable materials? What else are you anticipating and looking forward to in the future?

Great Lakes Trim (18:57):

Part of our organization now is working in concept. We take projects from conception to reality, to figure out how to actually put a specific piece into a production environment, one that can meet the demand, and satisfy the customer in quality and look. It is particularly challenging. You take an idea from a concept and the drawing board and next thing you know, you’re shipping thousands of them. You see them in vehicles and people are buying and using them.

Tim (19:41):

That’s the satisfying part of manufacturing, isn’t it? Seeing that end user ending up with the thing somebody was dreaming about. That’s a nice enhancement to your offering. That’s that would be pretty obvious if you’re able to participate in that. And on top of that, it’s gotta make you a fairly critical component to that vendor, which adds to customer stickiness, which we in small business like to have.

Great Lakes Trim (20:11):

Right. It is all about customer satisfaction.

Tim (20:14):

Yes, sir. It is. Isn’t that kind of a consistent thing that we hear, isn’t it, Ruthy?

Ruthy (20:19):

Absolutely. That’s at the heart, I feel, of every small business that we’ve talked to up until this point.

Great Lakes Trim (20:23):

Whether it’s a restaurant or a mom and pop grocery, I mean, that’s what it comes down to. It really is. It really is. .

Ruthy (20:31):

Well guys, if any, list one listening here wants to get ahold of you. What’s the best way to do it. Is it just to call your front office or find you online?

Great Lakes Trim (20:41):

Both ways are fine. We do have an online presence at GLtrim.com website. You’ll see what products we make and some of how we do it. And we have a full contact list there from our HR manager to our president general man.

Ruthy (20:59):

All right. Well, thank you so much for talking with us today, gentlemen, we really appreciate it very much.

Great Lakes Trim (21:04):

Thank you. And thank you for your time and asking us to join.

Ruthy (21:09):

And now, for Tim’s Takeaway.

Ruthy (21:40):

Hello, and welcome back again to Terrapinn Small Biz Connection with your hosts, myself, Ruthy Kirwan, and Tim Gillen from Terrapin Networks in Traverse City. This is the section of our show that we like to refer to as Tim’s Takeaway. This is where we hash out what we just talked about with our previous guests, who today were Al Koester and Gary Tujague from Great Lakes Trim in Williamsburg, just outside Traverse City. So Tim, we talked about a lot but there are two topics that I want to kind of get into the nitty gritty with you about, and that is in regards to the staffing issues that they have had. Can you kind of touch on that because we hear a lot of different things about employment in the area, but these guys are saying that they struggle sometimes with the staffing.

Tim (22:31):

Yeah. I think it’s fair to say, as Al mentioned it, that some of what they talked about with the staffing difficulties has nothing to do with being in Northern Michigan- that these issues crop up most anywhere for their kind of manufacturing. However, he also mentioned the Northern Michigan challenge with the seasonality and what that really means to them as some of their shop floor staff, for example, has other options sometimes in the summertime. Not so much this year with the COVID situation, but sometimes they have other options. That can make it more of a challenge on the retention side, but they have a big bonus that they keep people working year round. And that normally is preferred for the staffing up here, but what they do on the automotive side. They also do a lot with John Deere, as they mentioned. They work on interior vehicle trim, It’s not a manufacturing plant of, you know, just make a widget and pump a thousand a month and stick them in a truck. There’s a lot more to it that. A lot of that’s driven by technology and a well trained staff and a staff that’s motivated to do a good quality product. Because if they can’t keep the quality up, man, everything starts changing and starts changing in a hurry. And you won’t be able to keep the account. You might get some work out of them out of GM or Ford or FCA, but they’re not going to keep coming back to you. You won’t sustain that account.

Ruthy (23:57):

So how would you say that that applies to other small businesses, especially those are in the area.

Tim (24:01):

We talked about staffing, not just from finding bodies, but being able to train staff. And we also talked about EDI versus the new ways to communicate with your vendors and that all relates to any small business who has to keep that part in mind. Sometimes we take the technology and shove it aside cause we find it kind of irritating andcostly. But look what they’re dealing with out at Great Lakes Trim, they’ve got to train their staff to be able to do these things a little differently on the technology side, because you’re using machines that are more than just a simple heat gun. They’re also need to pay attention to security. They need a solid system that they know is well set up and secure that there’s no speed bumps. they need to know that when they send a communication that they hear back promptly. And that comes by having a solid technology setup. Now that’s where someone like us comes in, frankly. Your tech team, your tech manager, whoever that is, whether it’s someone in house, whether you’re hiring someone like us. If you’re doing it yourself, that’s kind of risky because you don’t know what you don’t know, as I frequently say on this show. You need to have a tech manager there who can help you get that tech system set up so that everything isn’t a speed bump. It’s got everything. You got to have workflow that just works securely and solidly. Sometimes we tend to work backwards. We want to optimize things that aren’t well-protected and really aren’t well-designed and it doesn’t go that direction.

Tim (25:37):

You got to start with the design. So sometimes that means making some tweaks to your current system to get it. You have to communicate with Ford properly or you won’t get that work. And you’ll wonder why you only get one account and you don’t get successive accounts- sometimes is because you’re trying to sneak by on not doing the internal stuff on your side properly. They’ll be more reluctant to do business with you when you do it that way and why they have other options. They have other vendors who won’t make them worry about, Oh, you have a proper setup. So it’s important that you make sure that your technology system is designed and implemented properly. Everything will flow from that. If it’s just banged together so it kind of works, then you’ll have a hard time with growth and people at Great Lakes Trim didn’ keep growing for 19 solid years through a couple of economic upheavals because they’re skimping on things, they’re doing things right. And that’s a real important takeaway.

Ruthy (26:39):

Well, absolutely. I feel that, you know, it, it really proves that a part of that collaboration that we make with our customers, part of those promises that we’re filling for our customers really is rooted in having the proper technology setup. That that’s an important cog in your small business and in fulfilling what you were setting out to do.

Tim (27:00):

Absolutely. And, and let’s think of it going in two directions, the way that they’ve done well with the Big Three and with John Deere and stuff at Great Lakes Trim is, as they said, makes them very much a partner for Ford. They’re very much a part of Cadillac. They’re very much a part of John Deere. And they are willing to do what needs to be done, to get a product to John Deere that John Deere wants. Think about that from a tech direction. It makes good sense to have a relationship with a tech team that you actually partner with. That you don’t just treat like a vendor, that the two of you are working for the same goal. Let’s get this set up right. Let’s get it done right. Because sometimes you’ll have a conflict with your tech team staff if you’re holding them back. And the other side, you want to be careful that they’re not just doing stuff willy nilly, you want it designed, protected, and optimized- everything methodical. And, and of course, we’re Terrapin Networks. Our logo is a turtle, and we’ve always said that since our inception 30 years ago, that the turtle won the race. We want to be methodical here. Tech guys are known for running off in 10 different directions. But I could see early on when we founded this company back in 1990, that man, being methodical and just applying best practice, whatever that might be, gives a solid outcome. It’s exactly what Ford expects or GM expects. It’s exactly what, no matter what you’re doing, your customers are expecting from you. So it goes in both directions.

Ruthy (28:40):

All right. Well, I think that’s unfortunately all the time that we have for this week, Tim, thank you for hanging out with me this week and breaking down some of these more manufacturing terms that I wouldn’t be as familiar with. That was a really interesting conversation with Al and Gary and we appreciate their time so much.

Tim (28:59):

Yeah. Great Lakes Trim is a terrific outfit and very impressive. They’ve got a great website with a ton of good information. And if you’re driving a Cadillac or a John Deere, there’s a pretty good chance that one of the side panels or headliner or headrest came from Great Lakes Trim right here in Traverse City area, Williamsburg. Isn’t that great?

Ruthy (29:26):

All right. Well, have a great week and let’s catch up again next week.