Kaiser’s Bridge To The Future John Walker’s Open-Collar Style Plays Well At Trentwood Plant
He’s a blues pianist with an MBA, a highpaid executive in steel-toed shoes.
At a time when the nation’s industrial plants are blurring the lines between management and the rank-and-file, 39-yearold John H. Walker is a bridge to the future at Kaiser Aluminum Corp. in the Valley.
The former Ohio steel maker was installed in October as vice president of operations of Trentwood flat-rolled products, one of the largest factories in the Inland Northwest.
As the head of this 65-acre factory, Walker is the designated “Mayor of Trentwood,” a workplace the size of a small city, with 1,425 employees who produce millions of pounds of aluminum for automobile wheels, airplane fuselages and beverage cans.
Walker’s open-collar style and ugly brown boots have surprised more than a few Kaiser workers who were used to Ray Milchovich, the button-downed executive who was promoted to head Kaiser’s micromill venture in Pleasanton, Calif.
“He’s a breath of fresh air,” says Reek Kasun, an inside sales representative. “From what I hear on the floor,” she said, “he’s turning things around.”
“This is a blue-collar people guy,” says Joe Thorpe, president of the United Steelworkers Local 338, which represents eight of 10 Trentwood workers. “Right now, he may have better relationship with my membership than his own managers.”
Such reactions could be attributed to a honeymoon period for the new plant manager.
But the upbeat commentary reflects Walker’s management philosophy to set the goals and direction for the factory, to put the right people in place to accomplish the tasks and to leave them alone to do their job.
“This is a profitable business, and it will become more profitable by focusing on details of the way we manufacture our products,” Walker says from his office in the forest green administration building at Trentwood. “We don’t have to hit a home run every time we come to bat.”
Some immediate challenges, goals and milestones facing Walker include:
Boosting Trentwood production from 475 million pounds of aluminum in 1996 to 530 million pounds this year. Accomplishing that, he says, would be Trentwood’s contribution to Houston-based Kaiser’s call for the company to save $120 million cutting expenses or improving sales in 1997.
Increasing Trentwood’s 1996 earnings of $30 million, before interest and taxes, closer to the record $50 million posted in 1995.
Breaking ground in April on a two-year project to build a huge $47.6 million heat-treat facility just east of the Spokane Business & Industrial Park. The plant, to open in 1998, will add 20 million pounds of production for Trentwood’s value-added specialty products line.
Exporting more Trentwood aluminum in 1997 than is sold domestically, a first for the factory.
“I’ve been given free reign here,” says Walker in a New York accent over the hiss of semi-trailers passing his open window. “The mother ship doesn’t beam orders down.”
“I’m pretty simple. I try to stay the course with the programs we put in place. I don’t try to redesign things. It’s a pretty simple formula.”
Walker’s formula may be simple, but the problem is complex. Trentwood produces both can stock for the beverage industry, at a thin profit margin, and heat-treated specialty products for aerospace and engineering industries, which garners greater returns per unit.
It’s up to Walker to strike a balance between the two lines to meet Trentwood’s goals and help Kaiser rebound from the $9.9 million in bottom-line losses it reported since June 1996. Those losses, however, are a pittance compared with the $652 million the company bled in 1993.
Walker also must deal with baggage from the past. Kaiser in early 1996 was rebuffed from its unfriendly takeover of the larger Alumax Inc., a Georgia-based competitor.
In the previous year, Trentwood experienced one of its most contentious weeks when the Steelworkers joined an eight-day labor strike, the first in the company’s 49-year history. The strike generated animosity between union and management, but also between workers at Trentwood and Kaiser’s smelter at Mead, which supplies the majority of metal to the rolling mill.
“John is in a very, very, very demanding position,” says his predecessor Milchovich, who also left the steel industry to spend 16 years at Trentwood. “Even though there’s been so much accomplished at Trentwood in the past, the war is never over. There will continue to be demands for higher quality, product differentiation and extreme pressure on cost reduction.”
“Because of its complexity, Trentwood is a tough plant to run,” adds Milchovich, who picked Walker from among six finalists. “It needs a leader with tremendous courage, and John has got that.”
Since his arrival, Walker has reorganized his management team, ruffling some who were sent from office jobs to the factory. He’s helped open communications with Mead managers and has asked his supervisors to embrace a riskier incentive program that could result in lower year-end bonuses in 1997.
Walker says coming to Trentwood was a great move. He says his eight-year career at Weirton Steel Corp. near Pittsburgh was stagnating and there was little prospect for advancement. Moreover, the company was experiencing $5 million in losses per month, and Walker saw little chance of recovery.
“John has all the talent in the world to be president and CEO some place,” says Craig Costello, executive vice president at Weirton.
Mark Glyptis, president of the 4,600-member Independent Steelworkers Union and a member of Weirton’s board of directors, says he was impressed with Walker because “he believed many answers were found on the shop floor. He was firm in his decision making, but fair. His door was always open.”
Walker’s stainless reputation among both management and union officials may stem from his white-collar training and blue-collar roots.
Born in Corning, N.Y., as the middle son in a poor family of eight children, Walker was forced to leave home at 17 because his parents could not afford to support him.
Walker worked his way through college at Virginia Polytechnical Institute, earning a bachelor’s degree of science. With the help of his wife, Debbie, a school teacher, he completed a master’s degree in business administration from Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh.
Walker became a consultant at McKinsey and Co. before joining Weirton Steel in 1988, four years after the steel mill was acquired by its employees in the nation’s largest Employee Stock Ownership Plan. When he left for Kaiser, he was Weirton’s vice president of operations, two steps below the president.
At his home in Colbert, Walker collects blues records, plays the piano and indulges his woodworking habit. Fearing he couldn’t get hard woods in the Northwest, Walker brought thousands of board feet of oak, walnut and cherry from Pennsylvania.
“It was a war zone where I came from,” says Walker, who has two children in grade school. “This is a far more pleasant environment, where people say ‘hi’ to you vs. some other words that aren’t so nice. Here, I’m not seen as the outsider.”
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