Ep. 17: Operations mgr Erin Cuellar moved between five states in 13 years for manufacturing career

Chinatown 2.0

Erin Cuellar is Director of Operations at STERIS, a manufacturer of medical devices. At the time of the interview, she was senior operations manager at the same company, and her role was essentially that of a plant manager.

Her responsibilities included supervising teams, managing KPIs, and maintaining quality controls.

Erin comes from a very different world than I do. She dropped out of college, worked at a local manufacturing site, joined an apprenticeship program, got her journeyman’s card which is sort of like a full license to practice in the trades, and moved from state to state for employment in manufacturing.

In the course of 13 years, she moved between five different states. At least one of the moves was the result of a plant shutdown thanks to outsourcing.

But Erin and her family, which includes a husband and three children were fully resilient in transitioning to new homes, new jobs, and new schools.

In fact, about a year after our interview, Erin moved to Pennsylvania to become Director of Operations at her company. I became interested in the trades in recent years after noticing and following the works of Mike Rowe and Andrew Yang, who both highlight a change in the mix of American jobs available as well as people willing to undertake those jobs.

In the US, there just seem to be fewer opportunities in the trades sector, and even fewer young people looking to enter those fields.

Mike Rowe looks to encourage the youths to get into these areas, whereas Andrew Yang sees the loss of these opportunities as the force that hollowed out middle America, which disenfranchised large swaths of the population, leading to rising support for the wings of the political spectrum.

In today’s conversation, Erin and I talked about what it's like to work in a manufacturing plant, her experience of working in the trades as a rare species of a woman, her moves around the country in pursuit of various manufacturing jobs, how does she think about raising her kids, and why she thinks it's a good idea for young people to consider a career in the trades.

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1. Teaser (00:00:00)

2. Intro (00:00:25)

3. Erin's current job as a senior Operations Manager at a medical device company: What they build, reporting structure and the size of the organization (00:03:54)

4. The inside of a plant: Material acquisition, assembly lines, and shipping (00:06:00)

5. Plant manager's role: Supervising teams, managing key performance indicators (KPIs), and quality control (00:07:07)

6. Erin's background: Born and raised in Michigan, dropping out of college, starting work at a local manufacturing site (00:08:08)

7. Joining the apprenticeship program: Why she chose to become a millwright (00:09:56)

8. What is a line in manufacturing (00:13:26)

9. Interviewing and getting accepted into the millwright program as the first and only female in 80 years of the facility existence (00:14:14)

10. The definition of a journeyman (00:15:20)

11. Getting her journeyman's card: It's significance, sexism, and empathetic team members that led to her breakthrough (00:17:19)

12. Discrimination against minorities in a largely caucasian work environment (00:25:15)

13. Moving to Florida after plant closing: Being turned down for wielding jobs because she was a woman (00:26:04)

14. Starting on the path of leadership, understanding lean manufacturing (00:27:26)

15. Moving to Kansas, being promoted to production manager, building a new team from scratch in 3 months (00:28:11)

16. Why Sunrise Medical Company merged their Florida and Kansas City plant (00:29:34)

17. Sunrise Medical plant closure, going to Ink Jet, then Sealy Mattress, head hunted by AGCO, moved to rural, non-diverse North Central Kansas (00:30:42)

18. Erin's experience in China: Working with a global team, wearing uniforms to work (00:33:28)

19. Getting called by Tesla: Moving from Baltimore to California, finishing her masters degree and leaving Tesla (00:39:52)

20. Dealing with frequent movement as a family; leaving new relationships behind, the exposure to different cultures and experiences (00:42:13)

21. What Erin's kids want to become in the future: Promoting skilled trades as an alternative path to going straight to college (00:44:19)

22. The argument that there's perceived instability going into trades: Factory closures, automations (00:48:24)

23. How the constant moves affected the kids; their request not to move until they are done with high-school (00:50:42)

24. Outro (00:52:06)