As a plant manager, my days are dynamic, focusing on optimizing processes and fostering a safe and productive environment. Achieving milestones like improved safety records, enhanced quality control, and consistent on-time delivery fills me with pride. Walsworth’s recent acquisition of our building solidifies our commitment to the community and reinforces our identity as part of the Walsworth family.
I was working for LSC Communications at the time, running the facility in Roanoke, Virginia. I had known Gary O’Toole for a long time – he’d actually hired me at Von Hoffman in Jefferson City in 2002 and we enjoyed working together. He left soon after and came to Walsworth, but we stayed in touch.
One day he called me out of the blue and said, “Do you know anybody who would be interested in running a plant up here in Michigan?” And I said, “Well, yeah, now that you’re saying it, I wouldn’t mind working with you again, Gary.” So, that’s how it started. Then Mark Hatfield called me, and the rest is history. I’ve been here seven years in May.
Well, I’d worked for private companies, and I’d worked for corporations. I mean, I had two tours with RR Donnelley. And what really drew me here was that it’s a private company. After I started with the interviewing and just got to know the leadership that we have, with Mark and then meeting with Don and Don and Jim, it was very clear that it was a different atmosphere than what I was seeing in a corporation. It was more of a family business.
Wyatt, Christy, Phil, Molly
It’s scary to think this is actually my 41st year in the printing industry. I started out of high school in 1983 as a utility in the press room at RR Donnelley, sweeping the floors and dumping trash and those things, working my way up to press operator there. I was there 11 years.
I went to Denver, Colorado, and was a working foreman there and eventually became pressroom manager. We were making money, and everything was running fine. But it was a privately held company and the owner was going to sell, so I decided to move on.
I then moved to Quebecor World in Clarksville, Tennessee, as a press room supervisor and stayed there five years. When I left, I was the press room manager. That’s when Gary (O’Toole) called me and asked if I was interested in coming to Von Hoffman.
There, Gary and I really hit it off. The plant was a diamond in the rough. It really was the best equipment I had ever worked around at that point. Just a really great opportunity. I was there from 2002 to 2007. And then RR Donnelley bought us and shut us down in 2013, which is when I was asked to Roanoke. So I’ve bounced around a bit.
But for my family and me, it’s been good because everywhere we’ve gone, there’s been a different culture. You meet a lot of different people. There’s lots of different sites to see. It’s been cool living in different places.
I grew up in California and people always say they want to go there for the weather and all that, but this is my favorite place I’ve lived. That probably sounds a little crazy to everybody. Michigan, really? But the summers are great. My wife and I go fishing all the time. Saint Joe – they call it the fifth coast. It’s where everybody wants to go on vacation.
The people here are friendly. They’re really accepting of people. We’ve got a good team – good, strong people with good work ethic. And believe it or not, there are places I’ve been where they just didn’t have that.
It’s constantly changing. Every day is different. When I first got here, the plant needed a lot of change. We had older equipment that needed to be maintained and replaced. To get a job in and out the door required a different effort and focus than we have today. We had a good core group of people and together we needed to change direction.
Today, we’ve got processes in place. I might have spent more time with quality issues in the past. We don’t have many of those anymore. My typical day today is, I catch up on emails and do a standard meeting in the morning to find out what we’ve done in the last 24 hours and what we’re going to do in the next 24 hours.
Then our team discusses how the week looks. And we try to get ahead of things. We forecast. What’s our month looking like? What are the financials going to look like? How do we reduce costs to make the month add up? It’s more about getting everything in line with one common goal, have the best month we can.
When I am not working on those things it’s all about the next roadblock to tackle, bottleneck to eliminate, or project to move the plant forward.
There’s a lot of them. But I look at the business basics. In my mind, that’s safety first. We’re below the industry average with our recordable case rate. I feel like we have good control over that. The Safety team does a great job!
The second one is quality. We had a low rework dollar last year – the best we’ve ever had in the plant. Our overall number was 0.25% of sales, and customer credits of $6,000 which is very low. Everyone on our team makes this happen, along with working with sales if there is an issue. The sales team is a big help.
On-time delivery is another. We just had another week at 100%, and we’re at 93% for the year. We’re as good as we’ve ever been in this plant.
If you walk through our plant today, you see a plant that’s completely transformed. It’s open and well lit. It has great equipment and most important, a friendly productive environment. It’s a place where customers want to come and when they leave, they feel better after having visited.
It’s huge. It was like the final thing that said, “You know what? You’re really part of us. You’re part of Walsworth. We’re going to be here awhile.”
You know, you can put a lot of money in on the equipment, but it could always be moved.
But when you buy the building, that kind of changes. That gets you settled in. That puts you here and puts you on the map.
When I got here, one of our biggest problems is people didn’t associate themselves with Walsworth. It was IPC (company name, prior to Walsworth acquisition). They would still wear the shirts. That was one of the things we had to change, and I believe that has been the biggest change over the last 7 years. Buying the building, it’s just the icing on the cake that says we’re Walsworth and we’re here.
Well, originally, I wanted to be an auto mechanic. Actually, as a kid I said was going to be a plastic surgeon. And the reason I wanted to do that was we used to do demonstrations at the burn ward in the hospital for kids when I was in martial arts as a kid.
When I was in high school, I was in wrestling, and I surfed. I’m not sure which sport did it, but I broke my neck. So, my hopes of getting a scholarship in college kind of fell through. That’s when I decided to be an auto mechanic because I love cars. But when you’re an auto mechanic, everybody’s car always needs to be fixed, and I got really burned out.
Then I went to visit my uncle in Virginia. And he was a press manager. He was shorthanded and he needed somebody to come in for a couple days, so I did it. And it was one of those things where I could work with tools, and I could leave my job at work. So when I got out of high school, I applied at RR Donnelley.
Phil and his wife have been married for 34 years.
My wife Christy and I have been married 34 years in April. We have two children. My daughter Molly is 30, and my son Wyatt is 27. They’ve moved with us around the country during my career and we left them in Virginia when we moved here because my son was in college and my daughter was working. But both of them recently moved up here with us, which is pretty cool.
Molly is a marketing manager for a non-profit Christian company. Wyatt is a lifeguard who is going into the academy, training to become a firefighter.
We also have two little Dachshunds. I can’t exclude them. They’re as much a part of the family as anybody.
When Phil isn’t at work, he and his wife are out fishing.
I like to golf, but it’s something I haven’t had a whole lot of time to do lately. I do fish a lot. My wife and I have really got into fishing since we’ve been up here. We have a boat. We walk down to the dock and hop on the boat and go fishing.
No, she kills me every time. I’m not gonna lie to you. If I catch a fish, she’ll catch one bigger. It’s just the way it is. (laughs) She’s better at it. She’s more patient than I am.
I’m a very religious person. I’m a born-again Christian. When we came out here, we joined a church and during COVID, our church unfortunately shut down. So, my wife and I, along with the associate pastors and another board member, started a church. I’m on the board. We started with 8 people meeting in my living room to buying a building, and now we’ve got about 55 members and it’s growing. It’s pretty awesome.
When I was in Missouri and we were raising the kids, we had a 38-foot fifth wheel and a camper. And we consistently went to the Ozark River waterways down there in the boot heel. Oh my gosh, Harvey’s Circle B where we used to go to the campground, right on the Jack Fork River. We did that for vacation all the time. We’d go canoeing, camping, hiking, or anything outdoors.
Well it would be the Bible, but I can’t say that I have read it cover to cover. That’s a large book. (laughs) But I do read it from time to time.
There are a lot of them. Rambo was always one of my favorites. I also like the John Wick series.
Gosh, I’ve changed my diet so much. I’ve lost about 100 pounds. So many of my favorite meals I can’t eat. But it would probably be pizza with a lot of stuff on it.
No, no. I like more thin crust with a lot of meat on it.
In high school, I was big into surfing. I used to surf all the time. I’ve raced motocross. I did that when I was in my mid-20s. I love desert racing. I once raced amateur night at the Rose Bowl.
Another thing people don’t know is that I’m a black belt in martial arts. When I was a kid, I was in martial arts from the time I was in fourth grade until I was 21. I used to fight in tournaments.
Phil’s two dogs are part of the family.
Yeah, it’s called Hwa Rang Do. It’s a Korean style. I had to master two different weapons. It was funny, I used to do the nun chucks, shuriken (ninja stars), and then I did short sticks. I don’t even know if I could get those things around me anymore. (laughs)
It would probably be a picture of my family, with our dogs and all that. So I’d be able to see them all the time.
It’s when we did the 85th anniversary party and when we handed out the President’s Milestone Awards. Having all the employees together. Just watching the smiles and how excited they were and enjoying the successes we all worked hard for. You know what I mean? It was kind of a moment where no matter how your day was, we were all there. It was just a great atmosphere, and it was everybody enjoying each other’s company and celebrating the success we’ve had.
There’s so many good things, but that one was something that collectively the entire group was able to enjoy. It was really cool.
