A Top Shop in the Time of COVID

Georgia Powder Coating (GPC, Gainesville, Ga.) is no stranger to the pages of Products Finishing. The company has participated in PF’s Top Shops Benchmarking program since the inception of the program and has ranked in the first place spot in the Liquid and Powder Coating category two consecutive years in a row.

From its modest beginnings operating out of the back of a poultry-processing warehouse, GPC has grown into a 35,000-square-foot facility employing a staff of roughly 100 people. The company provides commercial and architectural high-specification powder coating services for government agencies, industrial operations and architectural companies. GPC has achieved a lot since its early days, and if you ask about the secret of that success, you’ll hear stories about people. GPC prides itself on its customer service and its company culture.

Counte Cooley, president of GPC, stated in a previous interview: “Our culture is what separates us from our competitors. We care about the quality of our work in everything that we do, whether we are going through [today’s] COVID-19 problems or everyday working problems. If we have the right culture and commitment, we know that our outcome is going to be the best it can be for our customers and our employees.”

All about people

Enter the COVID pandemic. In a time of social distancing, quarantine and minimizing personal contact, how does a business built on relationships keep up the momentum?

Dallas Cooley, vice president of sales, recalls the early days of the COVID outbreak: “It’s not until recently that I have had time to kind of reflect back on the beginning of the pandemic. Do we continue to operate? What does that look like? Carrying the weight of those decisions is exhausting. Any type of logistical challenge — staffing, accounts receivable, payable, quality issues — those are normal pains that I think every production executive is more than willing to take on. But COVID was a whole new level of weight of those decisions. It really brought the responsibility for people to the forefront. Now that we’ve been through some of it, I’ve fully realized, ‘Wow. That was heavy. It’s exhausting and it’s heavy.’”

Workforce concerns were no stranger to the whole of manufacturing before COVID, but the pandemic raised the stakes. Every business was suddenly faced with difficult decisions about the health and safety of their personnel. In addition, many finishing operations are coping with staffing issues in the wake of the pandemic. 

Cooley considers GPC lucky when it comes to staffing. He credits the company’s employees themselves as part of that success. He says employee referrals have been a large contributor to hiring and keeping good workers.

“I believe winners attract winners,” he says. “If you’ve got a winning team — if you've got people who care about their job — then other like-minded people will want to come to work.”

Much of that attitude seems to come from GPC’s company culture — a culture that Counte Cooley says is based on “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.” He addresses the subject of workforce as follows:

“The workforce requires work. Work making sure that you are the go-to company in your industry, making sure that your culture and your benefits are the premier place in the industry to work. If I was going to work for this company at any of the multiple positions that we have, I would want to feel like and know that I had made the right choice because of the way I was treated at this company.”

Supply disruption

One of the issues top of mind for all finishers and manufacturers is supply disruption. Prior to the pandemic, GPC was accustomed to 2-3 week lead times on materials. 

“We started getting lead terms in the 6-8 week range,” Dallas Cooley says.  “Then we started hearing ‘it will be 6 or 8 weeks, if we can get the raw materials to produce.’”

Cooley says that some jobs were delayed because of it, but says the key to facing those instances was in straightforward communication with customers.

“You turn on the news at night and [supply disruption] is a leading story,” he says. “So, they understood our hands were tied.”

Delays are one thing, but then there’s the matter of price increases. Cooley discusses how the company navigated passing costs along to some of GPC’s customers:

“At first we absorbed the cost increases as much as we could in hopes that everything would settle in the coming months. But at a certain point, you have to pass some of it on. Our customers have been understanding of our position, and we make passing the increase to our customers the last resort. We’ve been trying to exhaust other options first. What if we sourced this differently? Can we have a longer lead time? Is there something we can do to work it out?”

Moving forward

Part of GPC’s strategy for growth is focused on continuous improvement. According to Stanley Phillips, vice president of production, over the past few years the company has invested in a five-stage zirconium wash, a Nordson Colormax Booth, a climate-controlled powder storage room, a new conveyor, a 50' by 14' by 16' sandblast room, and numerous other expansions and improvements.

Dallas Cooley says the pandemic gave GPC a few opportunities to check a few items like tooling and racking off of Phillip’s frequently updated request ledger for new equipment. With an eye to the future, the company is contemplating a building expansion.

At the end of the day, GPC is all about moving forward.

“I joke with our staff, if only we had the luxury of playing football,” Cooley says. “In football you win, the confetti drops and you get a few months off. We don’t have that luxury. We come back in Monday morning. We celebrate when we can, but we keep at it — because it doesn’t stop.”

Learn more about Georgia Powder Coating’s history and current operation: short.pfonline.com/TopShop