By Andrew P. McCoy and Fred Sargent
Published On September 15, 2024
We recently had the opportunity to visit with Brian DiBella, a 20-year veteran of Legrand, North and Central America, who became president and CEO in March 2024.
Brian DiBella is a gifted communicator. Equally important, he is a great listener. He’s made listening skills a priority for his entire organization. What struck us most was his fresh outlook on subjects that have been hashed over many times, which he presented in a new light.
How do you view the long-term prospects for the electrical industry in this country?
Long-term prospects for the electrical industry are tremendous. There’s been a trillion dollars in total funding committed to the electrification of our infrastructure over the next five to 10 years. That’s in addition to normal spending. The money is available. Now there’s important work to be done.
We do not have the opportunity to talk with manufacturers often enough. Can you tell us about the present state of “lean manufacturing” today?
Our Wiremold business provides a great example. Wiremold has had a great heritage in lean manufacturing for over 100 years. But instead of just thinking of “lean” as being about our own operations, we see it as a way to take better care of our customers. It provides quicker turnaround times. It means improving packaging for products so that it’s optimized for the job site—even if it costs a little bit more for us to do it that way.
Your company’s product videos demonstrate remarkable productivity improvements for new construction. How about service and maintenance?
Productivity is productivity, for either new construction or service and maintenance. When we design one of our products for easy installation during new construction, it will be easier and more straightforward to replace later on in a service and maintenance situation. Smart design will produce benefits to new construction and service and maintenance. We are always thinking about both.
Sounds like you’re pretty tuned in to the needs of service and maintenance contractors.
We have a regular “Contractor Advisory Council” that we listen to—including discussions about service and maintenance. We know that, especially with service and maintenance, when you need it is when you need it. We could design really complicated expensive things. But those are not going to be well-suited to the demands of service and maintenance. For example, there’s been a major technology change in LED lighting. That’s why we designed an LED dimmer that gives you something on the service truck that can fit a wide range of situations. It supplies and really prioritizes what users need most.
Cybersecurity is at the top of the list of concerns for every company.
For starters, if you are in service and maintenance, you are always concerned about keeping your business operational. And for us, the security of our products is paramount. We have been around for 100-plus years thinking about electrical safety, about installability and about making sure that our products will work for the next 10 or 20 years, electrically and mechanically. Now we also have to make sure that the technology inside our products is reliable—and that means protecting it from cyberthreats.
In many respects, the largest of all leading concerns worldwide could be grouped under the heading of sustainability.
Sustainability is becoming more important with each passing day. In our industry, it takes on a lot of different dimensions. Certainly energy efficiency is a critical part. Here we’re talking about products in terms of how they manage and consume power within a facility. We are constantly thinking about opportunities to do that, as with the dimmers that I mentioned earlier, one of the simplest ways to conserve power. Then there’s the question of packaging those dimmers and other products. If we use less packaging, there will be less waste on the job site, which benefits the contractor, of course.
Of course, on any day of the week, the biggest concern in the minds of people in every sector of the electrical industry is a shortage of workers.
Our industry is comprised of three major elements. We’ve got manufacturers, we’ve got distributors and we’ve got contractors. We’ve got the trade associations for each. To address the shortage of workers we all have to work together. We have to recruit workers together, because we need people throughout the industry. The war for talent is critical. We can win it if we can work together. It’s a time for collaboration.