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It’s Only Common Sense: Pride of Product

I recently read that when workers see who is using the end-product of their efforts, their productivity increases by up to 10%. This factor applies to a range of occupations, from seeing how the medical devices they build are used to save people, to migrant workers who get the chance to see that the fruits and vegetables they picked are eaten and enjoyed by the consumers.

In all aspects of life, people will always feel gratified to the point of pride when they see how they have contributed to the good of the world.

Consider the pride felt by workers who manufactured respirators when they heard on the news about the importance of their products during the pandemic. In another example, there are actually two factories here in Maine that, because of the pandemic, are running 24-hour shifts to produce those long cotton swabs used in COVID testing. They have been lauded by everyone from the media to the ex-president himself who visited their factories last year. Those people were filled with what we call “pride of product.”

In our own PCB industry, there should be a great deal of pride of product. We are certainly contributing to the rest of the world’s improvements in all areas—medical, defense, aerospace—and our industry is at the forefront of being both essential and innovative.

Without the PCB we would not have had space exploration, nor developed computers, PCs, smart phones, and electric and autonomous vehicles. Without the PCB we would not be able to produce the products of the future that so many companies are working on today.

For some reason we tend to forget this. Going back to my original premise, we’re certainly not doing a good job when it comes to instilling a pride of product into our work teams.

Whenever I walk into a PCB fab house for the first time, I am always amazed by two things. The first is the truly stunning array of customers they serve, and the end-products for these circuits boards; the second is the blasé attitude of the employees. I’m not sure most even realize what they are actually working on. I’ve witnessed time and again how little the people building these products know about where their boards are going.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s me. Am I the only one who considers it truly wonderful that a little shop in Chicago, for example, is building PCBs for a new product that will speed up DNA testing tenfold? Consider the company in Atlanta building boards for a Boston company working on an all-electric, all wireless house, or the Milwaukee fab that built the boards for the guidance control system for Raytheon’s Tomahawk missile.

What is up with that? Does our industry have such a downtrodden inferiority complex that we are underimpressed with the fabulous products we contributed to? Have we been deemed so insignificant that we lose the actual pride of product that we are rightfully due?

Have our customers in their negotiations so commoditized our technology and our products that we ourselves have had a drink of their Kool-Aid and have honestly lost touch with how important our product actually is for the good of the world?

Whatever the reason, let’s do something about it. Our industry has a lot to be proud about, so let’s concentrate on that. Let’s start focusing on the great, innovative, and ingenious products that have made significant contributions to the past and will into the future.

Here are a few ways we can do that:

• Let your team members know what they are working on. Many times, the team on the floor does not even realize what these “cards” (I hate that expression) are going into. Ask your customers for posters and other marketing collateral they have about their products. Post these all over your plant to show your work teams who their end customers are and what amazing products they are working on.
• Invite your customers to come in and talk to your team about their products. Invite one of your customers to your next all-hands meeting and ask them to speak to your team about the important contributions they are making to the success of their product.
• Hold an employee open house one weekend day. Create an event where your employees can invite their families to come into your facility—their facility—where most of them spend more waking time than they do with their families. Let them show their families where they work, what they do, and the important products they are working on.

As I stated earlier, if the workers who harvest our food can be inspired by seeing how the food is used, think how inspired the members of our work team will be after they realize that the products, they are making have taken us to Mars!

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.