Coffee with: Change in plans lands CAPTIN's new VP in Ladner
Marc Vallee had the cottage on Lake Erie renovated and ready. His boat was prepped. And he bought his wife, Debbie, her favourite sports car for those long anticipated cruises along the back roads.
Their retirement plans were set.
That's when the phone rang with an intriguing job offer thousands of kilometres away in Tilbury.
Would he put the "golden years" on hold for a while, pack up his family and belongings and move from Ontario to become vice president of CAPTIN (Canadian Autoparts Toyota) for at least the next couple of years?
The answer was "yes," and Vallee, his wife and 23-year-old son became Ladner residents late last year.
Vallee, 57, who has worked for Toyota since the mid-1980s says his response was pretty much immediate after putting in such long service with the company—loyalty to make sure the job in Delta was done right kicked in.
"I was going to retire. I had pushed my papers across the table and Mr. (Ray) Tanguay, our president and chairman of basically North America asked 'Would you help us out?'"
Having never been to the west coast before, Vallee says the experience has been quite an adventure. It also allowed him to reunite with his sister who decades earlier had moved from Ontario to settle in North Vancouver.
"I hadn't seen her in 17 years," he says. "And she was excited for us and it was good to see her and her family."
Over the next two years Vallee, who says the main area he wants to improve at CAPTIN is the company's profitability. And he plans to use his experience as general manger of the body shop at TMMC (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc.), a 7,000-employee facility—Toyota's third biggest in terms of production—in Cambridge, Ontario where he worked on the Lexus product line.
"We have a wheel plant that is almost right next to our (Toyota) production plant in Kentucky and their cost is pretty much nothing to ship the wheels there," Vallee says. "Here, our cost is about $6 to $7 a wheel to get it there. That's one of our challenges."
Since the Tilbury plant turns out 6,000 to 7,000 wheels a day that cost can add up in a hurry.
"We have to get our good wheel ratio up there, lower our cost to the customer and make the operation more viable," he said.
It's a challenge, but one he feels his workforce here is keen to meet. Much of that stems from the loyalty factor Toyota manages to instill in their workers.
An example of that was the company's decision not to lay off any full time workers after Japan was hit by earthquakes an tsunamis which slowed production.
"Basically, we shut down for three months here. We cut back on some contract work, but never laid off any workers. That's always been Toyota's way," Vallee says, adding since 1956 Toyota has maintained that commitment.
"If you're working for the Big Three they'll lay you off and bring you back," Vallee says. "Here, we'll keep the people cleaning, offer them vacation or time off. If it's a short-term thing, two or three months, by time you've let those people go, half of them don't want to come back. They find other jobs, and then you have to retrain them. And the impact is huge to the quality of the vehicle. And it's just not our culture to do that.
"I think in the long haul your people pay you back 10 times over."
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