Manufacturing Leadership: Why Quality and Customer Experience Belong Together

Transcript

[00:00:22] Josh: Quality often gets treated like a department or a checkpoint or something you deal with when something goes wrong, but today’s guest has spent their entire career proving that quality is none of those things. It’s a leadership discipline. It’s a system. When it’s done it shows up everywhere from the shop floor to the customer’s front door.

[00:00:41] Josh: This is someone who’s lived through complex global operations, led zero defect efforts, built analytics organizations from scratch, and carried quality responsibility across engineering, warranty, compliance, and customer experience. And not as a theory by the way, but in environments where mistakes are expensive and credibility is earned the hard way.

[00:01:01] Josh: They’ve also been a builder of people and teams mentoring the next generation of engineers and leaders, while driving real operational change inside of some of the most demanding manufacturing organizations out there. So today we’re talking about what it really takes to elevate quality beyond compliance and make it your advantage.

[00:01:19] Josh: So please welcome to the show, vice President of Quality and Customer Experience at American Woodmark Ann Tro Baugh.

[00:01:26] Josh: Welcome ma’am. Thanks for joining us today.

[00:01:28] Anne Trobaugh: Great to see you, Josh. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:30] Josh: Now, are you staying warm? It’s been pretty cold, across the, southern states and the eastern states this time of year.

[00:01:37] Anne Trobaugh: Yeah, I saw six degrees on my computer this morning, so I was happy to be seated. Not outside. but the kids have been off school for an entire week now, so that is, a bit of a challenge. I think it’s parents especially are ready for them to go back.

[00:01:51] Josh: Yeah, I understand. I understand. Yeah. I’m in Texas. We are not equipped to deal with any sort of winter weather that has anything to do with ice or snow. We got probably, I dunno, maybe two inches of ice in my driveway. I don’t even have a shovel to like clear that thing, so I was stuck in the house.

[00:02:11] Josh: so yeah, I could use advice. If any listeners have advice on dealing with winter weather, please send it to this Texan.

[00:02:18] Anne Trobaugh: I think you did well. You just stay inside.

[00:02:20] Josh: You just stay inside. That’s right. That’s right. today we’re talking about leading quality and customer experience in manufacturing at the executive level. Now we’re gonna start this conversation the same way we start all of our conversations.

[00:02:32] Josh: So Ann, what does a typical day look like for you as the vice president of quality and customer experience?

[00:02:38] Anne Trobaugh: Awesome. Yeah, I think as other guests have said, and as you would attest, no single day is the exact same. and my day starts well before. Midnight of the day off, if you will. So I mentioned I have kids, I have two teenagers, a husband who works as well. So there’s a lot of day before figuring out who needs to do what, at what time, who’s leaving to go where and when.

[00:03:05] Anne Trobaugh: So there’s a lot of communication needs for logistics, and it’s helpful just from that standpoint. Having a family and working that communication is really necessary. So my day starts well before the day from that standpoint. And then, my current role is, vice president of quality and customer Experience, so I can have any type of meetings.

[00:03:28] Anne Trobaugh: the role includes supplier quality, manufacturing, quality, product quality, customer quality, and quality systems. in the umbrella of quality. from start to finish, if you will, the entire, value chain of our product. And then the customer experience or customer engagement part includes, understanding and supporting customers, including a call center.

[00:03:54] Anne Trobaugh: so lots of variety of topic, which is really fun. But a lot of meetings and problem solving or initiative, updates, et cetera, every day looks totally different. And it’s so much fun because there’s so many different topics that I can work on.

[00:04:13] Josh: So it sounds like one of the first things you’re doing is making sure you’re prepared the day before, both for work and the stuff outside of work. That way you can have a smooth, relatively we’ll say. Expected day. ’cause like you said, you never know what troubles are gonna bring. So every great job you have a ton of meetings is what it sounds like.

[00:04:36] Josh: Now, one of the things you mentioned is, you’re sometimes you’re having to problem solve there. I’m curious, are you guiding the problem solving or are you figuring out the what, like what happened and what to do about it?

[00:04:50] Anne Trobaugh: It’s a hard balance because at an executive level, part of the most fun I’ve ever had in a career is solving big problems. But at the same time, as a leader, I have to let my team step up and do that. They’re the ones who are executing, leading the root cause analysis, et cetera. I do like to get updates in a way that doesn’t impede their progress or suggest that they have to get, input, that they’re empowered to make their own decisions.

[00:05:17] Anne Trobaugh: But at this time. I’m not solving a lot of the problems, unfortunately. So I would say some higher level that would be more on the manufacturing leadership level, not in my current role of, my team, but it’s a lot of fun to just understand the processes they go through to do the problem solving, and if they ask for advice or input, I will definitely give my thoughts or if I’m, if I think that they’re not going in the right direction, I will give them a little bit of coaching, but it’s more just understanding and getting updates on problems as they arise.

[00:05:55] Josh: So you’re facilitating the experience. You are, it sounds to some degree, enabling, the folks that you’re working with to not only learn, but a apply their own approach. Have some ownership over that role and the problem that they’re tasked with solving. even though you might be thinking in your mind like, we should really do it this way, you should look at this thing.

[00:06:17] Josh: Here’s the answer. That’s a tough transition for leaders to make. I spoke with a director of quality from Schaeffler, and he talked about looking back on his career, one of the mistakes that he felt like he made was not embracing that sooner. He went through this period where he felt like he had to have the answers, and it took time to transition from having the answers to, not being comfortable, not having the answers, but supporting people to then dig in, find the answers, and report back on it. Now. In your role, which metrics or KPIs are you focused on managing or improving?

[00:06:53] Anne Trobaugh: the biggest area of focus right now from a KPI standpoint or scorecard standpoint, we have what we call our CX dashboard, our customer experience dashboard, and we’re really focused on. Making sure that the experience the customer has with our product, so when they order a new kitchen from that time until they receive it, it’s installed and they’re in their new beautiful kitchen, the entire process is, at their expectation. And so our customers, when we think about that from a dashboard standpoint, we’re focusing on the delivery, the product quality, and the response. So are we ensuring that the cabinets or the kitchen, the cabinets arrive when we said they would on time and complete so that they have every single one of them that they had, ordered for product quality?

[00:07:47] Anne Trobaugh: It’s obvious. We just wanna make sure that the product is as expected, meets our specifications and delights the customer. So big focus on product quality, and then the response piece is. We do know that there will be issues, in every manufacturing process or delivery process. There will be some quality issues.

[00:08:05] Anne Trobaugh: We just wanna make sure that once we know of an issue, we fix it right that next time. So we aren’t sending multiple replacements to fulfill a product issue. And so we did a lot of work to say what is the most important elements from our customer’s standpoint that we need to focus on? And you have to ask the customer to get that information. We did a lot of that work and probably five years ago, put metrics within these three areas, delivery, product quality and response, put metrics in place that makes sense to our business. And each year they’ve gotten a little tougher, change very slightly. ’cause we’re still focused. we believe we’re still focused on the right things in measuring.

[00:08:54] Anne Trobaugh: For that optimal customer experience. So it’s been a great journey, but those three areas are definitely the, crux of what I will be focusing on day to day, month to month, et cetera.

[00:09:07] Josh: So it sounds like the North Star. Is that optimal customer experience? that’s what the company decided. That’s our priority. Everything must serve this. And from that decision, you and your team ended up building what you call the a CX dashboard, customer Experience dashboard. And that had the key metrics that indicate if a customer is going to be satisfied based on the firsthand research you did with your customers.

[00:09:35] Josh: What is it that you care about, which you broke down into deliver, delivery, product and response. So I think that’s such a powerful thing. I very much believe in putting the customer first, putting people first. And I love that’s the central point. And you found a way of measuring it because as we can all imagine, it’s very difficult to standardize at scale and make sure that everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to.

[00:10:03] Josh: When they’re supposed to do it the way they’re supposed to do it, et cetera. So you’re keeping a pulse on this in a way that I haven’t heard too many others doing. so I think it’s such a interesting focal point and just that report up to the executive leadership level I think is incredibly important.

[00:10:20] Anne Trobaugh: I think the, the thing we did was really focus it operationally on what we control. And so how are you, what are our critical xs into the outcome for our customer? And we have to make sure we hit those and we improve on them year over year. and then there is this, you mentioned communication and talking about that with executive leadership. We do have a very consistent process of communicating company-wide. The results of this dashboard, we’ve made it really important. And so that’s every month we communicate it via our internal website. It just making the main thing. The customer is the biggest part of our business. Here’s what we’re doing to measure that.

[00:11:03] Anne Trobaugh: And we’ve been very deliberate about that. communication from the time of when we launched this dashboard. So it’s been great to have the CEO and the COO really focused on it as well. Always helpful. so I think those two things, you focus it operationally, little pieces and then communicate it like crazy.

[00:11:24] Anne Trobaugh: Now we’re not done with our CX journey though. There’s still a lot more things we can consider with supplemental processes outside of the operations piece. So how is the ordering process? how is the, I need to make a change to an order process? There’s a lot of other things that we’re not yet focused on and we do have a plan to understand the entire customer journey and where those pain points are, but I really feel like investing in what we control from an operation standpoint, the biggest kind of that delivery product quality response focusing there has g given us huge strides.

[00:12:02] Anne Trobaugh: And then there’s always more we can do though.

[00:12:05] Josh: Absolutely right. it’s continuous improvement is a journey. it’s not a destination. quality is a, is a goal as well, but it’s never done. There’s always ways to improve. There’s always. The fact that you’re constantly having to check in with customers to make sure that if their needs change, how are you as an organization adapting or whatever the case may be.

[00:12:27] Josh: I love that you in that idea of this is our focal point. You said this, you said make the main thing. So let’s cut off all the other things that we could get caught up with. ’cause there’s so many things that we could measure and try to improve. Let’s focus on the thing that actually drives value, both for our customers and our own organization.

[00:12:47] Josh: And then to support that. You have to introduce operational changes, but communicating, keeping it in front of everyone’s mind at every level. ’cause we’ve seen consistently here at ease, the impact when leaders are involved in the higher degree of leadership. The higher that goes as far as involvement with any sort of initiative or organization, there’s much higher likelihood of success.

[00:13:13] Josh: I can’t tell you how many people have, I’ve spoken with who have said, we try to do these things, but our leaders don’t get it. Or we’re not getting the support, or people quickly forget about it. So the fact that you’re putting an effort and a focus on let’s communicate, let’s show that we are looking at this.

[00:13:32] Josh: Let’s show that we value this. We as an organization are all working together towards that. It can’t be reiterated enough, like how important that is.

[00:13:42] Anne Trobaugh: I agree totally. Sometimes the communication is as important as ’cause while we’re doing it, we can forget. We can assume that other people, everybody knows ’cause it’s my, I live this every day, but assume nobody knows anything or forgets everything and continuously put it in front of ’em. It’s just been really helpful.

[00:14:02] Josh: 100%. I once spoke with a director of sustainability at a paper pulp and packaging, manufacturer. And, one of his charge was how are we going to achieve our sustainability goals? And there’s a number of factors that went into that. But he found himself having to meet with tons of different people over and over again, and essentially the same message to a point where he was tired of saying the same message.

[00:14:28] Josh: and his learning was when you get to that point, when you are tired of repeating yourself and you can’t bring yourself to repeat it again. That’s when people are starting to listen. And so his point was like, you gotta keep doing it. You gotta keep repeating it over and over. Let’s talk about quality and customer experience.

[00:14:49] Josh: now these at surface level seem like very different areas of responsibility, but here you are leading both. So from your perspective, how are these two scopes, quality and customer experience connected?

[00:15:05] Anne Trobaugh: I mentioned a little bit of it just in the operational piece from a quality standpoint of what’s most important to the customer. A lot of it starts with quality. but if you think about the entire journey, quality can be, or maybe you said a different way, A lot of people might assume or think about quality as quality control.

[00:15:24] Anne Trobaugh: So they’re focused on the product spec, what does the product quality, but. There’s so much more to quality if you think about it as an assurance and more around the processes and proactive quality. So every single process has an element of what is necessary to ensure that it’s a great process.

[00:15:45] Anne Trobaugh: How do we make sure it doesn’t go wrong? What happens if it does go wrong? So in the entire customer journey, there’s just so much more connection to quality, a quality mindset than how we typically think of quality, maybe in that quality control bucket. So it is a broad quality can be a much broader topic, and I think there’s so well connected. You need to have, you need to understand the customer experience, but then you need to ensure that you embed quality into every process point.

[00:16:15] Josh: Yeah, I think it’s, I love, Addressing where people may be viewing a certain topic. Like we said, a lot of people think about quality and they think quality control, which you know, is not wrong. That’s an aspect of quality. But to your point, it’s much broader. And again, even in your description, you’re starting with the customer in mind.

[00:16:34] Josh: What does the customer actually want? they want a quality product. And how do they define quality? it’s a solution that meets their specific needs. So very much embedded in the success of an organization is that concept of quality. So why wouldn’t quality and customer experience fall under the same, leadership umbrella.

[00:16:52] Josh: Now, I haven’t met a significant amount of folks in quality leadership positions that also own customer experience. I’m curious, did that come about related to that. Initiative you had mentioned a few years ago, or I guess I should just back up. I’d love for you to talk to us about how quality and customer experience actually ended up coming together for you.

[00:17:18] Anne Trobaugh: It did start before my time at the company with the initiative of this. CX focus and a CX dashboard, and it ended up fitting in the quality department. And then I think the synergies started to be recognized, and then it was really like a, oh, this maybe should have happened the entire time. Some customer experience can be really focused on marketing from a, digital customer experience standpoint.

[00:17:46] Anne Trobaugh: So how is the website also important elements, right? but when you take a step back and say, okay, what is most crucial for the customer, for our product that we’re offering, it is that delivery product quality response. If you order a kitchen, you want to make sure that the delivery, you know when it’s coming, you don’t have a 10 hour window that you have to stay home and wait for it. They don’t leave it at the end of your driveway on a pallet. Because that’s a disaster. they might even, you might wanna help them understand what rooms you want to stage the cabinets in, because you might have other work in your house that you need to, take out the old kitchen. So understanding what the customer goes through and then thinking about the quality aspects of that alone.

[00:18:34] Anne Trobaugh: And it’s also connected to product quality because the damage is real from a delivery standpoint. These are, we’re shipping huge heavy boxes across the country and so there’s a lot that can get damaged, but if we ensure the entire delivery process is really well done, that only helps elevate the customer experience.

[00:18:56] Anne Trobaugh: So it’s funny to think back about the origin. It was because we focused first on what are those operational impacts? What does the plant need to do? The plant needs to make sure we don’t have any backorder material. We need to make sure we ship the kitchen in full on time. And then we also then were able to say, okay, what does the delivery agent, our logistics partners, what do they also need to work on?

[00:19:21] Anne Trobaugh: So thinking about the origin is interesting ’cause now it feels it should always be together. It’s just such an opportunity, I think, to make sure. And if you don’t have a CX or customer experience focus in a current company, maybe a different way to approach it is for a quality leader to say, what does the customer really want?

[00:19:42] Anne Trobaugh: And how do we know that? How are we focused on that and ensure that we are evaluating, putting controls in place and making sure the product meets that customer requirement.

[00:19:56] Josh: I think you brought up a very critical question that might sometimes go unasked, and it wasn’t, what does the customer want? I think that’s a very obvious question, but your next question was how do we know that validating that understanding, because assumptions can put you off the right track, or you could be working off of outdated information.

[00:20:20] Josh: what may have been true at one time may no longer be true. So I love that you asked that, that critical question of how do we know that’s true? That’s that’s such an important,concept just in general, right? With think about every problem solving like we were talking about. you get a data point, okay, how do we know that this is true?

[00:20:38] Josh: You have to challenge those things.

[00:20:40] Anne Trobaugh: And if anyone answers that question by saying, this marketing, this, sales this, whatever function within our company. have to challenge that and say, the only way you’re really gonna know what the customer wants is to go ask the customer.

[00:20:52] Josh: Yeah.

[00:20:52] Anne Trobaugh: ’cause

[00:20:53] Josh: Go talk to him.

[00:20:53] Anne Trobaugh: to the actual person. that assumption piece can get a little bit tricky if you just rely on others to tell or suggest what they think the customer wants.

[00:21:05] Josh: 100%. Now, I like how you called out that some customer experience may focus on things like marketing, right? Being discovered by the customer. Which to your point, you. Can be important, but like you said, what you had to prioritize right then and there was, based on, the research that you did and you’re not discounting it, this may be something that you end up having to take.

[00:21:28] Josh: You might do your next round of interviews with customers and they may say you know what, the worst part of this process is finding someone who can even make the cabinets that I’m looking to get. In that case, you’re like, I know what I’m prioritizing. with this broader scope in mind of quality and customer experience and thinking about what you said before, how quality is oftentimes put into a box or thought of just as quality control, how can leaders, whether they’re quality leaders or not, reshape that understanding of quality and that execution of quality within their own organizations to prioritize the customer experience.

[00:22:08] Anne Trobaugh: I think one of the main things that I have found to be very successful is to get as many diverse perspectives as possible. And so if you wanna understand something, I, my background is I was in a diesel engine manufacturer for a very long time, which the quality for that product looks a lot different than the quality of.

[00:22:35] Anne Trobaugh: A wood box. I have appreciated input from others from an automotive background, very much and I have also appreciated input for quality and customer experience of those who have been at my company for their entire career that know the industry, no cabinets, but it’s being able to invite all types of different perspectives within the expertise.

[00:23:05] Anne Trobaugh: So quality in a different industry like pharmaceutical, automotive, et cetera, will look different than quality in, a material that’s still alive. So getting that perspective plus the ones of those who have been here forever and here’s how we’ve always done it, kind of input. I think it’s really helpful to get all of that.

[00:23:28] Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Drawing from different experiences and tapping into different skill sets, to one kinda, it sounds like shape. The strategy, here’s what quality’s gonna be at our own organization, because it’s not gonna look the same at each. There’s so many variables that factor into what’s gonna make a quality and great customer experience depending on the product you’re working with, and the conditions and environment with which you’re working.

[00:23:58] Josh: So to your point, it has to be adaptable and to the conversation we were having earlier. You don’t have to have the answers, especially as a leader, which I think sometimes is a bit of a misconception. You want leaders to have the answer, but sometimes the best thing a leader can do is say, what do you think?

[00:24:16] Josh: How would you solve this problem?

[00:24:18] Anne Trobaugh: It is time for an ad break. Now, unlike other shows, our ads aren’t advertisements. Our ads are advice, quick tips and insights from your fellow manufacturing pros in the shop floor top floor community. Here’s the one. Now

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[00:26:28] Josh: let’s talk about leading quality and customer experience at the executive level. A lot of our conversation has centered around leading the, leading the people within your. Sphere of influence, but let’s talk about what it’s like to be an executive representing quality and customer experience to other executives on a manufacturing leadership team.

[00:26:51] Josh: What have you learned is essential for representing your department at the executive level?

[00:26:56] Anne Trobaugh: I think everyone has a few different roles in their job, right? They have the job that they’re hired to do to lead the team or do that kind of functional work. But then there’s also this role of a participant, a peer, and a team member to a broader organization. I think all of your experiences that you’ve had in your career helped shape that.

[00:27:19] Anne Trobaugh: I think. The team that I am a part of, my peers and my boss. It’s a great environment where, as an example, HR might be giving an update or presentation and there’s a lot of people who have really good experience with maybe what’s happening. Maybe it’s a downturn, maybe it’s a plant closure. So there’s a lot of expertise to be able to comment and contribute to the greater, goal at hand, if you will.

[00:27:49] Anne Trobaugh: So it’s really fun to be part of a team and bring your experiences that aren’t just functional. I sit on a staff as definitely the expertise needed from a quality and customer experience standpoint, but I have the freedom and opportunity to bring my whole entire background and experiences with me.

[00:28:11] Anne Trobaugh: And that’s been really fun. I think. One thing that’s helped me step into, I’ve been with the company for four years now,to step in as a leader is to really prove my credibility and that’s, it can be done a lot of different ways, like taking on a project and leading it well. I had an interesting opportunity, nine months into my role at American Woodmark.

[00:28:37] Anne Trobaugh: We had a major manufacturing quality issue, and it was within one plant on one cell, and it ended up in a CPSC recall, a consumer product safety commission recall to repair. So that was nine months into the role on a pretty narrow product. This is one time you asked a previous question on do I do the problem solving, et cetera.

[00:29:04] Anne Trobaugh: That’s one time where I did jump in and lead the entire effort. ’cause it was such a big deal. It involved such a cross-functional team making sure sales was involved because of our relationship with the customer, making sure our legal counsel communicating with the CPSC. So that was really unfortunate, but such a valuable opportunity for me to then get credibility.

[00:29:29] Anne Trobaugh: ’cause I was able to jump in and lead and all leaders at some point can lead in some capacity, right? that’s how we get to where we are. And so just leading the team, figuring out what was next, et cetera. So I think it’s really important to get credibility. I don’t mean I don’t suggest you do it the way I did ’cause it’s not a great thing, but it had a great outcome.

[00:29:50] Anne Trobaugh: I think everything went as well as it could have given the unfortunate situation. But. I then was able to, you always have a seat at the table. You always need to bring your whole self to that table. But I really felt like the credibility was a bolster to, okay, so Anne has a point, let’s listen now. And I think what, however you can get credibility when you sit at that larger table is really important.

[00:30:17] Josh: Yeah, that idea of establishing. This is why I’m here, which is what we do when we start out the show. We want people to understand why they should even spend the time to listen to your perspective. And so we want to build that up of oh no, you’re not just somebody off the streets, right?

[00:30:35] Josh: You’re an experienced executive in manufacturing. You’ve done all these different things. You’ve led this, large organization. That’s why. So credibility is absolutely important. Now, I would actually disagree with one of the things you said. You said you wouldn’t recommend people do what you did.

[00:30:54] Josh: I think, maybe not. hopefully it’s not a quality issue. Yes. Hopefully it’s not that situation, but doing what you did, which is. Taking that ownership and driving it, not just to, execution, but a satisfying result. that is the way of building credibility and that’s something that everyone should seek to do in their roles, no matter what level it is.

[00:31:15] Josh: Identify what is that initiative that I can do to establish not just my credibility, but what’s gonna make an impact on the organization? ’cause that’s what’s gonna drive that credibility, is that ability to identify and execute and support that builds trust. That builds respect to some degree. And I, I can appreciate that, yes, you would usually have your team en enable them, but sometimes urgency execution requires a different approach. So you certainly have to be adaptable. Now, I can imagine that at a leadership level, there’s a ton of ideas and initiatives that come up. Often, here’s what we should do to improve the business, et cetera.

[00:31:59] Josh: How do you as a team decide what to prioritize and what to say no to?

[00:32:05] Anne Trobaugh: so I think saying no is the hardest thing, for sure. But I think a lot of large companies have goals that cascade down to, to give direction on what types of things we should be working on. so we also have that, right? We would have some things that are cascaded and interpreted so that we can help reach this broader goal.

[00:32:29] Anne Trobaugh: Maybe to that point, it’s easy to add things to a list of initiatives. I think the harder thing is how do you look at all you have to do and go back and say, is this still providing the result that we wanted from this initiative? Is it still getting us to our desired outcome? Is it still aligned to the direction that we’re headed?

[00:32:52] Anne Trobaugh: And it’s much harder to do that and then suggest that we stop doing something. Someone I worked with once said that it’s a good thing if projects have funerals. So it is okay to stop doing a project and you do the quote, funeral, but you actually have communication. You tell people that it’s ending.

[00:33:17] Anne Trobaugh: You explain why you think those that helped get it to where it is, but making a formality of when you stop something. To make sure everyone’s aware of that. but that’s a lot harder. That is a lot harder to do. And a lot of times it’s because people feel this proud sense of ownership with the thing that they’re doing.

[00:33:35] Anne Trobaugh: And so it would look like failure, but you have to fail fast. And so maybe a different way of framing a failed project is what did we learn? Why did it not get us the outcome that we thought? If it’s truly not gonna help us continue toward our end goal, then let’s stop wasting time on it and let’s fo refocus on something more important.

[00:34:02] Josh: That could be extremely hard. That idea. first I love that quote. It’s a good thing if projects have funerals. Now, the completionist and perfectionist in me is fighting that concept. but logically I agree with you, but you brought up, a couple of things that I think are worth breaking down. you once again iterate or reiterated, I should say, that communication is still key.

[00:34:27] Josh: This project, it’s having a funeral. Everyone needs to know and probably gonna have to communicate that over and over again. And that the project, having a funeral, putting the project to an end before it is quote unquote complete, can look like failure. And that can drive a lot of resistance to ending the project, particularly if there’s ownership, if there’s stake, if there’s ego, all sorts of things.

[00:34:54] Josh: So I love that idea of fail fast, learn and improve. I’d love to hear your perspective on how widely debt. Gets put into practice. That seems like something that’s very hard for organizations to take on that idea of fail fast. So how do you promote that concept and that safety of failing fast?

[00:35:18] Anne Trobaugh: Yeah, safety and psychological safety is a big topic, in present time at our company, and it is a lot easier to say than it is to do Josh, you’re spot on with it. I think what happens if you don’t do that though, if things just stop appearing on our calendars or we just stop talking about it and communicating it, you’re you’re left to wonder.

[00:35:44] Anne Trobaugh: What’s going on. So you might have already actually stopped working on it. So that’s one potential solu like or suggestion of what’s happening. And so at that point, it’s helpful to give guidance to say, ’cause everyone’s thinking it, everyone’s noticing that, okay, this one project that I thought we were doing this and now we’re not.

[00:36:07] Anne Trobaugh: That communication at that time is really important. The really hard one though, is there’s still a team working on it. They’re meeting weekly and they’re just not getting the results. That part is way harder. and a lot of times how we do project work is we would have a sponsor and a project leader.

[00:36:27] Anne Trobaugh: It would be something that those two would have to come up and decide together. But I’ve not seen it done super well. unfortunately, but I, as long as we’re. about it and saying maybe we can implement it in our own teams. So what work is currently on an initiative list for my team? That doesn’t need to be, it might not be the biggest thing the company’s working on, but if we take small steps and just focus on our purview or what am I doing?

[00:37:01] Anne Trobaugh: What’s on my goal list? Am I still doing all of that and is it still impactful? If not, maybe I talk to my boss like, Hey, this one project’s on here. I we’re not doing as much with that. I’m gonna deprioritize this. I don’t ask for permission, but you suggest, and then wait for feedback if that’s not the right thing.

[00:37:20] Anne Trobaugh: So maybe we do it individually first. Get some momentum and power, and then start to think, okay, how do I disseminate this in a larger scale? But it is so hard.

[00:37:33] Josh: Yeah. that made me think of a question as you were talking about that, the, one of the things you talked about evaluating is whether or not it is still aligned with current goals, essentially. and I’m curious about your perspective at a leadership level. I have to imagine there’s projects or initiatives that are aligned with the key outcome, the key desired outcome.

[00:37:57] Josh: However, the execution for whatever reason, has not led to that specific outcome. At what point, from your perspective, do you say. We’re ending this project, because we just haven’t been able to execute off of it versus digging in what went wrong with our execution. Let’s get it back on track. Talk to me about your perspective there.

[00:38:22] Anne Trobaugh: Yeah, I think that is a tougher understanding the root cause of what’s really happening. Is it the team doesn’t have the right resources, the right data? are they working well together but not focused on or not getting the right input to make them successful? Versus do we really just not know how to solve this problem?

[00:38:47] Anne Trobaugh: maybe a specific example is we were seeing a ton of damage of our cabinets in the southeast. So Atlanta Metro, Florida, and we had teams focused on damage reduction in Florida, damage reduction in Atlanta, two separate efforts going after, how do we reduce damage? We were looking at all sorts of things.

[00:39:11] Anne Trobaugh: we ended up suggesting that nothing was specifically able to be targeted as the root cause. So in Atlanta, maybe a lot of townhouses, a lot of narrow staircases, tons of damage, trying to get cabinets up these tight areas. Not necessarily in Florida though that’s a little bit different. what we did was we took a bigger step back and said, if we can’t solve it in each of these markets, maybe the scope wasn’t set up well to go target the problem. Let’s take a bigger step back and say what’s necessary and what can we do from a product standpoint to really help this. And we ended up, over the course of many years and lots of work changing our packaging, which has reduced damage by 40% in every market that it serves. So I think we had noticed something and instead of maybe saying, okay, what’s the actual problem? We just said, oh, why is so much here? So we saw one metric. We didn’t necessarily take a step back, think about the context. So we went to solve something that really should have been solved at a macro level. We were trying to solve it as a, at a micro level. We couldn’t see any specific correlation to that market.

[00:40:27] Anne Trobaugh: so that’s one where once we had committed to fixing the broader problem, we were able to stop those specific work teams. Maybe a little bit different, but maybe it applies to the same. If there’s something that’s not working, are you really solving the right thing? Is there something different going on that we’re not seeing?

[00:40:48] Josh: So it sounds as long as the project is aligned with current goals, it’s worth digging into why have we not seen the results that we expect to see? and like you said, it could be skills, it could be tooling, it could be, need for priority resources, et cetera.

[00:41:03] Josh: because I think that can be a tough factor.

[00:41:05] Josh: I think, it’s easy. maybe not easy, but you can make the observation of this thing that’s supposed to have this goal is not working. And some people can be tough about it. They can say, I don’t care why we’re not gonna do it now. Now the example that you provided would be.

[00:41:22] Josh: Unacceptable to accept the results. you gotta do something about that, especially if customer experience is at the center. But for other projects you may just have to make the tough calls of yep, it’s a good project, but we’re not getting it done and we’ve got other things that we’re gonna need to pursue.

[00:41:36] Josh: sorry everyone, we’re no longer doing this project.

[00:41:40] Anne Trobaugh: And then a lot of people will say, we’ve done a lot of work to get it to this point. that’s like sunk cost, right? that’s a really hard conversation with yourself to be like, I know it was a lot of work. How do you package it up and put it on a shelf in case you want to take it off and redo it again, but.

[00:41:56] Anne Trobaugh: You can’t think about the past and all that work done. You have to separate that. It’s

[00:42:02] Josh: yeah. I spent a lot of time, resources, blood, sweat, tears, went into this thing. It is tough. It is tough to separate that you. digging into those ideas when we’re talking about what to prioritize or what to deprioritize, what data points, or what opinions or other factors do you seek out to make these decisions?

[00:42:27] Anne Trobaugh: Yeah. I answered this answer for another question too, but it’s so important to reiterate. I think that’s a theme of today, Josh is reiteration. but understanding diverse perspectives is such a great opportunity. what should we be doing? That’s, again, getting different types of industry input and, how would you prioritize this, et cetera.

[00:42:50] Anne Trobaugh: I think the phrase my team, my leadership team, which is the CXLT, what we say a lot is, is this the hill you wanna die on? As we connect that to, this is the absolute most critical priority that we need. And and we have a great diverse team of some who have been in the industry for 20 plus years, some who have been here just a few years, like myself.

[00:43:17] Anne Trobaugh: So really good input on the diversity of expertise and so forth, but,

[00:43:25] Josh: So it’s just really digging in, like what would you do, what have you seen done differently? I love that point that you brought up earlier, working, having a diverse background yourself, and valuing, you mentioned the automotive industry in particular,in a previous example that you provided, but just valuing, look, you were a manufacturing professional at a totally different type of facility, set up, product, customer, et cetera.

[00:43:51] Josh: what were some of the things that you were doing that made you successful because. We’re all coming up with different ideas and different ways of applying things, because like we talked about earlier and what we’re reiterating now, right? You have to adapt the principles and the concepts to your own operation.

[00:44:08] Josh: And so tapping into other folks to say what were the principles that you used? How did you actually put those into practice? Looking at those examples so that you can then put ’em into practice in your own organization. I’m with you on that diverse background, whether that is, it could be skills, it could be education, it could be career experience.

[00:44:31] Josh: It could even be like regional location, like people from the East Coast versus West Coast type thing, and ev everyone could learn from the south to be a little nicer in general. But, yeah, I’m very much a fan just like you are of gathering those diverse perspectives because that’s how we all.

[00:44:53] Josh: Build better together to quote our, CEO here, build better. now speaking of a diverse experience and backgrounds, you’ve held many roles in manufacturing before becoming a leader at the quality, a leader of quality at the executive level. When you look back on your career, which role did you hold that you feel like set you up for executive leadership in manufacturing?

[00:45:17] Anne Trobaugh: Ah, great question. I think every role, and I’ve had a lot of varied experience, which is I’m so lucky, to have had that, but I’ve definitely learned something from every role that has shaped. I think we can all say that, right? We’re all shaped by the sum of the experiences,

[00:45:35] Josh: I.

[00:45:36] Anne Trobaugh: single most important.

[00:45:38] Anne Trobaugh: Role I’ve had thus far is the last role I had at Cummins. I was the, chief of staff for the Cummins Vice President of Quality and really interesting role because, talk about what your day is, it could be anything. but the key skills I learned there, how to communicate and how to communicate the importance of the initiatives that you’re leading, how to ensure that they are seen by leaders as solving a really critical problem and then therefore gaining the importance and need to really focus on it as an entire company.

[00:46:24] Anne Trobaugh: So you create that urgency and you create the importance. So it has to be done quickly and it’s very, it’s critical, urgent and critical. how you communicate that. And then just the consistency of communication and different forums like town halls and we even did like communication on our internal website.

[00:46:47] Anne Trobaugh: so much was learned there about, it’s not just about the thing you’re doing, it’s about how you communicate that and make sure that others understand the importance and criticality. And the question was, what set you up for success to be in this current role? and that’s it. obviously I’ve learned a lot of other skills that probably wasn’t the most technical quality focused role, but it’s all about communication.

[00:47:18] Anne Trobaugh: The other piece that I mentioned briefly was the influence. So how do you influence others to understand? Why this is critical, et cetera, but that is about harnessing relationships and really making sure good relationships help you in that goal of communication and really getting your point across that this is the right thing to do.

[00:47:42] Anne Trobaugh: I think that’s critically important as well.

[00:47:46] Josh: How to communicate and how to make sure leaders see the problem to create that urgency. I’m curious, what is the lesson? how do you communicate, how do you get leaders to see,the problem and create that urgency?

[00:48:01] Anne Trobaugh: So figuring out from their seat what is the most important or what are they not aware of that is super important. Our specific target at that point was we had some quality issues. It was evident in our warranty as a percent of sales. So warranty has crept up and we have the data. Data speaks. You go and make sure that, hey, I’m gonna tell you if you’re not told to go do the thing, right?

[00:48:34] Anne Trobaugh: If this is just a, how do you focus on the right things? If it’s not a top down, you figure out what the data’s telling you. You figure out how it impacts the leader and you say, this is a problem. Here’s what I need to do to solve it, and here’s what I need from you to do it. You go, you create the forums, you create different project teams, almost like a blitz like focus and project, deployment.

[00:49:05] Anne Trobaugh: You ask for resources and you make sure to consistently stay up. I think we did weekly email communications. From the sponsors of what we were doing to reduce warranties, a percent of sales in 10 focus areas. So the question of how do you know what’s important, if you’re not just told from a cascading goal standpoint, use the data, use your KPIs, look at trends, suggest where you can go help.

[00:49:35] Anne Trobaugh: That really impacts the bottom line. Don’t do it on something that you really think is important, but they wouldn’t necessarily care about. So you have to also understand the business and what they need to, or what their goals are as well, which is pretty easy if you’re paying attention.

[00:49:54] Josh: Yeah, Answered my next question because one of the things you had said is, what are they not aware of? And my follow up was gonna be like, I’m sure that there’s a lot that they’re not aware of, but do they care about that? And you qualified that this needs to be something like, Hey, I know you’re responsible for blank.

[00:50:11] Josh: You have a vested interest in making sure that blank is accomplished. There’s this thing happening that puts that goal that you’re responsible have for accomplishing at risk. And because it’s at risk, to your point, you gotta know the person you’re working with. It that means blank. That means you know this is gonna be impacted.

[00:50:30] Josh: Your peers are going to blame you for it. You’re gonna lose your job kind of thing, or you’re gonna miss your bonus. Or I know that you care about the customer experience and the customers are gonna be extremely mad about this. like you do. to your point about communication, you have to understand your audience and adapt the message to meet that particular audience and drive that.

[00:50:51] Josh: But I love that you also brought up it’s, here’s something that you’re not aware of that you should be aware of, and here’s the impact of that. So you’re approaching with here’s the problem that needs to be solved. Don’t worry, I’m gonna solve it for you. here’s, I got the plan to do it, and if I don’t have a plan, I have a plan to get the plan in place to do it.

[00:51:11] Josh: Here’s what I need from you. So it’s just check yes or no. Are we going with this or not? And that helps drive that urgency, that buy-in, getting people on board and motivated. So I think that was a great breakdown of engaging with folks. Now, thinking about your experience and thinking about the manufacturing and industry, one of the things that is true right now is that the industry is struggling to not only recruit and retain talent, but to get more women to join the manufacturing workforce.

[00:51:41] Josh: What put you on the path of manufacturing as a career?

[00:51:45] Anne Trobaugh: Yeah. I come from a family of engineers. So my dad, my uncles, my grandfather, everyone who I would sit at a table at Christmas and Thanksgiving we’re all engineers. I don’t know if it’s genetic, but I always had an aptitude for that as a, definitely as a school. and I actually looked at the statistics when I went to engineering school.

[00:52:14] Anne Trobaugh: It was 20% female, 80% male. It hasn’t changed much. Today it’s 22%. So unfortunately you hire from the same pool and I’m thinking engineering ’cause that was my background. I realize there are other ways to come up through the manufacturing, industry or realm, but it sadly that hasn’t. Improved as much as I would’ve liked to see the data.

[00:52:38] Anne Trobaugh: but I’ll tell you, when I first got to American Woodmark four years ago, my observation was there aren’t many women in my meetings. In fact, I’m definitely the only, there is a finance, as a kind of secondary, not direct team member, but I’m the only female on my direct boss’s team. and I’m lucky that I have two women out of my six direct reports.

[00:53:02] Anne Trobaugh: so that’s great. But there weren’t a lot of us in meetings and I was noticing that. So I went to, my boss said, I’ve just noticed this. I would like to understand what the root cause is. And so just like anything from a customer standpoint, I needed to go ask and figure out what, why aren’t. There definitely wasn’t 2080 as far as representation, and I knew that was the pool of a technical engineering. So why am I not seeing that at the higher levels of this company? So I went and surveyed gender agnostic. Everyone got a survey and the question wasn’t, why are there no female leaders or not as many?

[00:53:45] Anne Trobaugh: That wouldn’t be a good question. The question was that we were trying to get to was what makes a good manufacturing leader and tell me that. And so understanding that we took that response and we figured out, okay, here’s what the company has suggested is important traits and ways to be successful in operations or manufacturing.

[00:54:11] Anne Trobaugh: How do we help more women have access to what we’re saying is the most important stuff? And the way in which we deployed that in an easy it. easy, but in a cheaper, pretty accessible way, was implementing mentoring circles focused on what are the important traits of a manufacturing leader. So communication was one of them.

[00:54:38] Anne Trobaugh: and excellence promote, how do you use excellence in your daily job? So those were two focus areas. We would find podcasts and articles and facilitate conversations around the subject to, again, just provide access to what the company was suggesting was necessary for this leader. ’cause there weren’t as many, from a gender equality standpoint.

[00:55:04] Anne Trobaugh: So it was great work and a lot of fun to, to help the organization understand there probably needs to be a little effort and focus here ’cause something. Is maybe different, I don’t wanna say broken, but if you look around the table, why are we not seeing the funnel maybe isn’t working as well, or something’s happening.

[00:55:32] Anne Trobaugh: So let’s, let’s help how we can and figure out how to get more women into manufacturing leadership. So I encourage others who are listening to consider something. and it doesn’t have to be focused on a gender or a different type of per, like how do you help others in the organization be successful and get to those leadership levels?

[00:55:54] Anne Trobaugh: And if there’s some education, knowledge, experience missing, maybe step in and say, this is what we need to do here.

[00:56:03] Josh: I think that’s such a wonderful example to, to start out with, what makes a good manufacturing leader? Boil it down to certain skill sets. Okay, now how do we provide people with the opportunity to develop those skill sets? And then there’s probably a way to take that further. ’cause there’s the side of.

[00:56:20] Josh: Are we offering the opportunities? Are we making this a place where this is even possible to begin with? But on the flip side, particularly when you’re dealing with people, is there an appeal? Do people even want to do this? Do women even want to be a part of this? And I, so I love that you’re breaking it down and you’re focused on, it’s not just about women, it’s about providing the future leadership with the opportunity to become leaders.

[00:56:46] Josh: And to do that, they have to go through the experience, and everybody, benefits from that. But there’s also the side of, how do we let people know that this is something that they can aspire to and that it’s rewarding and there’s a reason why you would wanna even go through this process to begin with.

[00:57:01] Josh: What do you think are some ways that manufacturers can demonstrate to women in particular that manufacturing can be a rewarding career path?

[00:57:12] Anne Trobaugh: I think just what you’re doing today and having conversations with various leaders is such an important thing. 

[00:57:20] Anne Trobaugh: I love this format of podcasts and speaking to people and just getting their personal stories. ’cause if there’s anything that resonates with a listener or, I don’t know, you might suggest this to another friend if, 

[00:57:35] Anne Trobaugh: if anything resonates, it’s just helpful to know that there are people in the seats that are sharing stories. You can have at least a little bit more aspiration. ‘

[00:57:47] Anne Trobaugh: cause a lot of what we heard was, I don’t have any visual role models, so I didn’t even think, to your point, I didn’t even really think that this was a possibility.

[00:57:57] Anne Trobaugh: that’s unfortunate. But at the same time, just cascading more. There’s women in manufacturing as an organization. There’s swe, society of Women Engineers. There’s a lot of groups that provide a lot of avenues for things like,women Leader series, et cetera. So getting more of this type of access to hearing their stories is super helpful.

[00:58:20] Anne Trobaugh: and sometimes it’s even just a, Hey, I have this situation. Just advice or, ability to see in them what you have in yourself. And I think it’s, and I had those leaders when I was at Cummins. I remember talking specifically to. A vice president at the time, an engineer, and she was in charge of sustainability and, she had it, it was much harder for even her, like she was a true trailblazer, right?

[00:58:53] Anne Trobaugh: And so hearing her stories of being like of the, things that she had to deal with day to day, nothing like what is in the workplace today, but that was even inspirational to be like, we can all continue to do things and be seen as leaders. I think it’s now just about seizing the opportunity.

[00:59:12] Josh: Yeah, representation. Representation matters because it shows people what’s possible. And one thing I’ve learned, and I by no means came to this conclusion, I heard someone else say it took a class course, et cetera, but how decisions are made based on an individual’s perception of their own identity. And the simple phrase that this individual used is when it comes to making decisions is this idea of people like us do things like this.

[00:59:43] Josh: And showing that representation where you say, Hey, you’re someone just like you, and this is what they’re doing. That’s what helps people decide to do something that’s true for pursuing a career path, a hobby, making a purchase at a, even at a as simple as a grocery store. It all ties down to some aspect of identity there.

[01:00:04] Josh: And so to your point, just showing. People like you are doing things like this can make a huge impact on the decisions that others make.

[01:00:14] Anne Trobaugh: And it’s exactly why when you asked me like, what, how does my day start? I made sure to highlight that, like I have a fantastic husband and partner who also works, and we’re busy, taxi, driving our kids around all the time. So you have to understand and relate to working parents, with kids. it isn’t, doesn’t have to be a choice.

[01:00:37] Anne Trobaugh: So I want people to understand like, you don’t have to have one or the other. There’s a lot of ways in which it’s, and I travel a lot too. so anything is possible, but,it’s helpful to see that it action and see yourself in their shoes, like you said, representation.

[01:00:55] Josh: 100%. Now. I know we’re getting towards the end. I’ve got one other topic I’d love to get your perspective on before we wrap. one thing that leaders have to do, they have to look ahead, so looking ahead and manufacturing, what trends do you see coming that you are excited about?

[01:01:11] Anne Trobaugh: you can’t talk about trends in 2026 without talking about ai. and it’s interesting, I live in Loudoun County, Virginia, which has, I think it’s over 200 data centers right now. It’s like data center alley. So a ton of investment and energy drain, in AI’s space or at least computing, computing power.

[01:01:32] Anne Trobaugh: So I am, along with our leader of IT infrastructure and cybersecurity, leading an initiative for AI within American Woodmark. more I’m on the business side partnering with the IT expert and. there’s a lot of opportunity in how we deploy ai, with governance, with prioritization, and with focus.

[01:01:59] Anne Trobaugh: it’s, so we’re leading a pilot to, to really just try to figure out how do we best use it. But I’ve seen some amazing, especially with those who are early adopters of any type of technology and not just using chat GPT to come up with an email, But like really valuable data analytics that replace maybe like three different minitab tests.

[01:02:26] Anne Trobaugh: And it’s been very powerful in one-off types of situations. AI specifically, I think has the power to, if used for the right correct use case to really have a an ROI, And I do think it will at least enhance our ability to get work done. It might not eliminate, hopefully it doesn’t eliminate our jobs, but at the same time, I think it can really help with some of the menial tasks that might not be needed for somebody to work on a hundred percent of the, of their day, but now takes an hour because we have this AI power at Gen AI specifically, but really excited about that its use in manufacturing.

[01:03:17] Anne Trobaugh: I’m talking more back office, was that discussion. But use in manufacturing is also spotting trends, thinking about, proactively assessing where we might have issues. It is such an a huge opportunity.

[01:03:31] Josh: Yeah, I went to an event late last year, and the number one topic was ai. Specifically it was everyone being like, what are you guys doing with it? Because we don’t know where to start. We don’t know what’s hype, what’s reality, et cetera. yeah, so I think there’s a lot of, a lot of people with great ideas, but there’s, a lot of people are looking to prove out the reality before they buy into the hype train that’s currently going on.

[01:03:59] Josh: I’m personally very excited about it. I’ve, in my own time experiment with Gen AI and agentic AI in particular. I see, like you said, there’s a ton of, to put it in manufacturing terms, there’s a ton of necessary but non-value added activities that have to happen every single day. And if the question isn’t really about eliminating the activity, it’s does an individual.

[01:04:26] Josh: An actual person have to be the one that performs this activity. You mentioned data and analytics. I would argue that the act of analyzing is a non-value added activity ultimately. So can something facilitate a faster analysis of that, or maybe even one day eliminate the need for analysis and instead you just have a proven this is what you need to focus on, et cetera.

[01:04:55] Anne Trobaugh: Yeah, it’s amazing. I think it is very cost prohibitive to do it all at once, but having a very organized pilot program with use cases prioritized. Will at least allow us to figure out where is it best and how do we best do this thing, called ai. So excited to, to keep thinking about how it can impact our business, but definitely we don’t have the answers yet, but I think like everyone we’re trying to figure out pieces of it.

[01:05:25] Josh: Please keep me updated with what you find. ’cause I am wanna share that message with folks. ’cause I’m telling you that number one question at this event was like, okay, but what is, what are people doing with it? Because

[01:05:35] Anne Trobaugh: like really?

[01:05:35] Josh: Yeah. But okay, I hear the marketing, but what are we doing? Ah, and there’s been a great conversation.

[01:05:41] Josh: I appreciate you sharing your perspective on leading quality and customer experience at the executive level about your background, about what you’ve learned, to, to set yourself up for success and lead teams to accomplish the goal of making sure that the customer has the best experience possible.

[01:05:58] Josh: What does that look like? How do you define it? How do you pursue it? How do you communicate over and over? So much good stuff in this episode. I can’t say it enough. Thank you for joining us today.

[01:06:08] Anne Trobaugh: Thank you, Josh. you’re the best at this and I appreciate the opportunity to be part of it, so thanks for having me.