Some companies talk about teamwork, PalletOne lives and breathes it. As the largest pallet manufacturer in the United States, it would be easy for the company to develop a more corporate atmosphere. But local managers run each operation with an entrepreneurial approach combined with the resources and workplace opportunities of a large company.
A key part of the team at PalletOne is its machinery and lumber suppliers, and one of its top relationships is with Greg Wine and the staff at Pallet Machinery Group (PMG). From Storti equipment to refurbishing older nailing lines to AIT stackers, PMG has provided solutions and the right equipment as PalletOne keeps on growing.
“We’ve partnered with Greg Wine for many years on our equipment needs. He combines service with integrity. He listens to our needs and brings new products to market to meet them,” said Howe Wallace, CEO of PalletOne.
“We’ve added a number of refurbished nailing machines to our fleet,” said Larry Draughn, vice president of manufacturing. “The modern improvements have performed as promised. We see immediate improvement in throughput.”
“The stackers are always welcome additions to our saw lines,” he added. “Easy to use and to maintain, they reduce our people needs.”
Keith Warren, a vice president for manufacturing, purchased the equipment from Pallet Machinery Group. His decision was based largely on the trust he places in Greg, said Keith. “He’s always been honest with us. He’s always listened to what we need… He’s trying to understand what we need to get us the right product.”
Teamwork Helps Boost Retention
It is one thing when the CEO of a company talks about culture, slogans and teamwork. It is another thing when local managers, supervisors and line workers mention how they like the team atmosphere at PalletOne.
Craig Parrott, the plant manager at the Butner, North Carolina facility, explained, “PalletOne believes in what is best for the plant – a strong team atmosphere. I try to relate it to being on a sports team. We have broken down departmental barriers and strive to meet weekly, monthly and yearly goals.”
You can see the teamwork approach in how employees are cross-trained so they can move from working on a saw to a nailing line as needed. This also means that PalletOne is looking to hire employees who can be flexible and problem solve situations.
Eddie Stokes, the nailing supervisor at the Butner plant, commented, “Craig, our plant manager, has broken down departmental barriers. He has helped us get to another level on the bottom line as everyone works together to meet customer demands and solve production challenges. Nobody says, ‘You can’t have that guy, he’s mine,’ when we need to make up in another area of the plant.”
Back a few years ago, the plant used to have 130 employees. It now produces more pallets with only 100 workers. Stokes added that the team has increased production on the Viking nailing lines 18% over the last 18 months. Workers and supervisors set the goals; they are not directed from the top down.
Employees can see their progress because television sets throughout the plant act as a scoreboard to track production. This visual approach to monitoring goals has been championed in the North Carolina PalletOne plants and is being deployed across the company’s entire network.
Parrott said, “I have guys who will ask if they can work 10-15 minutes extra in a day to meet their goals. When they are willing to give me that kind of effort, you know that you are doing things right.”
Recently, the Butner plant has achieved a 97% run time. Improved maintenance and staggered breaks have helped to reduce downtime.
Creating a team-based culture improves retention because no matter how you look at it, working in a pallet plant is physically demanding work. Wallace explained, “I want to be the best blue-collar employer in the markets where we operate… I don’t want to sugarcoat it. We still have some turnover issues because this is hard work. Our goal is to do a better job at keeping team members and getting them to play at a higher level.”
A lot rises and falls on the leadership of PalletOne’s plant managers and supervisors. Wallace stated, “You can’t run these plant locations from the top down. I try to outline a basic philosophy and yet leave a lot of the decisions up to the local managers.”
Growing Your People
One way that PalletOne keeps score is conducting an annual survey of its entire workforce. Employees complete a basic survey of twelve questions aimed at identifying the current health of the company’s culture. While the individual responses are anonymous, the results are made public to all employees. These results are benchmarked across the company and compared with results from previous years. Wallace said that this survey identifies ways that the company and its management can improve.
Brian Dyson, the Mid-Atlantic regional manager, commented, “PalletOne treats employees the right way and is very open and transparent with its books.”
PalletOne is not alone in surveying employees to determine worker attitudes. Increasingly, pallet and lumber companies are looking to survey tools and more openness to improve culture.
Beyond open communication, the company seeks to empower local managers to innovate. The Butner plant has pioneered a new apprenticeship program to raise up younger workers through college training. Employees complete courses at Granville Community College, and PalletOne pays the costs as long as the employee satisfactorily completes the course work. The employee learns new skills in fields that are in demand and for job functions that can allow the worker to advance at PalletOne. Parrott explained, “PalletOne is seeking to grow and promote from within. We are investing in our employees’ future…Employees will be more loyal when they know they are working for a company that will invest in and help grow them in terms of skills and abilities.”
The types of courses offered include: Hydraulics/Pneumatics, Intro to PLCs and DC/AC Electricity. Currently three younger workers are in the apprenticeship program. Lane said, “I am in the apprenticeship program because I want to be able to move up in the company.” Richard Lane has been with PalletOne for four years and primarily works as a saw operator. He added, “I eventually want to do anything in maintenance. I am trying to improve my electrical skills because there is a shortage of electricians in the area.”
If the apprenticeship program is successful, PalletOne may deploy this approach in other facilities. The goal right now is to grow and retain key, young talent.
Identifying talent and moving people into the right spots has made a huge difference for PalletOne. For example, the Butner plant had a maintenance guy who everyone looked to for insights on troubleshooting the nailing lines. Parrott said, “We moved Rick Hockaday into the role as the lead man on the pallet nailing line, and production has gone up 18%.”
Hockaday knew how to do little things in maintenance to keep the lines humming and figured out how to do changeovers faster. Smiling with a huge grin, Hockaday boasted, “We are a work family and care about each other. We try to have fun while we work.”
PalletOne’s friendly competition and teamwork approach helps change the way that employees view their work. Since everyone needs to be somewhat versatile, the company has had to change how it handles hiring practices.
Wayne Pennington, the safety coordinator at the Butner plant, pointed to the fact that prospective employees are tested before the company hires a candidate. Prospects are shown the work environment so they know what they are getting into before accepting a position. He said, “We have less turnover than in the past because we are doing more work on the front end to qualify candidates.”
Parrott agreed, “We like our team and don’t want to add the wrong person to the mix. We would rather go without a few positions and work around that challenge than hire the wrong person, which creates its own set of problems.”
Given the versatility required now in the plant, Parrott said that managers and supervisors must have a higher level of patience and understanding with employees.
Smart, Strategic Equipment Purchases
Each PalletOne plant is a bit different. Most of the locations were family-owned businesses before they were acquired by PalletOne. They have all evolved differently although there are some pieces of equipment that have become popular throughout the network. Since a number of locations have older Viking nailing lines running, PalletOne has turned to Pallet Machinery Group to perform upgrades on these machines. Wallace explained, “We have seen great results with the LZ2000 Electrical Upgrade. We are in a rotation upgrading older Vikings in our plants.”
The LZ2000 electrical upgrade improves the controls of the units. Wallace stated that it was getting harder to find replacement parts with the older Vikings, and the upgrades allow for faster changeovers. He suggested that the upgrades done by PMG have added significant life and output to its existing nailing fleet.
PalletOne personnel also rave about the AIT stackers sold and serviced by PMG. Chad Dyson, the plant manager at the Mocksville plant, said, “The small M2L stacker is easy to run and dependable. It works well in small footprints. The guys in the plant love the M2L stacker and want more.”
This stacker helped PalletOne eliminate hand stacking and improved efficiency. Wallace agreed, “The M2L has become our go-to stacker.”
For higher production areas, the AIT TS-300 stacker has been successfully deployed at many PalletOne facilities.
The Mocksville plant also has experimented with the Storti Freedom nailer and has achieved production of 2,000 pallets or more per shift. PalletOne worked with PMG to make modifications to the Freedom nailer to fit its needs. Josh Griffith, the nailing supervisor at the Mocksville plant, commented, “Everybody knew the Viking, so there was a bit of a learning curve.” He added, “The Freedom nailer produces a beautiful pallet and is a very precise machine.”
Currently, the Mocksville plant uses the Freedom nailer to produce KD pine and poplar pallets. PalletOne has also worked with Storti to deploy a robotic nailing line at its Port Author, Texas plant. This line produces one pallet for a specific customer and is designed to run fast because it has singular focus on one size.
Another new addition to the PalletOne equipment roster is a new Sahara X3 Colorbiotics coloring machine at the Butner plant. Trent Bray, the coloring supervisor, boasted, “This machine pays for itself in no time because it uses less colorant and water to operate than our old system.”
PalletOne offers both regular and certified mulch through the International Playground Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA) certification program. Certified mulch requires maintaining consistency, eliminating contaminants, and going through rigorous testing and audits to ensure that the final product is safe for playgrounds.
Data & Benchmarking Across Various Plants
The company has also found that better data has been worth the investment. PalletOne has developed an extensive inventory management system using Microsoft’s PowerBi software. PalletOne uses the software to track lumber and pallet inventory. The system was developed by Draughn, the company’s vice president of manufacturing.
Brian Dyson explained, “This inventory system has improved our analytics for faster, better decision-making based on facts not just guesswork.”
Wallace pointed to the recent acquisition of Bay Wood Products. He said, “Our integration process is much easier than in the past when we looked to integrate a new facility. We were able to process Jimmy Wilson’s inventory (previous owner of Bay Wood Products) in about 90 minutes.”
Better data also means that everyone is a bit more candid and held accountable for managing inventory. PalletOne can quickly know how much inventory it has and where it needs to deploy resources to meet and forecast demand.
Besides market data, PalletOne facilities also share best practices and hold each other accountable for capital improvement projects using the OneNote system. Brian Dyson said, “OneNote is a way to communicate and track progress on plant improvement projects. Other managers can see the progress.”
People First Approach
Employees need feedback if they are going to improve. PalletOne strives to have monthly review meetings with individual employees about their performance. Local supervisors and managers will cover strengths and weaknesses, what is going well and what can be improved. While this is hard to achieve given the duties of supervisors, it has improved performance.
PalletOne has worked to develop a reputation as a place where people can go who need a second chance. Parrott said, “We are a great company for people looking for second chances. We hire, pay and promote this group the same as all of our employees. We don’t hold a previous criminal record or drug abuse against them. The gratitude these guys feel at the chance to leave their past at the gate and start fresh with a good job creates a really positive work environment for everyone.” Currently, the Butner facility has a relationship with a work-release program to find workers.
Brian Dyson summed up the PalletOne approach, “Our focus is to build a good bench of talent. If you have the right people, the production will be there.”
