COVID-19’s Impact on Industrial Manufacturing and Broadband

Welcome to Wavelengths, a podcast with Amphenol Broadband Solutions. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Wavelengths on Amphenol Broadband Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Litwin, the voice of b two b. And folks, thanks so much for joining us on another episode of Wavelengths. We appreciate you listening along with some quality broadband industry thought leadership. As we continue with our conversation today, make sure that you're heading to our website, Amphenol Broadband dot com, as well as subscribing to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Just hit that subscribe button, you'll have a full catalog of previous episodes as well as notifications when we drop new ones. So with today's conversation, we're looking back on the last year of COVID impacts on industrial manufacturing and the broadband industries. If we look at a National Association of Manufacturers survey from earlier during the pandemic, that survey found that nearly eighty percent of manufacturers expected the pandemic to hurt their business, especially their operations, seeing things like workforce reduction and broader impacts from a global recession. Now that we're a year out from the start of the pandemic and we've got an end on the horizon, we can see which companies were able to weather the storm and how. We're happy to say that Amphenol was one of those companies that made it out the other side, as the consequences of crumbling under the COVID pressure would have left a major scar on the electronics industry if Amphenol had folded. So with our conversation, we're unpacking what the reactive and proactive steps were that the Amphenol team took to stay afloat during the pandemic, how manufacturing sustainability intersects with those strategies, and more importantly, understand what sort of measures need to be put into place to keep a critical supplier of the electronics industry operational, even outside of a pandemic and crisis mode. So for insights today, we're joined by Barry Holt, Vice President of global cable operations for Amphenol Broadband Solutions. Barry, great to have you on. How are doing? I'm good. Thank you, Daniel. Absolutely. Yeah. Pleasure getting to chat today. Looking forward to getting your thoughts on this. I wanna start by breaking down your background because I think it gives us a really interesting perspective on the global supply chain. So with Amphenol, you manage manufacturing operations across various countries, including the US, Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam, Korea, China, and Canada. And specifically with China, you were able to see the effects of restrictions, lockdowns, and obviously the health impacts on the supply chain a little earlier than maybe some other US centric players in the space. So I want to rewind and look at those early days of COVID. Can you give us a bit of a timeline on those early days as COVID hit? How did you see the industry begin to prepare, especially since you were able to see both, you know, China and US respond simultaneously. Yeah. I think the biggest effect was in January going into February last year. The Chinese government really stepped in despite what you really read in the papers. They took a they took a very strong stance early, you know, that this should be quarantined and obviously it's a different culture and, you know, it's a lot easier to do those in a country like China. But the, we took those effects from the start. You know, it was proper testing, you know, we started instantly testing temperatures, isolating people with any problems, sending people home with any symptoms, monitoring, you know, their temperature change over a couple of days and using masks, sterilization. So we really, the government set down some guidelines early that really weren't required, but we took them to heart from the start. We realized that this could be terrible, you know, if you have an outbreak or it hits the plant, we could be shut down for long periods of time. So the biggest thing was, you know, not fighting the process and taking it to kind of the extremes from day one. And you know, we used that in China what we saw. So going into February we were only down basically about two weeks. We were deemed essential right from the start. We worked with the government to make sure we got that certification. They came in and did some inspections to make sure that our measures were satisfactory. But the biggest thing was protecting the people. You know, our employees are our biggest asset and anybody that was sick or disruption we knew would disrupt our business. So we, we did pretty severe measures right from the start. As those came into place and we saw that it was going to start to be outside of China and to the rest of the world, you know, I instantly worked with our groups in all the countries. So we implemented pretty strong measures in all the countries immediately into February as it started to be a global pandemic coming into March. We were already doing measures in the other countries in the US and Brazil and Vietnam. You know we started taking temperatures at the door wearing masks make them mandatory on-site. You know working on all of those measures that we knew worked in China and kept them running. So I think that doing that, it really put us in a good position to keep those plants open, long before even locally in each of the countries, the measures were pushed by the government. Yeah, definitely. No, thank you for all that, all that context. That's great. I think the biggest one was masks and stuff. There was, you know, you know, United States and some places, Canada, there was a lot of controversy whether masks should be required in public, whether they really protected you whether you were protecting other people but I think from early on it was apparent that the only way masks work is everybody wears them and you have to make it mandatory. So I think the biggest step we took was the cleaning and the protecting the people and forcing the masks from the start. And it was a learning experience, you know, at the time it seemed like a little bit of a fight with some of the plants because it seemed almost too harsh of measures. But as, as it became apparent that this was a, this was a world changing event, I, I think we were ahead of the curve, you know. By the time the mask shortage started, we already had all of our plants well equipped. You know, we had the safety supplies long before the toilet paper crisis hit the Right. Yes. When the toilet paper is off the shelves, that's when you know it's serious. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So since you were in so many countries with such a wide footprint, did you have to diversify your approach, whether that is a diversification in the kinds of measures you took across, you know, USA versus Vietnam versus Canada versus China, or maybe a differentiation in how you had to approach the plants with options, right, whether that is because of the culture of, you know, the company culture that was built at the plants or anything in between. I guess just were there any differentiators across your various countries and footprints? And if so, yes. How'd you manage them? Yeah. I think every country handled it different. And even to today, you know, we're over a year later and I think a lot of the countries are still handling it different. Even in the United States, almost every state handled it different. For us we had a pretty strong guideline from our corporate. Amphenol took a pretty strong stance from the start that we were going to do the extra measures. We weren't to, we weren't going to go half, know, it wasn't going to be some masks. It wasn't going to be some things. We, our corporate really had updates weekly and, know, pushing some mandates for us instead of working with what the country required and the local specifics, we basically took the pretty strong measures that we put in China from the start and made them universal around the world. So I I think there was some battles, you know, some of the people were, you know, they're working in a country with almost no local restrictions yet. You know, you could go out and eat in restaurants, you could go out to bars, you could be in the public with a mask on, without a mask on, and here we are at work checking temperatures, sending you home if you have a fever, putting masks on. So I think we, the best way we thought to handle these differences is to just take the most strict measures. And it's, I think that's the key was, and what we told all our people is our number one goal is to keep you guys safe. We don't want you or your family sick. We don't want you part of anything. We know that, you know, the ripple effects of the cost of the disruption in business is one thing, but we depend on our employees long term and, you know, we did have some deaths. We had four or five deaths globally in our plants of people that worked in the plants even though the measures we took. But we didn't have any cases in any of our plants that were caught at work. And a lot of the feedback we got from people, especially as things got worse, was that they felt a lot safer at work than they did at home or on public transportation or out in their daily lives. I think that's because some of the, just the different approach that countries took at the safety levels and I think people looked at work and thought, you know, I feel safe at work because everything's being contained. It's when I'm not at work. So all of the cases that we confirmed, which is very few, you know, for a thousand employees worldwide, we had very few cases of COVID. Every one of them were from outside sources, either caught from family or, you know, caught in outings, but there was none verified that was caught at work. So I think that's that's the key and that's I feel that was our success story that we we didn't put anybody at risk at work. We we just took from the start that it's gotta be as harsh a terms as possible to keep everybody safe. I wanna continue to highlight the scope of your company and its footprint in the electronics industry, because I think this really is the the crux of why we're having this conversation today. If Amphenol had, let's say, not been able to respond proactively to this crisis, there could have been a major gap supplying critical components to various different aspects of various industries. So I want to clarify some of that for our audience. How integrated are you and your company to the global supply chain? And what are some of the larger flows of goods, parts, services, critical components that your company enables? It's a lot a lot of it's cables and connectors, and we have cables and connectors and everything, you know, but one of the biggest we had for the year is basically the Internet and broadband. You know, with everybody at home, the use of internet from home was huge. As more and more people transition to working from home, the need for the companies that are supplying the internet service was huge. And over a short period of time they put a massive spend into these items that basically made sure that you could get that high speed internet to your home or that your cell phone worked. And a lot of it was in the back system. We supply a lot of cables and connectors into the back plane, supporting that load and making sure that your your internet is clean, that your phone works properly and stuff. So as a, for the global, it's all tied together, you know, we really have integrated, there's components in almost every country in the world that are tied together and it really, I, for me the, this whole thing really highlighted how small the world is, you know, how, how container problems in Los Angeles can affect global supply. Everything is so tied together that I think the toilet paper as you mentioned earlier is a perfect example. Know, when you flood the use of these things in a short period of time, these companies aren't set to have six or seven months usage in a short period of time. That's just not the way they're set up. And supply chain, when you have a supply chain, especially from Asia to North America and back and around, these supply chains are like long trains and it's a very long process. You know, you've got six weeks in transit, but you've got four or five weeks of lead time in the factories, you've got four or five week lead time for raw material supply. So this train is months long and I think that really became apparent if you disrupt that or you try and speed that up you can't adapt. A lot of the people weren't able to do it. I think for us we, you know, we saw it kind of coming and, you know, right from the start we, we knew that, that the supply chain, if we disrupted it or put a gap in it, that it would be felt everywhere, especially by our customers. So I think we ramped up really quickly. We supplied well over what a normal year was for us. We kind of thought that it would be a down year, especially with the disruptions around the world, but it was a growth year for us. We had quite a bit of growth. So those supply chains are so tied together, but I think because we put entities, years ago we put these factories around the world to be where they need to be to supply quicker. You know, there's a lot of companies that bring from say China into the United States and that's their supply chain, but they just, they depend on a lot of external people for that. For us, we put a lot of factories locally where we needed to so that we controlled that supply chain up close. You know, we could work with the vendors, not twelve hours, you know, difference, but on a day to day basis, we were able to kind of prioritize us over a lot of the other companies. We have such a regular supply, we deal with them that, and we started early, you know. We saw it early in China, we reacted quick to the load and really putting these, we, we pressed that pedal early to get these things going and ensure that our partners were safe and using the same measures that we were. And, I think the, the end result was that we really didn't see any disruption and we actually seen a pretty large increase across all areas. And I that's key. And I think as going forward, we're realizing that a lot of people aren't gonna go back to work. And I think that's gonna be the change in the world. Before there was this drive of working from home and a lot of it was impossible or people really didn't think it was it could be done. But I think this last year proved globally that a lot of the jobs can be done well or even better from home once you're you're set up. But for us, we knew right from the start that that then you need that technology in your home that was only available in the past in the office. I think people went to the office, they had a good setup, it was with the interaction, but a lot of those jobs were because the internet was better, the printers, the service. So as the technology has changed over the last couple of years, you need basically the setup that you would have needed only in an, or was only possible in an office in your home. And I, I would believe that most people believe that they can work as well or better from home. And part of that is, is the technology behind it. I also want to know, how this impacted you personally. Did you get a lick of sleep during the pandemic? I mean, I'm sure the stressors were off the charts. They were, you know, it was, for me, I'm a belief that I need to do it in person, you know, the face to face. I travel two hundred thousand miles a year for the last eight or nine years. And that face to face and interacting with the plants is a key part of my management style. And that was completely disrupted, you know, so everything moved to, moved to online calls and Zooms every day and stuff. And that was a, it was a big learning curve, you know. It was, the big part was just making sure that everybody was safe. And as the stats became everything, you know, when the paper was just engulfed with the stats and what's going on in Italy shutting down and the world falling apart, that, you know, how do we reach out and make sure that the plants are doing well, that we're, that they don't need anything, that they have the support, that we're keeping people safe. So for me it was a lot of late nights, not a lot of sleep for quite a few months, I think. But the key was that we had, I have really good managers in the plants. I don't micromanage them. I try and have a good relationship with all the people and put the proper team in there that can handle it without a lot of guidance. So it was great to see that I didn't have to babysit them or, you know, talk to them every day to see how they're doing. Once they realize that, you know, look, they're strong teams, they have the right measures and, you know, they care. And so that's, you know, for me it was a tough year for sure. And we had just worked, we just opened a plant in Vietnam. I was there seven or eight times over a couple of months. And really when COVID hit in February, we were just starting to get up to full steam. But in the end it was the relationships I had with the people running those plants and going forward, just making sure they had the answers and the feedback and support they needed and that they could do the good job on the ground by themselves. So yeah, it was a big change and for me I'm missing that not the travel so much. I think the actual time you spend on an airplane is kind of a waste, but the face to face is hard to beat, you know. So I know when this is over, lot of people are saying they would never go back to traveling the way they did before. But for me that people are like family and it's, you know, I miss them and I miss seeing the plants and seeing how they're doing it. For me it'll go right back. I think similar, just just with a new way. I don't think you're gonna get on a plane in the next five years without a mask on a hundred percent. There's just some ways that it'll never be the same, I guess. I'm also curious how this impacted both the industries that you support with your technologies and solutions, as well as your relationships with those key business partners. So how did you see this mobilization and impact on the manufacturing supply chain hit your partners and their broader industries? I think that providers was a huge difference. The Internet providers always came to your home. I think one of the big aspects was they would, if you needed Internet in your home, somebody would have to come and hook it up. And we offer a solution that's basically a take home, a home install kit basically. You know, everybody now has cable in their house and cat five in the wall and stuff, so with, it's kind of plug and play and then initiating the devices has always been from a distance. So we've seen a lot of companies go from self installs was maybe twenty percent and, some of those went to eighty or ninety percent. And one of the solutions we have is, we do these, install kits. Basically, they mail it to your home. It has everything in it so you can basically hook it up yourself, plug it in, get it to the place where it's functioning and then phone in and activate it from a distance. So we've seen that part of our business. We make a lot of those kits in Vietnam that actually went through the roof in a short period of time. I think we also helped some of our customers with masks, with safety equipment. Like I said, we were in a good position early for supply before it really got tight. So we offered and supplied a lot of the safety equipment and helped some of our customers that way. But we could see, you know, a lot of them, we like to go out and visit our customers and have the relationship face to face and that's all changed also, same way with the plants. A lot of those people are working from home, they're, even if they're in the office, they're not allowed to have visitors. So that way, it was a tough transition, especially for our sales team, not be able to interact face to face with them. And, you know, we're a partnership company. We're not to sell and forget. Most of our customers and people we've dealt with for a long time, ten, twenty years, We have that personal relationship with stopping in their office and seeing what their problems are. You know, what problems are you having and how can we solve it? So I think that really helped, you know, they knew we were there as part of the solution. They reached out to us when they got in trouble as things changed and I think we adapted pretty well. And a lot of those, some of those companies are not going to go back to the office. So it was a real learning curve. Know salesmen were like me and I could, you know, travel. If you travel basically every day, days a week out to see customers and now you're trapped in your home, it's how do you find in yourself? How do I feel productive? How, you know, am I doing enough? Who do I need to call? A lot of those things, we all battled with the same thing and I think when we connected with our customers, we realized that they're the same. They're running through the exact same problems. They're trying to figure it out and just building on those relationships that we always had. They they reached out and, we worked through it. And I I think it strengthened our relationship with most of our customers. So you mentioned some of these up top towards the beginning of the podcast, but I wanna give you a chance to get even more detailed with some of your strategies. But as I understand it, you played a unique role in not only quickly reacting to the pandemic, but also making sure that the essential business operations and fulfillment of manufacturing services would be preserved. But also, with your unique position managing plants internationally, in the Asian markets, in the Pacific, in European and African areas, you were able to take some proactive measures as well from a global perspective. So, like I said, you already broke some of these down, but if you could get more detailed on the key measures you implemented to ensure that uninterrupted flow of products and services, and what some of the strategies and decisions that you had to make to influence those final decisions? I think a lot of it was taken to the extremes. You know, we implemented, we tried to quickly adapt to the new problems. So just putting masks and temperatures and stuff like that in the plants didn't, what it did was really slow everything down. You know, if you can't get within six feet of the people you're working with that's such a change. You know, how do you drive that through the offices? How do you adapt so that things don't shut down? I think we worked hard to try and implement some things that made those easier. We put infrared photo identification cameras at the door of all of our plants. You basically come in, look at the camera, it identifies your Barry Holt, takes your temperature, gives you a green light. We had somebody there, you know, with a little tick mark with the usual questions, if you've been in contact with anybody with COVID. You know, we rearranged the desks. We used contact tracers, So all of our plants actually have a contact tracer. When you come in in the morning it clips on your belt and it basically gives you a little vibration if you're within six feet of another person. It also records that. And for us it was contact tracing. You know, how do you, you could go back then and look at that tracer. So if that person came, caught COVID say in the next week, you could go back on the contact tracer and it would show you that they've in contact six feet of these twelve people over the last couple weeks. It also gave us a bit of a report where, you know, I'm not trying to invade on people's privacy But, you know, it would give us an alarm. This person has been close to other people ten times this week. Then the supervisor could go talk to them and just say, hey, you know, you're a little in the bounds. But the biggest part of that is how do we continue the business without grinding it to a halt. You know, if you look at the restaurant industry, you know, cutting their capacity at fifty percent just paralyzed that. And we realized early that, for us, if something is implemented that chops our business in half or limits our ability to function, that's going to be critical. So a lot of it, it was just pressing the extremes and trying to solve the problems. A lot of calls on how do you cut down on this. You know, we always started in the morning and everybody would punch in within five minutes and be out on the floor working. You start putting a temperature check and some things, you know. We started to see if the plant has two or three hundred people in it, you could be check-in, could be an hour in the morning. So we had to try and streamline that process, make it as easy for the people. We also pressed our supply chain. We, we made sure we, we gave more orders. We strengthened our position with raw materials instead of giving them one, two months orders. We stretched that out three or four months to give them the security that we're gonna be here. You know, you, you need to be ready. We're not shutting down next month. This is the load. You guys need to react to it. We also pushed our own safety measures. We shared, you know, practices and cleaning methods and ways that you fog it deep into our supply chain to make sure that they know. And in some instances, some of those business didn't make it, you know, if you, you always ran into a supplier that had an outbreak, couldn't use them anymore. So we had to diversify a little bit more. So we pressed some of our commitments, but we also stretched out, made sure that we had a couple of options. And I think in the long term the biggest effect was stretching the commitments with the fear that everything's going to shut down. If you're a small manufacturer or a big manufacturer, doesn't matter if you're selling us copper or providing containers for us. You don't know which business is going to go under and which was not. And I think we were pretty adamant that we're here in the long term, you know, we're taking ten containers a week in Vietnam. We'll commit to, you know, fifty over the next five weeks. We need to get those booked and put them in. So I think for our team and for me I had to push and make sure that everybody knew that those longer commitments were fine. Know, we're always tight on inventory and trying to hold stuff but the commitment level had to be longer. You know, we need to guarantee that our supply chain knew that we're here for the long term, we're not shutting down and we're actually booming. So I think that was the biggest change. Now, in that decision making process, were there any areas where you had to make sacrifices or difficult decisions to keep your supply chain operational, as well as keep your employees safe? Was there anything that, you know, maybe wasn't best for the bottom line, but was best for the employee and therefore you had to enact it, or maybe opposite? Know, give us that breakdown. I think one of the ones was that people without symptoms could be contagious. And do you push more testing and possibly find a lot of people that are basically walking around functioning and healthy showing no symptoms or do you test a larger group of people with the possibility of shutting it down? We also had, you know, the containment period. We enforced the fourteen days containment if you showed any symptoms and near the first, some of these, know, the testing wasn't globally ready really probably till June last year where it was, and even after that it was difficult. So in a lot of countries, if you showed some symptoms, we couldn't verify that those people had it or not. There was no test. So I had to make the decision. The decision upfront was that if you're showing any type of symptoms, you're off for the fourteen days. You know, we couldn't do anything else. Whether you had the common cold or whether you just had the sniffles or maybe allergic reaction, I think in some instances we sent people home that didn't need to be and it proved that way. And I think as the testing came out and was more regular we could verify that. But at the first I think that was one of the tougher decisions. You know, do you shut down a section? Do you send that person home that's critical because they have, you know, allergies and they're telling you but, you know, if there was, if you start to split those lines and keep people that might have been sick then it could endanger everybody else. I think that was one of the tougher decisions for me and all the managers where any symptoms you're off, you know, and if your wife or your family has symptoms you have to let us know and if that's true then you're probably off too. So I think those are some of the tougher decisions are whether you keep at work and sustain the business or do you on the side of caution and make sure that the people are safe. So those are some of the tough ones. The supply chain too of safety equipment, was very tough in some countries near the first. So we had to make some decisions to ration other countries. We shipped some from China, it cut us a little short. We shipped some from the United States to other countries, it cut us a little short. But I think we had to balance it, you know, some risk locally to make sure that some of the other plants were safe and sometimes those are tough decisions. Know, you don't want to put anybody at risk by shipping a couple of months of supply of masks to support another country, you know, for the people in the plants. They they are part of a team, but in the end, something like this, it's, you know, my my safety is first. So those are those were some of the tough decisions. I wanna further break down your response to the pandemic now by highlighting a few key solutions from Amphenol in your wide portfolio of solutions, and then intersect that with how the company adapted to continue delivering these particular critical services. Because some of them are technology, and some of them are a little wider. They're more of a service. They're not just a piece of hardware. So let's start with the hardware though. Your main set of technology that you offer your partners and end users is wired and wireless bandwidth solutions. Was there anything specific you had to do to maintain the operations and delivery of those critical components? And if so, what did that look like? Yeah. We had to we have Mexico got hit the hardest. We have a large production plant in Mexico. There was problems not only with COVID, but as you know, the tariffs building a wall between the United States and Mexico made relations very difficult. So we had, we had a lot of disruptions in service in February, March, April, May last year. And our customers at the time were booming. So those, those mainly cable and stuff we had to diversify, bring from some other countries. We usually don't import from Korea. You know, the cost is a little higher, but we had to react pretty quickly and get another line of, supply coming even though it was a little more expensive and cut into our profits just to make sure that the customer didn't have a disruption in supply. So what we've seen was really disrupting our global supply and how we regularly feeded customers, you know, our products on a daily basis. When, when that came into a crisis, we had to make some tough decisions on diversifying and maybe stop making locally and start bringing from more foreign places. So there, there was a quite a, few changes we had to make in our supply chain to make that happen. And at the time Vietnam was just starting, so really tough to take a plant with three hundred, four hundred people and ramp it up again in a short period of time to kind of compensate for something it really wasn't designed to be. So was I think the biggest thing was re getting ahead of the supply chain and making some changes that weren't planned, you know. So so we did bring a lot of product from Korea, a lot from from Vietnam that we would have made in in Mexico, but with the disruption, we had to had to make some of those changes. Yeah, it's curious, you know, with such a large footprint, how much, you know, one plant or one set of operations in one country will impact the broader supply chain for Amphenol and also for the electronics industry. You know, obviously that's typical for a the sort of global economy that we live in today. But, you know, I think seeing it down to that granular level for wired and wireless bandwidth solutions really highlights just how integrated all of these moving parts are and how, you know, throwing one wrench into the gears on the left side of the equation can totally, you know, throw a wrench on the right side too, basically. So if we dig deeper into your services, we also see things like premise installation as part of what you offer. So you send teams out to the field to actually assist in getting these wired and wireless solutions installed and integrated. That obviously was given a shakeup because of a global pandemic. How did Amphenol respond with those services and were there any key steps you had to take to ensure site safety, individual employee, and partner safety? Thoughts there. We provided a training program. So one of our biggest one is we do an online training program with videos, training videos. We we went out, we were training a huge amount of our customers, installers, people in a in a face to face. But we've always backed that with a pretty strong media part. You know, it's courses that you take at home for employees. We really found as the technology has changed, a lot of our customers have, you know, tens of thousands of people working to install their product on a day to day and as the technology changes one of the things they really struggled with is how to train those people. So one of our biggest assets I believe is our training program to get out there and help train these people and show the company that you can help. So we've trained thousands and thousands of people yearly on our products, the use, the installation. We provide, we have portals they can go in, we put together a program. When we come to site we do some training on-site, we follow-up with kind of a set of videos and tests and stuff that each installer would have to watch, then we could provide our customer and say, okay, thousand guys we trained, they have had these seven courses, they have basically certified it all, so your guys have been fully trained on these products. So as the pandemic went, it wasn't just the installations just faded away for a lot of our customers. They were doing as best as they could not to go to the home And they didn't really want the on-site training, they didn't want the interaction, you know, everybody's in their own little bubble and how do you keep from bringing too many people from the outside into that. So our key was that we had have a huge library of training programs, so pushing those through, making sure that we could get to these people even in their home without going out, I think was the key. So we didn't, a lot of the site visits did stop and we we tried to move more to the platform online. I think that was part of our success through it. The other main aspect of your services that I wanted to highlight was Amphenol's focus on global sustainability and some of these solutions that you offer in that space. Can you break down how those services were impacted by the pandemic and how that intersects with Amphenol's broader strategies. Sustainability is a, it's been a buzzword I guess for the last ten years, but we really, the last four or five years have taken it to heart. All of our plants, I push pretty hard along this. I think it is a good feeling leaving the, I like the zero footprint thought. You know, it kind of reminds me of a beach or something, you know, you start in the morning and it is no foot footsteps and then a thousand people, it's just completely ruined. But at the end of the day, you know, it kind of, the waves come in and wash it clean again, and I think the thought that that isn't what the world is, you know, that we're we're really leaving a lasting impact on the planet going forward. So we, we started along the sustainability and the first thing is, is really your usages. Cut down on your usages, get into your scrap, your electricity, all the easy things as to tackle and measure. But sustainability is so much more, you know, we extend sustainability once it's not just the wastes in your footprint is what, you know, how do you sustain the community? How do you help outside our plant? We have a lot of resources and people coordinated that we can do help. So we did a lot of, part of it is outreach programs, know, what can we do in food drives, what can you do with planting trees, working with the community. So that outreach program basically stopped and for a lot of people just trying to reduce your amount of scrap is not so personal. But as we put together sustainability teams and all the plants, it became more and more that you were making a difference, that you're not only affecting what you leave here as your footprint, but you're able to go out and support the community and spread it out. And I think that's the rewarding part of the sustainability. And that's, for a lot of that, that was put on hold for a period of time. Things kind of stopped around the world, but we've seen we've had some other ones. We did a good food drive in Virginia this year, you know, because of people hit by COVID, a lot of poverty, and a lot of needs. We worked with the local church group to basically bring donations in and then, you know, as a plant they were looking for everything from food to toothpaste to toothbrushes to cleaning supplies, stuff like that. So we basically put together a program where the employees brought in some stuff, we would match it and support it. So I think once you get into that sustainability and these teams start to feel that they're making a difference, just not on your footprint, but how do we affect the community? How do you take this to help the community? And I think that drive was there. When COVID came in, a lot of these projects that they were working outside, you know, Brazil does a fantastic job of stuff like this and you know, that drive was still there. So I think as soon as people learned that the world has changed and there is an adaptation, you know, we still work to provide those and just came up with a different method. So I think as going forward that's the big thing that sustainability is not just about sustaining the planet and going forward, it's sustaining the community. How do you support the people and the reward it gives people from working on it? You know, it's great that it's not only a benefit from the business, it's a benefit for the planet, but there's a lot of cost factors. It's reducing the waste, the costs, increasing the service and that image of the company is one of the big aspects. When you do these programs in your region and stuff, you're looked at as a responsible company and that follows through to a lot of things. It follows through to employee satisfaction. Everybody would love to work for a company that people are asking about saying, hey, I saw you were doing this in the community. That's so fantastic. It must be great to work there. Know, so it's that image allows you to draw talent and draw people that wanna work with you and that's part of the big aspect of the sustainability is it's not just about reducing the waste, it's bigger than that. It's an image of the company as not being a destroyer of the planet but maybe additive. So Amphenol's taken a pretty strong stance on the sustainability and over the next ten years I can really see that if you're a company that's not doing that, you're probably not going to last. You know, people are going to want to be part of that program. We have some of our customers that have said they're going to be zero footprint, you know, by two thousand and thirty and that seems like a long way across, but to be zero footprint is a is a huge step and it's not just your company. It's got to be all your vendors. You got to push that down to your vendors. You got to start and peck people that you're going to do business with got to have the same values as you. And I'm hopefully that it it looks back, you know, in generations in the future that, you know, the companies that just poured the oil in the in the water and didn't really care too much about, you know, their environmental impact won't be around anymore. That'll be a different place. On that topic of sustainability, I want to wrap our conversation by breaking down some initiatives around manufacturing sustainability at a higher level and intersecting them with Amphenol's COVID response. So in some ways, the pandemic actually reduced carbon emissions as production slowed and demand for oil, natural gas, just fossil fuels in general, also decreased. Do you think this is gonna have a long term effect on the industrial manufacturing industry? Yes or no? Why or why not? I would like to think it would, but I I think the fact is that about half the businesses in the on the planet were affected or shut down for a period of time. And a large part of it I think is cars. People trapped in their home, being told to stay home for long periods of time just meant that people were using it less. I'd love to think that people learned from this, that going forward you don't get to go back to normal. But I think we're going to see a rebound. I think a lot of people are feeling trapped and their way of life and the ability to drive where I wanted and do what I want is going to open up and you're going to have a boom again. And it might get worse for a little while. So I would hope that it's, you know, this little bit of change showed that we can do things differently. But I think for a lot of the businesses and a lot of the change in the environmental impacts were because things weren't running. It'd be great if the countries could get together and put some thoughts into, you know, how do we do it different? I think the electric cars and the drive for electric is huge and I think the global commitment to that is is gonna is gonna change things in the right direction. I think a lot of people look now that electric car is more expensive, but I'm doing it to to reduce my footprint, you know. Whether that's true or not or how that electricity is being generated, I think the biggest factor is you're just not having the emissions that you would have from the cars. So I think the trend is there and I hope it goes forward, I think my personal thought is on the environmental impact is really because people aren't doing what they normally did. So I think it's probably gonna go back the other way pretty quick. But, but there's always hope that that we'll learn from it and see that a little bit of a slowdown would actually really affect the planet. But that's I'm not too optimistic, unfortunately. Alright. One more question for you, Barry, before we wrap up the conversation here. But, how do you think that this pandemic is going to motivate other trends such as software support, IT or OT capacity, you know, anything like that to encourage sustainable manufacturing? I think that it's on everybody's mind. I think the biggest drive is that companies want to be green. They don't they see the impact of these companies getting vilified in the newspapers and everything you do, there's nothing secret anymore. Anything that's bad is out there and it's it's it's immediate. So I I think companies driving in this direction and looking for sustainable solutions is really changing things already. You know, what would have been a decision based on cost, just what's the cheaper method. A lot of us have put in place that the sustainability has to be looked at if you're buying a new piece of equipment. That's one of the questions you should be asking. It shouldn't be just cost and usage and savings and stuff like that. There's a sustainability. How is it affecting the programs that we have in place already? Is this going to increase our water output? Is it going to increase our scrap or rework? You know, is it going to affect the community? These are decisions, things that people are looking at. And I know for sure all the big companies have these questions. What's that's driving is it's driving this option that if you're selling equipment or something to people, you've got to address that. You've got to, as a manufacturer, you've got to address the fact that people are going to be looking for, you know, a realist package or something with zero waste. So I think the long term drive is you're going to see an effect globally in a lot of areas. These have got to be considerations that people take into account that ten years ago would have never even been talked about. Nobody really cared if it came in a plastic container wrapped five times that I threw in the garbage and filled a dumpster in plastic every week. But that's that is a factor now and you've got to take that into account. So I think you're gonna see a real boom in these things and obviously a lot of those solutions now I say this a good sustainable solution is more expensive. But everything's an economy of scale. If that has to be a decision in things that you're making that it'll dominate the market more and more and as more of them are made, the cost will go down and I would hope that the sustainable options become part of the staple. That if if you're not creating a product that's pretty sustainable, doesn't affect the planet, doesn't add to my personal waste, then you'll win the market. So I I, for sure, we're already seeing that, but as we go forward, I think this will get stronger and stronger. Alright. Barry Holt, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Wavelengths. I really appreciate you breaking down how Amphenol responded to the pandemic, how you managed various footprints across the globe, and some learning lessons, honestly, for what other companies can do to have that proactive approach that prioritizes not only supply chain and operations, but also employees and their health and well-being. So again, we've been chatting with Barry Holt, Vice President of Global Cable Operations for Amphenol Broadband Solutions. Barry, I appreciate it. If folks want to find out more about you or about any of Amphenol's solutions, how can they get in touch? How can they learn more? Thank you very much, Daniel. It was a pleasure for sure. I think if you go to our online platforms know Amphenol Broadband Solutions is out there. Our contact, we're a pretty open company for people that want to reach out. So I I think we're out there and we're available, and I think our our offerings are pretty solid. Fantastic. Barry, thanks again for your time, and I'm looking forward to chatting again soon. Okay. Thanks, Daniel. And thank you everyone for listening to today's episode of Wavelengths on Amphenol Broadband solutions podcast. If you like what you heard and wanna listen to previous episodes, make sure that you head to our website, Amphenol broadband dot com, and subscribe to Wavelengths on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I'm your host, Daniel Litwin, the voice of b to b. Till next time.