Tell us about Bennie.
I am married, and I have two daughters, who will soon be 14 and 11, and a son who is seven years old. If there is time to spare, between family life and work, I love playing board games with friends and discovering new craft beers. By this point, I have tasted around 4,000 types of beer. My favorites, so far, are 3 Fonteinen, Tree House, Het Nest, and among those available in supermarkets, Chimay Blue.
I am an engineer by profession. I studied electrical engineering, worked in biomedical engineering and infant nutrition, and have been with PPF since 2023.
How do your values align with PPF’s?
I love working in manufacturing, and I am passionate about pets. I have quite a few–a dog and cat, chickens, quails, a snake, a frog, an ant farm–so the idea of working with PPF intrigued me. I was enthusiastic. During high school, I worked with dogs at an animal shelter. I understand them and their nutrition. That is my link to our consumers, not just our customers, but also our consumers, the pets who enjoy and depend on what we make. That is the energy I bring to my work every day.
What significant project are you working on day-to-day right now?
Just one? Where to start? One of the most important projects involves rolling out and promoting PPF’s purpose. Since I am a sponsor in this, it is my responsibility to empower my team by giving them the resources they need to succeed, like the time and budget they need to put their ideas into practice.
Something else we are working on is improving our performance management systems. These systems are action- and comms-based, ensuring continuity and consistency across our factory teams’ eight-hour shift blocks. We are focused on KPIs and understanding why and how procedural deviations happen. Each shift builds on what the last shift was doing, both top-down and bottom-up. If something needs to be escalated, the issue in question quickly becomes the responsibility of the entire factory. Weekly and monthly, we look back at our KPIs and, if there was a quality deviation, consider ways to increase the effectiveness of our processes.
How do you put PPF’s company values into practice?
I asked colleagues why they chose to earn their salaries at PPF instead of at another company. To them and to me, working with PPF is about our people, our passion for our products, and the company’s vision and mission. Ideally, your personal purpose and the purpose of the company you work for overlap.
I spent time working in the plastics industry. That work did not align with my purpose. Again, once your personal and professional purposes align, it is perfect. I like pets. I want to leave the world a better place. PPF supports my purpose and vision.
How do you empower PPF people to live up to these standards?
Through discussions. While these are and have been effective, I would like to see these discussions happening company-wide, in offices and factories. The more we learn from each other, the more we can improve.
What makes you happy about working here?
I always enjoy coming to work because of my colleagues. We have a lovely team, locally and as a group, where fun is essential alongside our work.
PPF’s values hit close to home, professionally. Continuous improvement and entrepreneurial spirit mean a lot to me. I believe in giving employees and teams space to execute the ideas they have come up with. I acknowledge this often and encourage everyone to treat PPF’s business as if it were theirs. In megacorporations, every factory is usually for itself. Here, we work together across our sites and job functions. This is a much better approach.
What was your workday like yesterday?
From the start of business until about 10:00 a.m., we review our daily reviews and have the meetings central to our performance management systems. In a sense, these meetings run themselves, and while I could miss them, I am there for all of them. Being there allows me to listen, guide if needed, and do my part to ensure our site runs smoothly for the next 24 hours, 72 if it is a Friday. I always make it a point to walk the factory floor, shake hands, and ask how everyone is doing. I often get updates about how the machines are doing. OK, those updates are good, though I am interested in how employees are doing. Sometimes the responses are about how terrible the weather is. Other times, you get details about what is happening in the lives of their families. Afternoons are primarily spent in meetings about the factory operations.
What feature would you like to see added to PPF’s supply chain?
Responsibility and actionability across job functions. Concerns and issues often escalate to the managerial level when they could have stayed with line employees for resolution. I would like to see even more initiative. Be entrepreneurial! Innovate! You have our support.
Tell us about your charitable work.
I am the secretary of the Ma-run, a foundation that hosts a yearly motorcycle parade in the Venlo region for children with disabilities. The smiles of these children bring me great pride and satisfaction.
Who inspires you?
The easy answer is my children. They always get the best out of me. If I dig deeper, it would be the disabled children we work with as part of the Ma-run foundation. Seeing how happy these kids are and that they have not given up on life, even though it is challenging, puts things in perspective for me.
