Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Gerry Angeli. Gerry has been a manufacturing and supply chain executive for over 35 years, including CEO-level experience. He's had the opportunity to work all over the planet on products, ranging from high volume consumers to very custom high value-added durable goods. Gerry, welcome to the show.
Gerry Angeli: Lisa, it's great to be here. I appreciate you extending the invitation to be on the podcast.
Lisa Ryan: Absolutely. Please share with us your background and what led you to do what you're doing.
Gerry Angeli: Well, it all started way back when I left college, and I remember the line in the interview that got me into my first job. Coming out of engineering school, the interviewer asked me what I would like. I said, look, if you're looking for a world-class designer, that's not me. But if you're looking for somebody who knows how to troubleshoot things analytically and fix stuff, and work on items associated with quality and reliability. So he stopped me when he said I get 1000 of the first kind.
I get one a year of you when can you come to visit the shop and that's how it started so from then until and in the early days, people called me a factory rat. I was always in the factory, so that's how I got started in manufacturing and the supply chain. It's a virtuous profession to make things and get them out there. So throughout my career, I've been up and down the supply chain. From customer service, on the one end to procurement, on the other, it's treated me well.
Lisa Ryan: Being in the supply chain these days is just a little tricky. So, what are some of the things you're seeing that your experience or seeing happening in the industry? What are some of the ideas that you have to reestablish business continuity?
Gerry Angeli: Well, that's the greatest place to start. I get very vocal about what I see going on at times, and much of it has its roots back in the 1980s when just-in-time and zero inventory production started. I'll hold that thought for a second because those were all good things to do. When I came to Florida, I was recruited by a company down here in Hollywood. Shortly after that, I got an operations executive. They had manufacturing locations in various parts of the planet. They had just moved the company from another State to South Florida when I got here. As I entered, the boss said to me, "I need you to stick your nose in something for me. Everybody warned me that there are hurricanes here, and you got to have a plan if you're in manufacturing, whether it's here or anyplace else, to recover from a weather event."
We didn't call it business continuity. Back then, it was disaster recovery. I stuck my nose into the topics. As I got involved with it, naturally, the first thing is power, the second thing is water. All learning associated with recovering from a hurricane or a flood or a tsunami doesn't matter. It is episodic. You learn what to do.
Next time because of what's happened to you this time. So, there's no manual written. There's no checklist. There's no place you can go to say what is it the way I have to do. Can I run down this list and be safe? No. You've got to build your knowledge. And so we began doing that, and the more I got involved with it, we went through a couple of storms, where you're down for a week or two.
You begin you build an encyclopedia dictionary of what to do. You'll resonate with this. One of the things that I learned early on is they always talk about power and water. Stay away from the down electrical lines. You gotta take care of the folks.
They were getting ready for it, preparing for the coming storm, what happened during the storm, and what happened after the storm. The first
