Podcast: Continuous improvement for manufacturers — How to get started and keep the program going

David Higgs is the vice president of MEC business excellence at Mayville Engineering Co. David has more than 20 years of experience in the industry helping companies achieve revenue growth, operational transformations, and cost reductions through footprint optimization, product launches, and manufacturing process improvements. Eric Lussier is a principal at NEXT LEVEL Partners and has 30 years of experience implementing continuous improvement practices in a variety of industries. Eric is a student and practitioner of lean with a passion for building problem-solving cultures built on the pillars of continuous improvement and respect for people. Gene Mussel is a director with Wipfli LLP and focuses on business strategy development and integration. He specializes in using data analytics to identify opportunities for business and operational improvements and helps implement strategies to improve efficiency and profitability. Randy Morehouse is the director of operations at Falcon Plastics. His expertise centers on lean concepts, injection and blow molding processes, and showcasing an understanding of the industry.

David, Eric, Gene, and Randy recently spoke at IndustryWeek’s Operations Leadership Summit in June. During the panel, "Building and Maintaining Continuous Improvement Cultures: Best Practices," the four experts explored how to create a continuous improvement culture. In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Jill Jusko, executive editor at IndustryWeek, shares the audience questions and expert answers from the session.

Below are some key quotes from the podcast:

So, we have a common set of metrics for the company as a whole that each facility is measured on: safety, on-time delivery, lost opportunity, that type of stuff. They're all common metrics, but each facility still does have a daily metric report on what's the most critical to their operations to meet those goals. Part of that is they have actual items that they put on the corporate key metrics, but then they also take them, dive them down, and decide how to measure it internally to make sure to match whatever their immediate needs are in their facilities and immediate goals are. – Randy Morehouse

I’d highlight that those sub goals, in many cases, are more important to drive the behaviors you want in the facility than the corporate ones. How can an employee that's on the floor, maybe in those first 90 days, a new employee, understand their impact and how what they're doing in the day actually matters to the corporate goals? Often, they're hard to translate. People don't feel like they have that impact. So, focusing on the sub goals with a commitment that, look, if we hit these sub goals, we know they're going to translate into the corporate ones. Your site manager has to figure that out, but then the plant individuals, those leaders on the shift, they're more focused on what is going to be the site focus for this period, and they're changing. – David Higgs

I don’t expect somebody who’s an operator on the shop floor running a machine to know how to calculate EBITDA. I've got people that can do that, but I do expect them to understand how many people need to be on the line. How many parts do we need to produce today? What kind of quality level? Where is the inventory? So, I'll break the goals down, and there's alignment in the top-level metric, and then filter it down. And what you're really trying to do is give people the language to understand what the score of the game is. And you're trying to break the goal down from maybe a corporate goal. You know, our mentality is lean daily management. Let’s make the hour to make the day to make the week to make the month to make the quarter to make the year. – Eric Lussier

A lot of the stuff that we're putting in now is stuff that we feel is necessary to address problems now and to continue it. If something starts to become not sustainable, do we need it, and why is it not staying sustainable? When I was a plant manager, I always preached that it was better to try something and fail than not to try something. And you had to deviate, sometimes multiple times, and maybe you came full circle back. But the stuff we're putting in place now may not be sustainable, and it may not work, and we may have to deviate and, if it's important to us, we find ways to sustain it. So, we're still early in it. Right now, there’s still some excitement around it, and we're still going around it. There are a few committees that haven't had the success that I've seen out of some of mine, but right now, I feel like there's some good excitement around it. And if there starts to be a point in time where it's not something that's sustainable, we'll figure out how to either make it sustainable or deviate to something that's more important at that time. – Randy Morehouse

One of the big concerns I had with my core engineering team was burnout. Are they going to be able to last more than two years with the travel and all the kaizen activities? For me, they're personal development and challenging them mentally to grow, the training and education. I've got a gentleman now who's going through the University of Michigan lean training that I completed, challenging him to grow and expand. And even with all the work, it's made a big difference with the leadership training. We’re always trying to keep their minds working, and it's worked out very well for us. And when they can see a growth path, like knowing that people get promoted off the team and how important it is. You get visibility. You're working on a kaizen next to the CEO for four days and the executive leadership team. It's impactful. It's impactful for their careers, and you get to show what you can do, and they're driven. They're driven to improve. – David Higgs

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.