by Charles Engrem, Director of Aquafeed Process, Wenger Manufacturing
What defines an excellent leader of a manufacturing plant that produces extruded feed products? What sets an excellent leader apart from the norm? What does operational excellence look like for extrusion-based manufacturing processes?
I've been part of this industry for more than 35 years, and I have learned excellence can be spotted within a few minutes of stepping into a plant. There will be a crispness in the visual, a clear desire to welcome visitors with open arms, and a sense of urgency to focus on today's goals.
The fact that there is an extruder onsite is not what defines excellence. What defines a well-led plant is one where the customer orders are being delivered on time and in full at an expected quality over the life of the plant. But that does not happen naturally, nor does it happen overnight.
The demands of a modern plant manager are complex, and those who are disciplined at executing activities through their team will be the winners. It requires companies to be intentional about development and setting future leaders up for success. Through decades of supporting and overseeing plant operations, I have a few insights to share on leadership and driving operational excellence:
Leadership requires development and practice—and time
It is the natural tendency of new and inexperienced plant manager trainees to believe their education alone qualifies them to be a leader and that they will be ready to go day one.
I cannot tell you how many times I've witnessed a trainee fail to reach leadership level because they weren't given the right development and/or they were placed into a leadership role too soon. During my tenure in a director of operations role, less than 10 percent of the plant managers under my wing ever became ready to lead a plant in fewer than six months—it could take 18 to 24 months for someone with no leadership experience to be fully prepared to lead a team. Novice manager trainees should be given time to work with and learn from effective leaders, whether through mentorships or as an assistant.
Culture is very powerful, and every organisation is unique so it takes time and coaching to be ready to lead. Onboarding processes for new managers should be rigorous.
Leadership styles also are not one size fits all. Great leader developers must recognise the uniqueness of individuals and adapt accordingly. As leaders we must be able to put our technical skills into perspective and be grateful for that background, but leading people is rarely solved with technology tools.
And, since great leaders cannot be created overnight, top leadership must prepare for change and growth continuously. There should always be a pipeline of future managers in development stages.
Operational excellence leadership is not just how well leaders do their job. It is how well they enable their employees to do theirs
In our world, extrusion is a small portion of a leader's responsibility. The most successful operations are defined by the leader's ability to develop highly engaged employees who are disciplined at managing things. It is really the leader's role to ensure that the team is self-sufficient and focused on the delivery of products that are made to order, meet the specs, and are delivered on time.
If leaders spend their time fighting everyone's fires for them, they are not leading. If they try to do it all by themselves, they are simply an assistant to their plant team, and they are not leading.
As Director of Operations at Cargill, I had the opportunity to lead the improvement and creation of programs and administer global training and coaching to hundreds of leaders and leader trainees.
Many of the operators were better trained and more technically competent than the manager. As a result, they could effectively avoid losses in productivity, communicate effectively and minimise disruption. This enabled the leader to lead people and coordinate with the other functional parts of the business effectively. The leaders of the best plants learned early how to train, how to develop a culture, how to focus and to engage their employees in the business purpose.
Leaders must help employees align their work with the goals and greater purpose of the company
It is imperative that the operators are highly engaged, empowered and fully capable of understanding how they fit into the bigger picture—and it's the leader's role to get them there. Why do we exist? How does my role fit and why does it matter? What do we do and how we do it?
By starting at the top and linking their roles to company objectives and to your vision, mission and values of the organisation, you establish expectations for the role and give their work more meaning. Every extruder operator needs to have a clear and challenging role and they should understand and know why their function is connected to the business' success.
To achieve operational excellence in a manufacturing environment, leaders must create programs for all aspects of the operation geared toward getting them to best practice status
Every manufacturing operation must execute disciplined programs for safety, quality/food safety, productivity, sanitation, maintenance, shrink, energy management, environmental, continuous improvement, personnel performance and development, security, financial, supply chain, and more. Any weakness in the interaction of these key programs will stall the system's momentum.
When a leader executes corporate standards effectively, the plant benefits from the experience of many who created improvements of procedures over time and were proven to be effective in many situations. The best practices should become points in an audit system which is used to evaluate the plant performance regularly.
An effective organisation benchmarks itself against best practices and eliminates deviations. Every employee will participate in and know the meaning of the best practices and ensure the ongoing execution. It is well known that world class operations don't leave their standards undone. It is critical to have a tight control of programs which leads to efficient process execution. Strong programs are designed to minimise bottlenecks.
Safety is king; and emphasising it through training and certification demonstrates how highly you value your people
All employees must go home to their families safely every day. Safety is the first and most important requirement of leaders. Without it, employee operators are simply not being valued for what they can accomplish, and machines will never really provide the value the CEO was expecting.
As a leader, I was not satisfied until each member of my staff could demonstrate their capability through a certification program, which included detailed instruction for each component of the system. Every employee who operates machinery should be certified from a training checklist and be adept enough that they can train new operators. Their lives depend on it.
This is just the surface of what we'll explore during my session. As manufacturers of equipment, we know that the machinery design is static; but when it is in the hands of a motivated, educated employee it becomes invaluable.
Wenger partners with clients all over the globe to help them lead and empower their operators. It is our responsibility to make sure the work experience makes their engagement soar, and as a result the business will thrive. We work with our clients to develop skilled operators and have an infrastructure dedicated to ensuring each client can maximise value of the machines to whatever level of expectation their leaders have.
