[00:00:37] Good morning and welcome back to another very interesting talk, another episode of Supply Chain Out in Spanish. My name is Enrique Alvarez and today I have a guest of honor who not only has a very successful professional and personal career, but I had the pleasure of working with him several years ago, so Ricardo Ricardo Maíz, president of bitro Architectural Glass, part of the bitro group Ricardo, how are you? What a pleasure!
[00:01:05] Very good Enrique, thank you very much. It’s my pleasure and here at your service,
[00:01:09] Well, as I was saying, we haven’t talked for a long time and we are catching up a little bit, you and me too. So for me it’s going to be a lot of fun and it was going to be amazing to be able to talk a little bit more about your almost 20 years of experience in glass and crystal. Tell us a little bit about who Ricardo is? Where you were born at the beginning before you had this career in the glass part,
[00:01:37] Sure, no, with pleasure. Well, you already introduced me, not me. Ricardo Maíz I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, that’s how I grew up all my life and my whole family is from Monterrey, it’s my home, there are four of us, I am the oldest, I have two sisters and a brother and well all my life growing up in Monterrey, schools in Monterrey. This avid follower of sports before, before more than now, now no longer, no longer, there is not so much time for. But you continue to
[00:02:09] Playing, you keep playing soccer for all the kids,
[00:02:12] I continue to play soccer, I continue to play with the old guys, with those over 40 years old, and we try to defend ourselves, amateurs or fans who have just gone to make a fool of themselves, to comply with this.
[00:02:23] I hadn’t seen that they went against Palmeiras or something like that against a team.
[00:02:27] They played, they played against, they played against an Egyptian team and then they played against Palmeiras. They didn’t swim and lost with five starters in the Egyptian national team, which was a disgrace at world level. But well, nowadays they have us, they already have us used to that. I say very much I like sports in many sports on a daily basis I like to play them, I like to watch them. My family is a very sporty baseball family, although they are others, not the grandchildren. We were an embarrassment to our parents and our grandfather, who almost never played baseball. We were more soccer-loving this one. But if that, that I definitely enjoy very much. And yes, I studied at the Tec de Monterrey, Economics, with a degree in Economics East and then I went to. I went to ? I went to work, to work for free. I spent a year with the Legionaries of Christ. I was living in Buenos Aires from Argentina, one year there, recently graduated. Then I worked as a teacher for a year and a half. I couldn’t get, I couldn’t get a real job. So I had to be good, I had to be. I was a teacher for a year and a half at Colegio Irlandés de Monterrey and after that I joined bitrO. I joined bitro when I was two years old, I went to do my master’s degree at Wharton. Just like you. East. And I came back. I came back and they supported me in going to study for my master’s degree. I had a commitment to come back and twenty years later, and there we are still giving a race.
[00:03:57] It’s been quite an extensive career and well, now you saw us like the synopsis of everything you are going to tell us, but going back a little more to the part before you started your career. And well, then I’d like to understand a little bit more about why you liked that career and then how you got to the position you have now. But as a young man, something your close-knit family is something you learned. At the moment you and I talked before and we also have children around the same age and they are at that stage where they are starting to see what they are studying and where they are going, etcetera. Something that reminds you of that stage of your parents or grandparents. Something you were driven to do.
[00:04:35] Yes. Yes, my family is very large, thank God, and I think it used to be the style before. Today not so much, but my dad, may he rest in peace, was a 12 year old and my mom was a 9-11 year old. I had a lot of cousins all over the place. This one especially, especially on the corn side, because on the side, on the side Rodrigo Rodriguez, on the side my mom and my mom is the oldest. So it did create a bit of an age gap between me and my older cousin and everyone else. There were not many of us. Then came two more grandchildren, smaller, but on my side of the family. The truth is that everyone half married at the same time and had a child and more time. I have a lot of cousins all over the place and every Sunday we would see each other. We actually saw each other, we played. They all play soccer and softball in Monterrey today. So there was a lot of relationship with my grandfather, my grandfather, and yes he was a great businessman. He founded the Maíz Meyer construction company, which is one of the largest construction groups in Monterrey, and my grandfather was a great businessman, a very good example for all of us. He was, yes, very hardworking, very successful, but he was also, he was, he was, he was a minor. He was very, very good with children, he liked to have people. Every Sunday we were there at his house. I didn’t see him in a bad mood, happy with the kids, listening, listening to the game, the sultans on the radio and and well, it’s just memories, a little bit as a kid. And yes, that culture that I had to be an entrepreneur, I had to be an executive, but if that entrepreneurial culture and that example that my grandfather left us, I definitely believe that it marked me and many of my cousins.
[00:06:22] Yes, he is a great example, as you say, a great Mexican businessman is very well recognized and followed and loved by many people. So tell us about your path from going from the Tec to studying, to saying well, yes, I want to go study abroad. And you told us a little bit about how you went to Buenos Aires for a year. I didn’t know that. So, if you can tell us a little more about what happened that year, how did you get started with the one you lived in Buenos Aires?
[00:06:51] Sure, it wasn’t a very nice year, to be honest. I say me of and especially today, I think we. I think you had to study two years of high school and I was one of the kids of my generation. I was twenty-one years old when. When I graduated and. And the truth is that I had always worked a lot with religious groups and helping in various things. And there was the opportunity to go to some kind of volunteering and I had it very much in my mind since I was a kid that that was going to be when, when I graduated, that instead of going directly to work and especially knowing that I was entering or finishing my career, very young I was going. It was going to be that year of volunteering and you volunteered and it was your turn wherever you went. I had worked in Tapachula as well as in Buenos Aires and I ended up working in Buenos Aires and it was a very cool experience because we all know the history of the Legionaries, including its founder, very, very tragic and unfortunate. But within that organization there are very good people that I still love very much today and people that had nothing to do with some of the scandals.
[00:08:01] And when I arrived in Argentina, unlike other places where there were very established organizations and schools and institutes, what you want to send is that in Argentina they were really just arriving and they were just founding and establishing themselves. So I had to do a little bit of everything. What was offered was to have a spirituality center. I was the manager of the center and I was the one who went and deposited the checks and organized the trips and a very cool experience for someone who is twenty-one years old. And they let you have the key because everyone had to do everything there. So I appreciate the experience very much, obviously on the spiritual and religious side and as an experience, a very nice experience, but also on the professional side. These are experiences that hardly 21 years old can have adventurers, a company and you have a boss and your boss has a boss and another boss and what you can do is minimal. Here, they let you have the keys and now you have organized a trip for 100 people to Rome and where to go
[00:08:59] Start your
[00:09:00] Just graduated? I am not a travel agent, but the group organizes it separately with Argentines who want to and I love them very much, but son, working with Argentines was also an inside joke for me every time.
[00:09:12] Each country has its own peculiarities and you are a recent graduate with no experience of coordinating much, I imagine. It has been the best thing that was a great, great experience and learning for your life. Where did you get it? Where did you get the interest in helping others? Because that’s a medium that hasn’t been ingrained in you since you were very, very young.
[00:09:32] Yes, my parents were always very much into helping in the church and they were Eucharistic ministers in the Catholic Church for a long time and they always left us the example of helping. One of my aunts has an institution for children with special abilities. And if that’s something that when I was a kid I definitely saw it and participated and liked it, I like it and the truth is I haven’t had much time to do it recently. But I did like it a lot. And so and so I started to work and for me it was a step, a very natural step. But but certainly this one. I think that one of the best experiences and even thinking about the professional life of those who best prepare me for professional life. There yes, yes, in every sense and living there. I literally lived in a church, not in a pew. If I had to have my room and everything, but. But yes, we lived in a church and ate there at the times and had the schedules and helping out on Sundays of whatever. So it was not a very cool experience, very enriching. There I was asked, and it was the style to say Hey, why am I not doing a master’s degree instead of the philosophical answer? No, I’m not doing a master’s degree in life here, from here it’s part of the learning. And then and then I tell you another anecdote over there, but. But the truth is that the experience, the experience was very pariah and that’s how it happened. And then here comes the harsh reality, because if he ends up giving that year.
[00:11:01] It was a one-year commitment and return.
[00:11:03] I could not be a year and I but you can’t believe it, but my commitment was a year and back and it was my plan to come back. And in
[00:11:11] What year? For which year?
[00:11:13] 98, 97 98 I graduated in December 97 and by February 98 I was already
[00:11:20] In Buenos Aires,
[00:11:21] The World Cup of France 98 or the World Cup of France.
[00:11:24] Did it touch you when you were in Argentina?
[00:11:26] Then I had to be in Argentina and Argentina, England, Argentina, England. It was chaos and then they were eliminated by the Netherlands and we were eliminated by Germany. But if it was not a good experience to see the World Cup there in Argentina people are just as passionate as in Mexico or more, but here goes that and now, yes, I want to work in a company and nothing more than all the wave of interviews of recent graduates. You missed those. I mean, no longer, you didn’t get into all that, in all that wave of help that the school gives you when you are in ninth semester or eighth semester. And it was a fresh start. And the brava you took you already enough to get a job for as long as you employ me and with the same organization with which I went to volunteer and taught economics class and gave and led a program of social participation and I that for a year and a half. But I was looking for some job in some company studying economics. I wanted to work in a company and the truth is that I struggled a lot. I had a lot to do to get my job at Vitrola.
[00:12:25] And so it was. It was a difficult time as well. The country’s economy in the history of the world, then it was not easy, maybe to get a job. At that time you had a conception or a predisposition of something you wanted to do, that is, you saw yourself already graduated or returning from Buenos Aires. And well, I would like the corporate side, I would like certain types of industries or you would still at this point be very open to anyone.
[00:12:49] I liked the strategic theme and I liked where the strategic theme is. I liked the idea of getting into it, whether it was a consulting firm or one or a strategic press area within business. And the truth is that that way, that way, that way, where I liked it and finally it was what it was, that’s how I joined Vitrola in the strategic planning area in the flat glass division at that time and it happened and it happened. I keep reminding the human resources people at vitro that they didn’t hire me, that I hired me. When they talk to you, they talk to a friend of mine or a very good friend of mine, who used to work, used to work in a bank and they invite him to interview for a strategic planning position. And my friend says You know what? Look, I’m not interested, but I have two other friends who might be interested. Then they give him my phone number and my contact information, and my phone number and another friend’s phone number for him to contact them and they contact my other friend, but they don’t contact me. So I had to go stand there in the Human Resources office and say hey, I hear they are looking to interview for a position, they can test me, they can interview me. They said Yes, of course, come in. And I was tested and interviewed and eventually hired. But I still remind them that I had to go knocking on doors and you had to go knocking on doors.
[00:14:02] You were the one knocking on doors and talking. It speaks very well of you, of the proactivity that you have always, always had for all those who listen to us, because obviously they listen to us in other places, not only in Mexico. Could you give them a brief summary of what bitro is, what the referee group is and what it refers to? What is meant by flat glass collection.
[00:14:21] Of course, if this group is a public company, it has been listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange for many years and is basically dedicated to the good, not exclusively, but mainly to manufacture glass, to manufacture glass containers for the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry and some premium liquor and make flat glass, which is the glass that ends up in all rooms, furniture, automobiles. Anyway, there are many applications of glass, but we make glass, float glass and glass. It is called floating live because it floats on a tin chamber as it comes out of a furnace or is cut to size and is packaged and shipped to customers who make it. They do a lot of things with it. They are our customers, they can make windows, they can make tables, they can make windshields, car window, in short, there are a lot of uses for glass, but it all starts with the smelting of the raw material sand, carbonate. We take out the glass and we sell. This is a company that was founded nineteen hundred and eight, that is, more than one hundred years ago. It is a very rich history and always with a very interesting leadership in the manufacturing part in the north of the country and that took a very interesting turn or a very interesting change.
[00:15:46] Approximately five or six years ago this book was born as a company for the beer industry, making packaging for the beer industry, but however we invested that business in the beverage and food packaging business and reinvented the group. At that time we sold that business which to the founding business was a very successful transaction. I got to be the me. I was the I was at that time in business development and then I had to lead the sales process, a very cool process. It was sold to a world leader, a Chilean. He now owns bitro’s former beverage and food packaging plants in Mexico. And after that we are left with zero debt, some cash and a plan to grow where we hit it. And what we had was that cosmetics packaging business. We had the airplane business which consisted of float glass and automotive glass, and we also had a diverse industry that makes chemicals, mostly sodium carbonate and some of the by-products calcium chloride, salt, bicarbonate, etc.. This and at that time seen it had to reinvent itself and was given the opportunity to buy the flat glass division of a very large American company PPG.
[00:17:07] In fact, the name PPG is East Roleplay Glass is a company that was also born as a bitro making glass. This logo was checked and a lot of side and paint investments were made. They bought comics for those who listen to us in Mexico, but PPG concentrated. Part paints and chemicals, because we are looking to grow, they are looking to leave and we acquired a company with a technological and branding background. The virus is PPG, we make one more virus, more commodity in Mexico. And to whom? To whom? Ppg The virus that was being made was glass, value added for industry, especially for commercial construction. So all the glass that in the United States and developed countries, all the glass with solar control coatings that is the standard in developing countries in Mexico and other developed countries is just beginning. But what they buy from us was the technology leader in. It is a company with a tremendous technological, patent and research background that would have taken us 50 years to develop on our own. So we took a quantum leap and well, that’s why, that’s why we are over here now living in Pittsburgh and managing the joint vision with the Mexican, U.S. and Canadian operations.
[00:18:21] And well, I think it’s a company with a lot of history also began to pass the time, they come together in
[00:18:29] 800 888 even older
[00:18:33] From 1900. Yes, yes, yes.
[00:18:36] If we don’t put two century-old companies together, the truth is that we can
[00:18:39] That’s going to be really, really fun. And obviously this speaks very well of the leadership of both companies and of how important the whole strategic part has been for bitro, for the group and for flat glass. And well, also for you and your career. Central, going back again to where we were, you just got into bitro the strategic part, they managed to hire you or rather you hired you after you went to tell them to hire you? East. How have you seen up to 19 years old? You’ve seen a lot of things over the years? You have gone through several stages of development, not only of the group, but of the entire industry in this world. How has your perspective changed a bit since you started? And in this restructuring, this restarting of certain things in vitro, what could you comment on that?
[00:19:30] I mean, definitely your perspective changes. You enter and enter a small world without much idea of the big picture, as the Americans say here. And well, you go, you focus and you realize. And what is true is that a colleague, a colleague of mine, a boss, was telling me. And now we are competing in the Major Leagues and it is no longer, it is no longer an amateur competition. Our competitors are the French leader, the American leader, the Japanese leader, the Chinese leader. We are competing against global companies, one of the best global companies in the world, and sometimes that doesn’t help you, doesn’t help you. You don’t get it, especially when you’re more focused on Mexico and trying to compete for your little bug all of a sudden. Well, now, now. The competition is worldwide and it is intense and relentless. But you have to keep innovating, you have to keep creating, you have to keep moving. And that perspective, when you start working, you are focused on your project, on your division, on your, on your region, and obviously you have all that, you see it in a broader way and you understand it and participate in the decisions that impact the business. And it has been very enriching for me. Thank God I have always had to keep moving forward in the group, jumping from one position to another until I got to where I am now, which is already three years in the World Cup. In three years time flies, but well, in short, it is an evolution and well, with time and the level of responsibility, if you become aware of many more things and the decisions in which you collaborate or you have to make, then they have a direct impact on the results and the future of the group. For, for, for better or worse.
[00:21:20] Based on your experience and everything you have experienced, if you had to summarize in three or four points or what makes, what characteristics make a good company or of what? In what way? Again, I know you have gone through several, several stages of the company and well, it has been growing successfully. It’s a great career path. What makes a good company? Because you are as you were against French companies, against Japanese companies, against companies all over the world. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you become better?
[00:21:52] That is the key. It is how you differentiate yourself, because continuing to compete in the most commodity products, the most battle-tested products, becomes very complicated, because it is the industry that we participate in our intensive life. In capital investments are monstrous. Here, each exploded furnace costs 130, 150 million dollars. So, how do you stop, how do you get the necessary returns to justify this type of investment? And the truth is that it is not easy. It’s not easy because for the same as the competition and then you come and compete against 15 and there are others maybe from China that have no capital cost that you had and they are willing to get by with very tiny margins and the pressure is immense to keep delivering. So I believe that a good company has to know how to innovate, it has to be able to react, to react very quickly, which is something that I do believe has characterized us, that we have known how to react and be resilient. When you come for a while it’s good, how you solve it the reasons already because you don’t know anymore who knows if today, tomorrow and the sense of urgency, and innovation and creativity and finding those niches where you can play. I think that’s what makes a good company and we don’t always get it right. We try and move forward, but I definitely believe that this characterizes the definition of a good company.
[00:23:13] Cardo A little bit changing the trajectory of the conversation, what do you think has been your biggest challenge professionally speaking? And well, now you have mentioned several of the competition, but you going back a little bit to you as a central person in this interview, what is it that? What has been the most difficult thing in your professional life?
[00:23:35] Look, I am going to mention two examples of humor and I say they are for different reasons, but for a little similar this virus and it goes through a financial restructuring around 2015, starting a little earlier, starting a structure that maybe ends in 2015, but it starts around 2011. 2010 2011 and I happen to be in the United States working in Memphis, Tennessee, in a company we had as Finance Director and one fine day we receive the notification that we are being sued by the creditors and that we have to appear tomorrow in Dallas to be in front of the judge and a restructuring process begins, which I had in 2000 2010 talking about I was thirty-three, thirty-four years old. I was the lawyer of a company totally inexperienced for what was ahead of us and it was a frontal attack from the creditors for the restructuring with vitro against the company that I had to manage the finances and. And the rest was extremely intense, extremely enriching at the end. But yes, there were days when I don’t know how we’re going to do it, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
[00:24:49] The responsibility, the responsibility of all the employees we had, to find a way to solve this issue that seemed to have no solution. And that period of my professional life was, was, was, was of great challenges, also of great teachings and. And well, and in those, in those difficult moments you realize what you can do, what others can do, who you can count on and. And that space was, was definitely very challenging. And also, also where we learned a lot and then the same, then the start of the pandemic, the start of the pandemic. Suddenly it’s April 2020 and I have. In North America we have ten float furnaces and at that time I believe by May we will have nine of the ten furnaces either recycling glass or shut down. Do not turn off. You know not to turn them off. Those ovens you turn them on today, you turn them off in 15 years because of the structure that you can no longer turn them off and turn on some light of the beautiful, everything you have to break. You reproduce it, you breathe it, it starts to recycle it, it breaks it, you put it back.
[00:25:55] Because sales were not there, they broke up, demand stopped,
[00:25:58] Everything stopped and the uncertainty
[00:26:01] Stopped, stopped
[00:26:02] The product was stopped automotive and the uncertainty and need for cash. So ok, I’m still selling, but I sell and sell inventory. I’m going to go to the bones to zero, which is what much of the world did and why we are already struggling with all the logistics and supply issues worldwide. But. But the reaction has to be immediate and the solutions here already the decisions are already and take the best decisions you have. And brands, and even if they are radical, it is imperative to move. And the truth is that this period of how and how we solved the year was a year where we generated a lot of cash flow because we were able to reduce inventories and become more efficient. We reached all of our goals, managed to ride the second recovery in the second half of the year and he may have met the expectations of that very difficult year. The truth is that this was a very big and super challenge, the great reward of knowing that we pulled it off and I was relatively new in the position. I had one year in the position, so I really wasn’t, I didn’t have that much background or that much experience and having to sit down with everyone and say let’s see here what we are going to do and between all of us decide and face and make decisions quickly and concisely. Well, I think Jorge was another great challenge, which I am very proud to have been able to meet, I guess.
[00:27:20] And well, I think it’s definitely a source of pride. These two years of pandemic have been quite challenging for everyone and for all industries, let alone one in which overnight you drop 100 percent of your demand, not on the construction side and in all other areas. So I think the constant here is that the more challenges you are presented with, I think you get better and better, so you have already been served this one. We already have some white hairs that were not there before. No gray hair
[00:27:53] Three years ago in all white, but let’s not wait, let’s wait a year is a little more stable, but well, but that’s what we are for and that’s what the team is for. And when I say when I talk to you about being proud and I talk to you about achievements, they are not mine, they are achievements of the whole team, of the whole organization and I have the best team in the industry and together we have been able to do it.
[00:28:18] No, what a taste and how good this one is. So, tell us a little bit about it. You mentioned a little bit about the supply chain, logistics, which at the end of the day is something that everyone here is passionate about. Tell us a little more. They obviously saw themselves in the pandemic. Does all this happen on the glass or flat side, how does the supply chain work a little bit? How do the flows work? What did you really struggle with on the supply side and going forward this year and in the coming years? What does that part of the supply chain look like?
[00:28:51] If not, as well as me with the word we suffer and if we suffer some, some issues, but we also benefit from some issues. I think there were, there were pros and cons. I definitely learned in these years of things I never wanted to have learned and probably will never go back. I would never have learned it if it hadn’t been for all the. Suddenly the calls were coming in at ten o’clock at night and we’re running out of hydrogen for I don’t know which plants. And today explain to me where in the process we use hydrogen first and how we can run out of hydrogen that is happening? And hydrogen? Nitrogen, sand. Whatever you want. There were, there were a number of emergencies that, thank God, all of them are not only emergencies, but all of them are just scares and there is a lot of work to be done to solve them. But if we get a lot of warnings to say hey how does this look and what can happen if we don’t fix this, well in ten days I can stop supplying you and that means your furnace is almost collapsing, you have to take action and you are going to stop all production and react against that and see well, where if not this tester, where do we get it from and so on. And it was a theme of today. This is still an ongoing issue. Difficulties continue, there are things that we lack every day and we have to take care of things that normally you never thought about, you will never think about what is going to happen. We have definitely seen that push and pull.
[00:30:23] Transportation, moving the product yourself to your customers, becomes an adventure as well. I’m still going to raise my hand and you had a trailer there at the doors of your company and shipped it and dulled it. You dial it and that’s it. Not now, now, now it is scarce. Fewer people are willing to engage in trucking, especially heavy haulage. And it has been, it has been an adventure. And on the other hand, exporting, exporting has become almost impossible due to logistics costs. Do you have or do you have a separate place on the boat? You show up and they say no, always the ship did not stop at this port and we see that, we see it every day. We also see it entering our markets, which we have to accept when before perhaps products from other geographies were arriving much more competitively and much more constantly to our geographies. Today we probably see much less of it, so that helps and frees up a little more demand to be able to meet it, and it has definitely helped us in these years. But it is a reality. The issues, the world is not back to normal from the logistics and supply side. And we have to adapt, we have to adapt, and thank God we have manufacturing centers very close to our final destinations. Our main focus is not exports, so we have not been affected as much as perhaps someone who was an inept exporter or importer, whose business model is still there, was totally, totally changed. The irruption was total.
[00:31:57] If not, plus the costs and all the other complexities of what we are experiencing in the supply chain, then it is extremely interesting and well, you can see that there is no, there is no respite when it is not in the input part, it is a part of the sales or the customer that after all these years. And this question has been asked to several people and I understand that no one is more, the more I think about what the answer could be, the more wrong I become. I don’t know how. What does the future look like? I believe that right now it is this uncertainty. He is still as someone in your position in a world-class company like the one he leads. How? What do you plan to do next year? What do you think about, what indicators do you personally take into account the most?
[00:32:46] See here. If you ask me the question, you ask me what is going to be your biggest challenge this year? The answer is I don’t know what my biggest challenge is going to be. Sea No, I’m sure you won’t run into some
[00:32:58] Zero, but no snowfall. The fire poses from
[00:33:03] The snowfall, the snowfall last year, the freeze in February in Texas. Our plant or not was a from ten days of terror in northern Mexico and in and in Texas last year in February. We didn’t have that. Probably not. No one plans it. He doesn’t plan to. You don’t put it in your. In your budget. So, what is my biggest challenge? I don’t know. So what do we do or what do we have to do? One is good to run it run the hole. Be, be, be very disciplined. To continue improving the operational part, the model of excellence, operation. Keep taking care of your current background, make sure that you take care of it today, but you are working on tomorrow, we keep working on tomorrow. We believe that if glass as a material, especially in buildings and in matters of energy conservation and energy renewal, is a product that is at the center of the whole wave and brings a very pronounced tailwind. Times may vary. This is not uncovered today, but. But what is coming is a trend, a wave towards more value-added products, more products with solar control, more products with thermal properties of another, of another level, of another smell of self-renewal of energy or solar panels and even solar panels on the facades of buildings. All of that is coming and we are getting involved and investing in all of those. We have to be there, at the forefront of what’s coming for tomorrow’s buildings. So there is something today that needs to be executed. Today you have to start planning for tomorrow and make those investments and those decisions to enter those markets that tomorrow will be the livelihood of your company. In all these areas we are facing it and we have started to make our first steps in very interesting and interesting areas. And that’s what we have to do.
[00:34:50] That, that’s amazing and very interesting, isn’t it exciting? I would even say the part of technology in products such as glass, something that has been around for many years and how it has developed to what we have now is incredible, impressive and will continue to be relevant. What’s more, it’s going to be more relevant than ever. With all these climatological changes, etcetera.
[00:35:16] And legislation is coming. You look at all the buildings that have to be renovated based on legislation in New York alone, there are thousands and thousands of buildings. California already requires self-renewal, auto or power generation. And there’s the whole issue of the virus, the virus, the solar panels. There is a whole wave that goes in that direction. It is not a question of whether he will come. It’s just so quick to come. And you have to be, you have to be prepared. But I get very excited and I say what a father? That your product can collaborate. That is that progress and that and that benefit to the environment and the planet. And I think we’re riding on a company that has everything to compete for those new niches and. And yes, it does excite and thrill.
[00:36:04] Yes, of course if you’re in a not just a company, but an industry that is really changing a lot of people’s lives for the better and is changing the world, not for, for the better as well, then yes it’s very, very exciting. And again I thank you very much for giving us some time to talk today. I know we can continue talking for a couple of hours, but you have a lot of other things to do. A penultimate or last question if you could go back in time and give a tip to the Ricardo more than 24 years playing soccer in calcio every Thursday, or was it Thursday or when Thursdays Thursdays Thursdays.
[00:36:41] You play calcium.
[00:36:43] What? What advice would you give yourself?
[00:36:49] 24 years old, son. I was practically walking in at the time. The advice I would give to someone just entering a company is. East. The economic part. When you go to work, they should take a back seat. The important thing is the opportunities and the learning you have. This is the power of attorney. When I. When it is my turn to hire in vitro the first people that I had a hard time with as a boss. It was something that the one I gave him as. As the point of sale. Look at this me. I do not know. I mean, I don’t know if they will probably pay you better, they could pay you better and maybe you could go somewhere else. And maybe when you practice to your friends that I am working in Cemex or in other companies at that time and I say and. But then what I mean is look in vitro. At least being here with us you are going to be sitting with the general and you are going to be talking about the projects and you are going to be in the thick of things here. Here the levels are really very short and you and your chance to learn, to grow, to, to, to, to be able to show yourself, are quite a lot. That was my turn. My experience may not be that of all the areas where I was, but it was and those opportunities are invaluable.
[00:38:07] What you can learn in those formative years is your money, you’re going to do later, but, but, but, but first you have to learn and you have to roll up your sleeves and get your guts in and do the dirty work. That’s what I would recommend. This is forget about, forget about everything that is not a subject of growth and teaching where you are learning. Get into everything you can learn. Get together with people you admire who can teach you and help you develop. And it helps others as well. When. When everyone else you take yourself and. And that part we sometimes undervalue or get into competition. But when you help others and you also get closer to people who help you, it is a virtuous circle where everyone will win and your career will be much richer. So I say, that would certainly be my advice to myself at that age or to someone who is in a new stage. And you look for where you can learn that you can grow, where, where you are going to learn the most and put aside the status quo or maybe the best economic opportunity. Go away for the little opportunity that more teaching will leave.
[00:39:21] Ricardo, thank you for your time and for the talk. Ricardo Mice, president of bitro Architectural Class Part of de bitro bitro group Ricardo if anyone has any questions, anyone would like to learn a little bit more, whether it’s de bitro of the history of PPG, of job opportunities, even whether it’s in the United States, in Mexico or somewhere else. How can you be contacted?
[00:39:44] Of course, on our website it’s corporate, it’s bitro. Dot com. In the United States we use another one for the industry which is bitro glacis with z is dot like this one. So anyone who wants to learn more about our products will be able to find our website there. What I’m talking about is the building-integrated solar panels for photovoltaic buildings and everything else we are developing. And there may also be job applications or how to enter resumes and so on. And well, I think that in terms of social networks, I am not very active in social networks, but I do have my LinkedIn profile and if anyone, if anyone, if anyone listens there and would like to contact me, send me a message and nothing else, put a note that you listened to the Supply Chain Now podcast and I will gladly be back with you.
[00:40:38] Well, thank you very much, thank you very much Ricardo, thank you very much to everyone who is listening. And well, if you are interested in listening to interviews like this with people like Ricardo, who is not only changing and continuing to innovate an industry that is very relevant to everyone. Be sure to subscribe again. My name is Enrique Alvarez and we see you in one more episode of Supply Chain Out in Spanish. Thank you and see you later.
