90's Recollection Part 5

From mid 1993 to mid 1997 I moved to western Canada, where I led the operations of two plants.  One was located in Kelowna, BC and the other in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Entering into the Class A Trucks & Waste Disposal Equipment industry was a whole new experience for me.  Eighty percent of our business in the Kelowna plant was for low volume heavy-duty parts and components on Class A Trucks and the assembly of aluminum built sleeper cabs.  The remaining twenty percent of our business was custom fabrication.

The Medicine Hat plant had three main product lines;  Industrial Garbage Containers (as seen behind every business unit), Intermodel Containers (used to ship goods, from 20’ to 48’ in length), and Front & Rear Loader Garbage Trucks.  To be more specific, we would receive the chassis and build the body onto it.  These three product lines were low volume orders. (approximately 1500 garbage containers per year, 100 to 150 intermodels per year and 10 to 16 garbage trucks per year).

Until I moved out west, I thought I had seen it all.  Was I ever wrong!  The plants were in great need of improvement and I loved the challenge.  All I had to do was take my manufacturing know-how and implement this into the processes used at these two plants.  This was a great opportunity for my career.

I hired four people from eastern Canada to join our strong existing team in Kelowna. They were Paul, Tara, Murray and David.  The local team was Mike, Don, Dan, and Paul.  Together, we started implementing best practices and continuous improvements.  Initially, our new team had some hurdles to overcome since East and West had different approaches to manufacturing methods.  East coast having more experience in assembly plants with larger volume products and West coast being more familiar with fabricating one-off.

We invited a facilitator to assist our team.  His name was Joe Cyr.  (A talented man that I worked with in the past and respected tremendously). 

Our goal was to eliminate the internal East Coast/ West Coast competition and build one solid team.  We started with one product line at a time.  We asked our production manager to write out all steps involved in producing this product from the time   raw materials are received, to the time it’s shipped out as finished goods.  Showing detailed movement flow on the plant layout.    

I still recall hearing Don’s statement when he saw the documented steps on paper.  “I just wasted $20 on gas and the part hasn’t even been shipped to the customer”.

This project was very successful.  We received recognition from our customer for quality, delivery improvement and competitiveness.  This resulted in a significant increase of business as the new driver cab was stamped and partially assembled in our plant.

Thanks to our General Manager Tara’s great leadership skills, the plant achieved shareholder expectations and received recognition from Kenworth, Peterbuilt, Freighliner and Western Star.

The plant in Medicine Hat went through a total transformation in a short period of time.  Our objective was to expand the manufacturing and assembly of the garbage trucks.  We knew our intermodel line was getting more and more outsourced to the far east and we needed to react in order to replace this business.

As we started focusing on the front loaders, we obtained feedback from our customers.  Weight, quality and reliability were their main concerns.  We needed to take this into consideration moving forward. 

The first step we took was to design and engineer a front loader that could go from 32 to 38 feet in length.  All components needed to be modular for ease of assembly and we set an objective for our trucks to be 2000 lbs lighter than our competitor’s in each category.    

The second step was to build work cells for making different components with quick length modification and an assembly line that allowed us to start and finish the assembly of main components, hydraulics, electrical, surface preparation and painting.

From time to time, our Kelowna team pitched in to assist the Medicine Hat team. I hired Dr. Gabi Balan to lead this project and later promoted him to our plant manager.  I must say that I’m very proud of his accomplishments.  This project was very successful and exceeded everyone’s expectations.  In 1994 we used to build 15 trucks a year and by the end of the 90s, Wittke was building 1000 trucks per year.

I’m proud to still see trucks on North American roads today bearing the Wittke name.

With ingenuity and determination, both plants worked together as a team.  I cannot recall all the names of our key people, however, I can definitely say we were a success and extremely competitive.  We worked through our initial hurdles and became one outstanding and dedicated team. 

Thank-you for your dedication!  It’s been 15 years and there’s some names that still come to mind that I’ll probably never forget. Mike Hall, Don Siebert, Ed Samp, Andy Marlow, Rick Hogaboam, Al Dare, David Lurie, Dan Allison, Dan Willms, Paul Plocktis, Tara Sangster, Marnie, David Lurie, Murray Francom, Paul Cairney, Nic Mendoza and Gabi Balan.

While working for Northside Industries, David Lurie produced an amazing video that he presented to our Northside team during our 1996 Christmas party.  I’d like to share this video with you and will post it later this week so that you can see our wonderful team spirit.