Episode #18: Flexibility and Competitiveness in U.S. Manufacturing with Pat Dippel
In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, powered by Veryable, we dive into the pivotal aspects of U.S. trade policy, global negotiations, and crucial signals for U.S. manufacturers. Host Matt Horine welcomes Pat Dippel, President of Veryable's West Division, to discuss his journey from operational leadership at General Electric to shaping on-demand labor at Veryable. Pat shares insights on maintaining manufacturing competitiveness through operational agility in the volatile trade and tariff environment. The discussion covers labor strategy, the impact of tariffs, and the importance of flexibility at scale, highlighting how manufacturers can stay ahead of the curve. Pat offers practical steps for operations leaders to introduce flexibility into their existing structures and discusses future trends in labor strategy, automation, and building resilient operations.
Links
- Pat Dippel on LinkedIn
- Navigating Trump 2.0
- Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
Timestamps
- 00:00 Introduction to U.S. Manufacturing Today
- 00:21 Guest Introduction: Pat Dippel's Journey
- 01:24 Lessons from GE: Operational Excellence
- 05:32 Labor Strategy and Flexibility
- 11:38 Navigating Tariffs and Trade Policies
- 18:30 Future Trends and Recommendations
- 21:04 Conclusion and Resources
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to U.S. Manufacturing today. The podcast powered by Veryable where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of the industry, the changing landscape policies and more.
Today we're unpacking at a pivotal moment in U.S. trade policy, global negotiations, and the signals that U.S. manufacturers can't afford to miss. In this episode, we welcome Pat Dippel, president of Veryable's West Division, whose journey spans deep operational leadership at General Electric to shaping the future of on-demand labor at Veryable.
With decades of insight into workforce dynamics, pat brings a sharp, experienced view of what it takes to keep manufacturing competitive, especially in today's volatile trade and tariff environment.
We'll explore what Pat learned at GE and how it shaped his leadership philosophy. How large scale manufacturing and distribution operations can adopt flexibility without sacrificing control, and why operational agility is becoming the key differentiator in a tariff pressured, reshoring driven economy.
This episode is a must listen for [00:01:00] operations leaders who want to stay competitive without waiting for the next policy shift to force change.
Pat, welcome to U.S. Manufacturing today.
Pat Dippel: Hey, Matt.
Matt Horine: We're excited to have you on and I think we'd like to start with your background and your leadership evolution.You've had a pretty unique journey from leadership roles at GE to now helping manufacturers transform how they think about labor at Veryable. Can you share a bit about that path and how it's influenced your view on workforce operations?
Pat Dippel: Whenever we talk about ge, I have to go back and think through all the different roles and what that looked like, but I was at GE for six years in total, but I can confidently say that it was like a crash course where we crammed about 20 years worth of manufacturing and operations leadership experience in that timeframe. Manufacturing's an exciting industry, but it's a whole sort of different level at ge and I really didn't know much about that.
Coming to two GE straight out of college, I didn't know any better. But as I got to see how some of our suppliers work, [00:02:00] how peer competitors operated, I got the opportunity to see some small and medium private public businesses operate.I realized how different we operated. I had a phenomenal experience, a tremendous amount of learnings that I took away from those different roles, and I think I, that's what I've used for every role that I've had since.
Matt Horine: Yeah, no, I always take that as your formative experience and everybody, you know, at Veryable and everybody in manufacturing who ran through the GE Crucible, there's a lot to take away and you kinda see that the theme is the same.But most importantly, what lessons around labor strategy and operational discipline resonated with you in into further roles, even post GE and prior to Veryable.
Pat Dippel: I think at GE we had an extreme intensity on knowing if we were winning or not. It's known as an operationally mature business. Some people say I probably had too many KPIs, but they're the same ones that all manufacturers really look at. And service was number one. If you didn't have service, you lost your [00:03:00] customer base. If you lost your customer base or scrambling to try to refill that pipeline, you were no longer in first or second place in the market that put your business at risk.
So there was like a deep understanding and alignment on taking care of our customers. Figuring out how to do that operationally. How do we become faster than our competitors? How do we understand our cost position? How do we do that safely? How do we drive period over period, year over year productivity gains, whether that is in material, operating cost and specifically labor. So. Very early on it was read into us that you need to understand your operations.You need to understand how it works, and you can't be satisfied with where you are today. And that sort of drives that continuous improvement mentality. They invested pretty heavily in us in detailed understanding of lean manufacturing use of Six Sigma, going to Crotonville for [00:04:00] leadership classes because the work of an operations leader is really hard. There's a lot you can control and even more that you can't control.
That was our sort of day to day, how to figure out how to get product out on time, how to get product out at or below cost and figure out how to get a little bit better every single day. That's what drove everybody around us and that's really hard to do.
So some of the people that maybe weren't able to or won't want to do that didn't stick around very long, and that left you with a team of people who really wanted to win. And wanted to help each other get better and solve those problems. So we had really tight-knit close leadership teams, very focused and aligned on what good looks like.
Understanding of where are we at against that plan, and if that plan off, what are we gonna do to get back on track? So those are the sort of three things where the mantra sort of embedded in our brain and the questions that we [00:05:00] asked ourselves and each other every single day.
Matt Horine: If you hit something that has been recurring theme on our show about that customer-centric mentality, and oftentimes the commercial side of the business can hijack that and they talk about it through.Commercial terms and GE bets and folks that I've talked with in the operation space, it's always that operations first mentality about being better and continuously improving that seem to be the real drivers of truly taking care of the customer.
And I think that kind of pivots us into the big topic and where we can talk through Veryable a little bit more. About labor flexibility at scale. And one common misconception is that flexibility only works for small shops or agile startups, right? You hear that, that they're too big to move. It's like changing, uh, the direction of a cruise ship or something at scale. But you've helped large complex operations adopt a more dynamic model.What's the key to making that work?
Pat Dippel: Before I get to that real answer, when I'm talking to a potential business user or some of our clients, I can confidently say that this is a tool and a platform that I would've [00:06:00] used in every single role.
Getting back to my GE evolution and some of the roles that I had, I was a planner and supervisor and production team leader. We're focused on service, production schedules, meeting cost.
When I was a manufacturing engineer, my entire focus was on labor arbitrage and how do we look at potentially low cost regions? How do we look at the impact that layout manufacturing engineering has on our ability to be able to drive cost and speed?
When I was a materials manager, if I didn't have product when we needed it, that line shut down and people were standing around. So I was probably the single biggest lever on labor productivity. All of those things are really important and labor touches every single one of them.
So that's why labor is so important. It's not anything other than the impact that it has on cost, speed, service, and therefore how we support our customers. So that's why it's important.
When you look at flexibility, I guess the [00:07:00] easiest way to look at it is the inverse. So what happens if you're inflexible? If you're inflexible, it's got a huge impact on your operations, primarily in the form of responsiveness to change. And you can think about that a couple different ways, right? If you have an opportunity to take on more orders, but you can't scale, that's a sort of a, an opportunity cost that you're missing out and somebody else is gonna take that because there's demand out there in the market for it.
If that demand goes the other way and drops and you can't respond quick enough, either because you can't see it or you're afraid to take some of those steps for a rebound, that's has a massive impact on your cost, and that's eating into your margins.
You can only go so long before your hand is forced anyway. So being inflexible at a macro level is all about responsiveness to change. You could. Zoom in a little bit and look at that. In any operations and different work centers within the operations, how [00:08:00] flexible or inflexible are you in being able to move people around the skill sets that you have? Do you have enough for that surge capacity? How are you using your team and being proactive and cross training? So it, it flexibility touches every single one of those things. And when you can figure out how to harness it. Now you get all of those benefits. You've got the top line, the growth opportunity, you've got the responsiveness on the cost side.
You do that while being able to protect service at all costs, and that just gives you optionality as a business, and that's really what puts you back in the driver seat of. Running your operations, you get to pick the customers you work with. You get to pick the product mix that you know fits your equipment, type your skills.And when you have the ability to do that, now you can really point your business in a strategic direction. Where do I want to be this time next year? Where do I want to be five years out? And a lot of [00:09:00] businesses just operate from a reactive. Manner. And so they're playing whack-a-mole with strategy, with cost, and they get into not quite a death spiral, but they stagnate and they can't do anything else.
So that's what I see is flexibility being the big differentiation between the businesses that are just surviving and then those that are going out and thriving and being in control of where they want to go.
Matt Horine: No, that makes a lot of sense. And it's great that you mentioned that everybody has the goal in mind or they think about where they want to be in a year, or maybe they're more concerned about maintaining the systems that they have. But what are some of the first steps leaders can take to introduce flexibility into their existing structure? I think we see a lot of people who are worried about triggering some type of disruption or they're trying to take on everything all at once. That's been something that's been recurring and wonder what your thoughts are on that.
Pat Dippel: The thing that pops to mind is that the whole definition of insanity and doing the same thing over and over again. One, I think a company, small or large, needs to be [00:10:00] brave enough to try something different. And then it's super basic. It's why are we doing this? Like we, we talked about the importance of flexibility, but I think everybody understands for all the reasons that I already mentioned, why we want to do it.
But if you are more flexible, where would you see that present itself? What are you trying to change? For your company? Is it service? Is it cost? Is it speed? Is it all of the above? And you really need to know where you're headed back to those GE things. What is the plan? What is the target? So that you can track where you're at when you get there, and use that to inform what those steps are after that.So you have to know what you're trying to do and where you're appointed.
Then you have to take a methodical approach to introducing that flexibility. You can't solve everything at once, so if you know what you're trying to impact. Look for that first area to go solve that problem and to solve it permanently.That that's a big difference. There's a handful of things that impact operations [00:11:00] leaders every single day. You never know which one it's gonna be or how many of 'em, but it's those same things on repeat that chip away your year or your week, your month or year. So if you can solve that. Permanently really important.
And then take that and translate that Best practice. Now go upstream or downstream, and over the course of a couple months, you're gonna introduce flexibility into all of the important parts of your business and eliminate those constraints. While doing that, you're creating a physical asset that you can use to not only solve the problems that you've already solved, but to use those, the ones you haven't seen and things that are coming around the corner.
Matt Horine: Yeah, that's a really good way of framing it as almost a level of certainty that you can grasp this problem because there is a lot of disruption and change going on in the market, which a little bit of a pivot here, but something on the macro side and with terror pressure and.
There's a lot of opportunity for competitive advantage that we like to highlight.I think people are really scared of tariffs. They don't understand it. Anybody who tells you they know exactly how it will play out. [00:12:00] Probably doesn't know what they're talking about, but we're seeing early signs of some of the ramifications of this new type of policy, and with tariffs emerging as that kind of central policy tool. Certainly around specific deals like with Vietnam or China or others, there's usually whatever the buzz country is this week or this month.
How can U.S. manufacturers stay competitive without relying on those low cost imports? And how have you started to see that shift or that change probably in the day-to-day operations environment?I.
Pat Dippel: Steering clear of the, maybe the politics or the rationale or opinions about tariffs. Like the fact remains that it's changing the landscape in U.S. manufacturing, and it's doing so with the level of urgency and speed that manufacturing leaders really need to understand.
If you take a step back and as a consumer. What do you care about? You frankly care about price and speed first, and I think anybody with a, a prime account is gonna be able to attest to that. If you're the fastest or the cheapest, you have an advantage. So if you have both, you're [00:13:00] positioned even better.
I think when we are, when we were talking about tariffs, there, there is a cost that's being added onto the products manufactured outside of the United States.
What does that mean for the business? They can absorb that from the company and eat into their margins or they can pass that along to the consumer and frankly risk their market share.
So that's really the only two options that they have short term. So with everything that's unknown about the tariffs, I, I'd say, I imagine, but I actually know this 'cause some of the companies that we're working with, their procurement teams are scrambling trying to figure out how to rebalance their supply chain, not knowing where these tariff levels are gonna land by country. They're looking and trying to figure out what their options are from their supply base. Everything from raw material to sub components that are put, purchased, or even value added services from subcontractors. That perform work on the product that they make.
Everything's up in the air and they're looking for those types of suppliers. That creates an [00:14:00] opportunity for us manufacturers to really be able to capitalize on how can they respond to those requests quickly? How can they do so in a manner that they can be aggressive about taking on that volume. So a huge, almost once in a lifetime opportunity to grow your business with the right type of product, with the right customers.
And you just need to be able to scale to, to do that. And that's why we're seeing so much interest from as manufacturers coming to Veryable, because we give them that flexibility and the ability to be able to scale quickly. So they've got the tools, they've got the demand signals and those that are aggressive in pursuing those, the ones that are gonna be able to grow.
Matt Horine: Yeah, that's absolutely what we've seen as the way to win. This is the best way to describe it. And we talk a lot about controllability and businesses Talk about that. And like you said, at GE. Owning your inputs, the labor component, your delivery timelines. It's a critical component of that.
Do you see a growing shift among ops leaders [00:15:00] towards localized production and the scalable workforce mentality and the strategy in response to the macro forces? Is it happening in real time and do you see big shifts happening?
Pat Dippel: Yes, and I think that looks a little bit different for every manufacturer and their supply chain and their base and their goals. If your lead time is six weeks and somebody else is doing that at the same cost in four weeks, you're at a disadvantage.
Putting that strategy hat back on, how do I get to three weeks or two weeks, or even a week and a half, how do I stay ahead of my competition?
So. That has a big impact by your supply chain, where you manufacture things, how quick and responsive your supply base is, and so when you put all those things together, it does shape some of the decisions you make and where you operate and how quick you do that. So absolutely.
Matt Horine: Just coming back to an earlier point that you made, and shifting gears here a little bit, you said something earlier, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting some kind of different result.But in [00:16:00] manufacturing, I think there's a pretty, pretty solid track records of organizations that have been doing things one way for decades.
How do you shift or help shift the mindset towards this flexibility with the macro factors in mind? It's that mover that can maybe change some opinions, but it's looking for that critical path.
How do you help shift the mindset when you see operations that have maybe been doing things, and they've been doing them well for a long time, but they've gotta stay ahead of the game and get out in front of this?
Pat Dippel: Yeah, I think we, we help paint the picture of what the future could look like. I think everybody in operations wants to get better.They want to outperform, they want to move the needle, but they're limited in their understanding of what tools can help them get there.
So we usually start that conversation talking about cutting lead times by 60%. Or being able to double within a three month period or breaking that bottleneck that has plagued them for four years.[00:17:00] And granted, that looks a little bit different for each business, but that's where we start the conversation. We've gotta be able to help paint the picture of that value.
What's in it for them to go out on a limb and try something different. There's very low risk in being able to try a tool like Veryable that's gonna help them. But still, we have to get through that sort of mental block of why would I even want to do this? How is this gonna help me in my day to day? I think we start that by solving those problems permanently and doing so in a manner that you get to see that on your KPI board. When you're rocking around the plant, you get to see that when your controller CFO closes the books every month and those inputs, those are what inform the rest of the business about what they can do. We're taking that information to the commercial teams and saying, we've just cut lead time two weeks without impacting service.
Go out on the road, be loud about this. We've just shaved six points [00:18:00] off of our COGS. Do we put that in our pocket? Do we get a little bit more aggressive on a pricing perspective? So those are the conversations and the optionality that we're giving the leadership teams the ability to talk about and to use that to direct what their next steps are. That's the exciting part about it.
Matt Horine: Yeah, it is very exciting. There's kind of something for everyone there, which is always been the big question.And if you're focusing on those operational KPIs, there really is a benefit to the entire organization and everybody involved, and most importantly, your customers. Taking a look ahead, so looking out to the future and making a couple of observations and predictions, what trends are you watching most closely when it comes to labor strategy right now and pairing that with industrial competitiveness?Because we see that the two are intertwined.
Pat Dippel: I'd say some of the things that I'm looking at is there's a lot of noise about automation. I'm pretty pro automation, but the the counterpoint point that I try to offer up is, it's like any other capital [00:19:00] investment. You have to look at it from an ROI perspective.
Do you have the volume or are you going to have the volume to be able to, to enable a $10 million robotic line that you're gonna put over? And if you can't answer that confidently, you have to really question like the validity of that investment. It goes back to my lean days, and I'd say like, why would you automate anything that you haven't really tested?
The reason I bring that up is because being able to scale labor to be able to take on more work is gonna help you in a volatile environment like this, where orders are swinging up and down, where the tariffs are changing the landscape, where market share is bouncing customer to customer, you need to get in control of those things before you put a big heavy investment with something in the automation, in the robotics areas.
Long term, absolutely. Right now, probably not the right time.
Matt Horine: Yeah. That's really insightful. And the last [00:20:00] question for, and we try to do this for the audience, but for manufacturing manufacturers listening right now who want to build a more resilient operation, what's the one action you'd recommend they take in the next 30 days?Or maybe that window's a little broader, make. Maybe 60, 90 or over the course of the year.
Pat Dippel: Yeah. I'd say sit down and take a hard look at your level of flexibility within your operations. How quick can you respond? How? How much can you respond up and down? You really need to know that. To start understanding your constraints, your opportunity, and today's environment. If you don't, if you don't know that, you need to inform what those next steps are, and if you need help doing that. We've got people that have spent their careers.
Looking at this hundreds of years of manufacturing, logistics, distribution experience, who have run sites, who have run multi-site operations, who've driven double digit labor, productivity numbers.You get to to tap into some of that [00:21:00] experience and have a real conversation about the things that matter.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. Pat, thank you very much for coming on. This has been very insightful. Where can our listeners go to find out more about your team and about Veryable?
Pat Dippel: Yeah, just say. Check out www.veryableops.com.You can find our coverage, all the different markets that we're in. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. There's a way to opt in for more information about what's going in manufacturing right now, and you also get the opportunity to see and hear from some of our customers and our business users and the impact that they've had on their operation.So don't take my word for it. Hear it. Hear it from the customers and they get to tell their own story on our website as well.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. Thank you again for coming on and we appreciate it.
Pat Dippel: Thanks, Matt.
Matt Horine: To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.