The Conversation I Keep Having with Manufacturers

Diana San Diego moderating the Glass Magazine Awards Winner's Circle Panel from the Main Stage at GlassBuild America 2026.

Over the past several months, I've noticed that I keep having the same conversation.

Whether it's a building product manufacturer, glass fabricator, glazing contractor, or another construction-related company, the story is usually pretty similar.

They're busy.

Not necessarily in a bad way. Business is good. Opportunities are there. Work is coming in. But their experienced people are stretched thin.

Estimators are juggling too many quotes. Drafters are trying to keep up with revisions. Engineering is getting pulled in different directions. Project managers are spending time on things that don't really require a project manager.

And sooner or later, the same question comes up:

"How do we get caught up?"

I understand that conversation because I've lived it.

Before starting SmartSource AE, I spent more than a decade helping build and manage remote technical teams for a specialty glass manufacturer. During those years, I made plenty of mistakes, learned a lot, and saw firsthand what worked and what didn't.

Here are a few lessons that have stayed with me.

Lesson #1: Hiring Alone Doesn't Solve Bottlenecks

Early in my career, whenever a department got busy, the instinct was simple:

"We need another person."

Sometimes that was true. But often, adding people didn't immediately improve results.

The real constraint wasn't headcount. It was training, documentation, communication, unclear ownership, or experienced employees spending their days buried in production work.

I've seen companies hire talented people only to realize nobody had the time to train them properly.

I've also seen teams improve output significantly without adding a single employee simply by changing how work was distributed.

One thing became clear: your most experienced people create the most value when they're solving problems, supporting customers, making decisions, and improving the business – not when they're buried in routine work all day.

Lesson #2: Documentation Beats Heroics

Every company has a few people who seem to know everything.

They're the people everyone calls when a project gets stuck.

They're incredibly valuable. But they're also a risk.

Some of the biggest improvements I've seen over the years didn't come from adding people. They came from documenting knowledge that previously existed only in someone's head and making it available to the organization.

I’m talking about operating procedures, checklists, training materials and clear expectations.

The easier it is to teach and repeat a process, the easier it becomes to grow without overwhelming the team.

Lesson #3: The Best Support Systems Are Almost Invisible

There's a misconception that adding support creates more work.

In my experience, the best support systems do the opposite.

Projects move. Quotes go out. Drawings get completed. Customers get answers. Deadlines get met.

Nobody is talking about the support structure because it's simply part of how work gets done.  That's when you know it's working.

The goal isn't to create another layer of management or another process to maintain. The goal is to make life easier for the people already carrying the load.

Lesson #4: Start Small and Earn Trust

One of the biggest mistakes I see is trying to solve everything at once.

Most successful initiatives start much smaller.

One workflow. One department. One backlog. One specific need.

Get a win first. Learn how the team works. Build trust. Then decide what comes next.

In fact, many of the most successful technical support programs I've been involved with started with a simple conversation:

"Can you help us with this one thing?"

Over time, those small wins often opened the door to bigger improvements.

If you're interested in seeing what that looked like in practice, here’s a case study.

What’s Stayed with Me

After all these years, one lesson has stayed with me:

Good people do their best work when they have the time and space to focus on what they do best.

The companies that handled growth best weren't always the ones with the largest teams. They were the ones that found practical ways to support their people, share knowledge, and distribute work effectively.

Those lessons eventually led to the creation of SmartSource AE, but they started long before the company existed.

And they're still shaping the conversations I have with building product manufacturers and construction teams today.

If any of this sounds familiar, I'd be happy to compare notes and learn more about what your team is experiencing.