Podcast: From frontline worker to plant manager — Leadership lessons in manufacturing

James Lane is a plant manager with Trivium Packaging. He works out of their Youngstown plant, which is the largest of many plants that Trivium operates, and he's skilled in operations management, continuous improvement, and business process improvement. James is also a strong media and communications professional, having earned a J.D. degree focused on corporate law from Capital University Law School, which has informed his leadership in union environments and contract negotiations. James recently spoke with Plant Services editor in chief Thomas Wilk about his journey from military service to manufacturing leadership in the packaging industry.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

PS: Can you start by telling us about Trivium Packaging as a company. What are your primary products? What's your plant presence nationwide?

JL: Trivium Packaging is a global company, a metal packaging company in fact, and we offer all kinds of innovative shaping and opening solutions. These solutions are very sustainable, infinitely recyclable in fact. Most everybody probably has one of our products in their home as we speak.

We service a wide variety of industries, including food and beverage, beauty and personal care, health and nutrition, pet food, paints and coatings, home care, even industrial. What these look like is aluminum aerosol beverage bottles, thread bottles. We even venture into the tin steel plate side of the substrate, with two-piece and three-piece cans and ends, and very cool processes to make those happen between draw, redraw, DWI, and impact-extrude aluminum that we do specifically here. So lots of technology, lots of portfolio offerings for our customers.

Specific to the Youngstown plant, we focus on a variety of impact-extrude aluminum aerosol cans and threaded beverage bottles. There's good chance that most of the listeners may have something of ours in their home at the moment.

PS: A lot of my colleagues at Endeavor Business Media work out of the Cleveland area, some in Chagrin Falls, some in the city. I think they'll be excited to hear that we're talking to someone from that northeastern Ohio area. I remember last year we had a Penn State fan and an Ohio State fan, during the College Football Playoff, and they were having fun going at it during that period.

JL: Oh it’s a rivalry!

PS: Before we pressed “record” you mentioned how you got into the packaging industry, and it was through your work in Columbus, right, at a bottling plant?

JL: Yeah, that's right, there was a can plant on the east side of Columbus, at the time it serviced the Anheuser Busch Brewery there on the North End of Columbus, around I-270, and I came in entry level. I had been in the Air Force for six years, and got out and went to school full time for a while and kind of landed in Columbus and serendipity brought me over to the can plant there. That was 19 years ago and I've kind of worked my way up through the ranks here to plant manager, but that's where I started right there in Columbus.

PS: Was it a direct line from that plant up to Trivium or were there a couple plants in between?

JL: Many plants, so this is plant number six for me. I worked with one of our competitors, I started out in their Columbus, OH plant back in 2006 and worked in two other plants, in fact, and then came to Trivium in 2020, right after the company was formed, and this my third plant for Trivium.

PS: I'm curious to know about the plant you work at in Youngstown. What were some of the innovations in the past two or three years that you look back at, that Trivium invested in? We hear a lot about automation and we hear a lot about artificial intelligence, especially in the past year or two for various applications, smart factories. How has Trivium embracing that sort of thing?

JL: We have our own research and development department here in Youngstown, an incredible group of folks. This point started in 1993, and they've really shaped the market through innovation in R&D to provide the customer something that looks different on the shelf and it's premium. So differentiation and premiumization is our game, they stand out on the shelf. And again, the circularity of our products, we have the impact extruded aluminum operation here, there's a pretty good chance that if a consumer recycles this within about 60 days, that it may be back on the shelf through the recycling process.

The team here has really shaped the market by coming up with offerings that our competitors have not brought to market, for example, a one-liter threaded beverage bottle. It's very hard and very complex to thread an aluminum beverage bottle, and this team has figured out how to do that specific to the one-liter size, which is very a very big piece of aluminum.

Also the 2 fluid oz. single shot, if you've been at a convenience store or check out line in the grocery store, you've seen the small energy shots that are plastic. We've come up with a way to make that out of aluminum and make it a sustainable, recyclable option for the consumer.

PS: My kids are in middle school and they love big bottles, the larger aluminum sized cans, they're in love with these things.

JL: Yep, in fact that's part of the market base, is college students and a lot of hikers. We offer a 66mm diameter and a 59mm diameter beverage bottle that's filled by some of our partners such as Culligan – Culligan Water is one of our customers – and they'll put that in their backpack on the side, and they'll take it on their hikes or to school or whatever.

PS: And like you said, immediately recyclable, which is a huge plus.

JL: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's incredible to have that part of our offering, that everything we do is recyclable. In fact, this is our fourth year in a row being on the EcoVadis platinum status, which is a very, very distinguishing piece because we're the only metal packaging company in the world that has that distinction.

PS: No kidding, how did you earn that?

JL: You know, there's quite a bit of scrutiny looking at our CO2 levels and our sustainability initiatives throughout our plant, our business, and our supply chain, so it delves into every aspect of the business and how we orient ourselves towards sustainability and circularity of our products. We are the only metal packaging company in the world that's achieved that status.

PS: That's outstanding. Again, we talked before the podcast “record” button was pressed about how I worked for the Environmental Restoration Group at Battelle Memorial Institute, so part of me is always focused on the ESG side of the world, making sure that we promote circular manufacturing as much as possible.

JL: Yeah, it's fun for kids to recycle it and to see it contribute to their future.

PS: If I could switch over to the uptime part of our conversation. Our tagline in Plant Services is “smart solutions for reliable operations” and we have a traditional focus on the maintenance and reliability function, especially when it comes to reducing unplanned downtime. So I was curious to know about some of the initiatives that Trivium Packaging has introduced, either before you got there or once you got there, to take a look at levels of downtime in the plant and address the unplanned downtime part of it.

JL: We have the initiatives that you would expect underway with rigid maintenance cycles, preventive maintenance cycles to look at base conditions of our equipment and looking for wear, and typical inspections for predicting / anticipating problems throughout our production runs.

But in addition to that we've got a pretty cool exercise that we kicked off in several plants called a “Deep Clean”. So a deep clean is really an operational excellence initiative, and it's a three day event where we take a major piece of equipment out, and we just comb through that over three days. We start out with a with a deep clean, just as it says, and from myself as plant manager to the operators to engineering group, we're all up there just cleaning the piece of equipment so we can see, when we start out, whether there's been wear and tear, whether there's metal shavings coming from somewhere.

So we start out with this impressive clean and sometimes we even paint to restore it to basic condition in that regard. And after the cleaning exercise, we all go out to the equipment with about 30 tags, and we just start scouring the equipment for defects. This could be a chafed wire or it could be a guard that's hanging, or it's plexiglass that's cracked, or it could be an air line that we see a hole or a crack .Whatever does not look normal or basic condition, we tag it for inspection and for some sort of correction. What comes out of that is generally, by the end of the exercise three days, we’ve pretty much corrected a lot of those defects and we've had some of those exercises have 200 tags are hanging on a major press, and so we log all those of course and drive them to completion.

What also comes out of that is, is we adjust PM tasks based on that Deep Clean exercise. Also our cleaning inspection lube maps, we’ll update those or create them if they're not been created to guide our team on better ways to maintain the equipment. So overall, there's a great sense of teamwork throughout that exercise from top level down, getting their elbows dirty, and what we see is generally a significant increase in asset utilization of that equipment once we've come out of that and we monitor it for some time to make sure we sustain it.

PS: That's a really cool process. Are these assets that you focus on considered critical as part of a criticality analysis? Or is it more that when it's a certain number of tags build up that that asset goes more to the top of the list for these deep cleans?

JL: The equipment is generally one that we don't have redundancy for; it could be a major litho press, for example. It's usually one that we just have one of, and it's critical that it's running and it's available to run all the time. So we would have some criticality to our defects in the nature of that and the urgency of correcting those. Yeah, we generally have started with the major pieces of equipment.

PS: I’m struck too by the fact that you mentioned that you take the opportunity to relook at your job plans and relook at your lubrication maps. One of our writers, Doc Palmer, is a huge fan of considering job plans as living documents. It sounds like that was really important to this operation.

JL: What we found out is sometimes we have shortcomings with our training and onboarding of new team members to a processor, to equipment, and sometimes they'll say they've lubricated something, but they really never knew where it was and they were too prideful to ask where the lubrication points were, or where we had to shut down and remove guarding to lube things. It's an intense education exercise as well for our team to understand that equipment, and they're a part of that through the exercise to see it.

PS: Wow, it’s kind of great that it does build that sense of teamwork, when you dive deep into the mechanics of the asset, everyone's invested in the outcome. Everyone just comes together.

JL: That’s right, and it is very prideful and a lot of teamwork. In fact, I had the opportunity to do this into a facility in New York, about a week before I became their plant manager. I was in another facility and I came up the week prior, and it just so happened I was in close contact for COVID at the time, so I had to wear the mask. When I showed up for the three day exercise, nobody knew who I was, and I was out there scraping the stainless steel skirting and asking for paint and cleaning. It wasn't until the following week that they recognized that that was their new plant manager down on the floor with them, so a lot of credibility there. But along for the maintenance side, we see quality improvements as well and they will see a shift in quality throughout that as well.

PS: Let me ask a technology question. Is there a specific technology or best practice like ultrasound or vibration analysis that stands out as particularly effective at helping your teams getting their arms around these kinds of projects?

JL: Some of our plants at Trivium, we do have a lot of vibration analysis. We have sensors on critical pumps, motors, blowers, that sort of thing, where we can monitor those things and they'll send alerts. Specific to Youngstown, we've got a bit of a homegrown system that we're very proud of called our central monitoring system. That's where we've deployed a sensor network of IFM sensors across critical support equipment such as our pneumatic supply, our water treatment, our reverse thermoxidizers, our vacuum systems. And we're looking for a change, so we're looking for vibration to change for bearing temperatures, water quality to change, differential pressures to be outside of thresholds.

So we monitor these and we look for a change in state so we can predictively anticipate a failure and get ready for it, and also understand mean time to failure throughout that process. What happens is we sense a change with the sensor, it's going to trigger an e-mail to technical managers, maintenance managers, and then they're going to kick that over to the team to investigate and go out there and see what is the urgency of this. Was it in fact a reading that we need to respond to? Is it something we need to plan into our next opportunistic downtime event or into regularly scheduled maintenance?

It’s been good for us, it’s helped us. I can tell you since I've been here in the last few years, I can't remember any support system downtime we've had that's taken the plant down, and again this our largest plant, 14 production lines, 24/7 running. So you can imagine if you lose a compressor or a vacuum system or your water is not within specification, you've got a lot of lines that are going to go down and a lot of volume that's lost.

PS: Holy cow, this program I'm guessing didn't develop overnight too. How long did it take to implement the sensors and then get the data moving where it had to go, and then get the notification the right people? Was that a one-year process? Or multi year, sort of growing over time?

JL: Yep, it’s grown over time, it's probably a 3 or 4 year project to get everything in place, understand where's the best ideal optimal location for the sensor network, getting the communication stream in place, and getting our people to understand the e-mail triggers to investigate, and working that into the PM cycles and updating PMs and that sort of thing. It's been a multi year journey.

PS: One last question before we focus more on leadership. Did your training in the Air Force inform your approach to asset management? Because it's sort of a truism among the reliability folks that I know that a lot of best practices are drawn from aircraft maintenance. I was struck that you mentioned an Air Force background. Did that influence the way you think about these things?

JL: Absolutely, I worked on fighter jets in the Air Force, the F15 and the F16 specifically. And you can imagine with the Air Force it's incredible training and standards and expectations that need to be met, and the maintenance cycles are non-negotiable on a $30 million jet.

We had an incredible standard of work. So when we talk about standard operating procedures and work instructions, they were in fact orders, they were direct orders that we had to follow this process to maintain or to remove and install a new weapons launcher, to do an operational check, that sort of thing. That was my background for six years of knowing that that the maintenance schedule and the standard of work involved with maintenance was non-negotiable. You can imagine being in a position as plant manager, you know, I've got an eye towards making sure that we have standard work, that we've got feedback from the team when the standard work needs adjusted or updated or is no longer relevant. Those motions need to be happening quite continuously to be in the optimal state.

PS: If we can move to leadership in general, one of the things I've noticed at recent conferences is that the next generation of plant leadership is moving into place. As millennials move into these leadership positions and GenX takes over from Boomers, how do you approach training new leaders from different generations? Do you modify your approach based on the generation that you're speaking to?

JL: Very interesting question. Having been born in 1980 I think I've fallen into the GenX category here. So again, 19 years ago I entered this business and it was very much a command-and-control dynamic from leadership. Top-down decision-making, decisions only seem to have been made at certain levels, and then we just had to carry out the orders. Thankfully that dynamic it feels has eroded away quite a bit with the generational shift, because I feel the workforce now desires a bit of a work environment that offers empowerment and autonomy. They want to feel vested in the results, they want to feel like a shareholder, they want to be impactful and they want some space to make decisions at the appropriate level.

As a consequence when I look to grow and develop leaders – and I have several leaders here that you know are younger than me that have come up and are leading some folks – I would say it’s all for a leadership style that the frontline workers can buy into, that they can get behind and they feel like they're truly impacting the business. My coaching is, as a leader, we need to be empathetic, we need to be authentic, transparent, and most importantly servant based. That's what I found to be most impactful to motivate and to inspire folks to own their piece of the business and maybe even get some discretionary effort. You know, I talk about pay above and beyond maybe what they feel like we're already rewarding them for.

So I want my leaders to direct their efforts to ensure that the team they're leading is successful. Our success comes from the success of the team we're leading, so the more we orient our mind towards that, toward our coaching and development, towards the empowerment and autonomy of the team. We want a very structured training plan to develop the skill sets and confidence of the team. But most importantly, I want my leaders to be humble enough to roll up their sleeve shirts and get dirty alongside the frontline leaders or the frontline workers when a situation calls for it. That’s kind of how I earned a lot of respect without really endeavoring for that. My last plan was I got down there and I did what we were asking them to do. I had the empathy to understand what we were doing, and I was there as an hourly entry level anyway.

I think overall just driving decision making down to the lowest level, and coaching and developing this new generation of leaders is probably the most impactful way to unleash potential and discretionary effort. It’s kind of my focus to push away the top-down decision making and drive decision-making down to the best level possible to motivate the team.

PS: Your answer covered two interesting poles of what especially millennials and GenZ seem to want – both a formal training expectation, sort of the plan going forward, but also the autonomy to make decisions and help inform their own progress. So I'm curious to know, you said you did sort of a formal training track in places. Is this homegrown Trivium-based training? Do you borrow methods from other trainers to build that sequence out for new leaders?

JL: We do have a homegrown Trivium leadership platform. We call it Leadership Essentials, where our new leaders in position, or even some of our tenured leaders, will go for a three or four day class with several leaders. We generally bring leaders in from different plants, so we have a nice dynamic of folks, and we'll step through some critical characteristics that we think would unleash the potential of the team and discretionary efforts and just give some solid leadership perspectives to take back to their teams.

PS: We'll get you out here on this question. We’ve got a lot of frontline workers these days who are curious on how you advance into leadership. When I was a kid, I simply thought it was inevitable, as many kids do. What advice do you give frontline workers who are looking at the next step and might not be sure how to get there? Would you tell them to do?

JL: So, this has been my experience. I came in entry level 19 years ago in this metal packaging industry and so I can speak from experience. My first six years was a frontline worker in a union plant in fact, so I never, never thought I'd be a plant manager of one of the biggest plants in the world, in this industry.

The first piece of advice I'd offer is in whatever position you're in, be awesome in that position as a frontline worker. If you can exemplify your ability to pursue excellence and deliver excellence just in your daily task, and whatever assignments come your way from the leadership team, it's going to land you on the radar of being somebody that's potentially in a position to promote. It's really marketing yourself just by doing an awesome job in your area of responsibility and showing the team that you're already moving the business forward or you're already an informal leader amongst your peers. So that's Step 1, promote your own exposure through excellence. In fact, excellence is one of our core values here at Trivium along with passion and teamwork. It's a great way to distinguish yourself not only in your organization, but among your peers.

I would say the second piece of advice is really lean into developmental opportunities as a leader. This can come from many different areas. You can volunteer for a continuous improvement project and be a facilitator on that team and step up. You can join a team that’s looking to boost efficiencies or drive down scrap and spoilage in the plant, and take a lead role there. Even outside of the plant, activities committees or community engagement opportunities to market your employer and your business in the community is a great way to step up and lead. Or even a coach with your kids is a great way – if you can influence and lead kids, it's a pretty good chance you can do it in a manufacturing environment.

But I would say the ideal situation to press in your leadership, is look for those opportunities to backfill when leaders are out on vacation or leaders have gone into a different assignment. Step up, put your name in the hat and say, :hey, I would like to lead the team, I would like to lead the crew, give me a shot.” And that gives you two things. It gives you the opportunity to understand whether it's a worthy ambition, whether it's what you think it is, so you can run through the position for a week or two weeks, or a month and you can decide, yeah, this what I want, this is where I feel I can be more impactful as an individual contributor. But it also gives the leadership of the organization an opportunity to understand your capabilities, and potentially develop a plan to ascend you into leadership and help you grow there.

My final piece of advice here what I try to endeavor to role model myself, just as lawyers and doctors practice their crafts, leadership is also a practice that's also a continual process of self-education, reflection, and refining your leadership skills. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach, so you've got to adjust to every one of your followers where you might need a different leadership style, and you've got to understand how to motivate and influence those folks. I've read a lot of books, and leaned into a lot of books to understand different perspectives of how to unlock leaders and grow leaders in their career. But I would say most important thing that anybody wants to do that can lead or is already leading, is to be a student of leadership. Understand the skills and the traits that good leaders are exhibiting to be successful, and understand what's working well, what's not working well, and adjust where you need to.

PS: That's all terrific and sound advice, and I love the part where you said, where there is an opportunity to backfill, to give folks a taste of what you can do and also to give yourself a taste of what it's like, what a terrific idea. That sounds like a life hack but one that was well earned by you, experienced by you in a way.

JL: Yeah, we do that here in the Youngstown plant. There's a path, a definitive path from entry level employee to plant manager. Everybody has an opportunity to step up at all ranks of leadership, quasi leadership, and see what they can do. It’s important to seek out those opportunities. I mean, they may come to you, they may not, but you’ve got to stretch for them as well.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.