The Future of Processes
Unique perspectives from people in manufacturing about what it really takes to bring products to life. This is a podcast about building an organizational culture, leadership, product design, supply chain, change management, how to attract the best talent and in particular, how we can create better, more human processes for the factories of tomorrow.
How Stephanie Stuckey turned around her family’s candy business without any business or manufacturing experience
In this episode we speak to Stephanie Stuckey, a former state representative in the Georgia assembly and now CEO of Stuckey’s, a pecan log roll and candy manufacturer that was started by her grandfather in 1937 and sold to a conglomerate in the 1970’s. Stephanie re-acquired the company in 2019, turned the business around and is now determined to put Stuckey’s back at the forefront of roadside Americana. We also talk about:
The history behind the Stuckey’s brand and why it was 6 figures in debt when she bought the companyHow she runs a successful comeback brand despite having n...Sarah Mauragis on women in Continuous Improvement in manufacturing
Sarah Mauragis runs Continuous Improvement at Flow Rite Controls, which manufacturers, and markets fluid control devices for lead acid batteries, recreational fishing boats, laboratories, and medical uses.
During high school, Sarah Mauraugis read an article in Seventeen Magazine about women in STEM, which set her on a course towards engineering. Today, she heads Continuous Improvement at Flow-Rite Controls, a manufacturer of fluid control devices based in Byron Michigan.
Ben Merton talks to her about the advantages of being a woman in a male-dominated world, how she builds and manages Flow-Rite's Kaizen funnel and some fascinating i...
How Tudor Saroiu aligns teams on quality in a brewery
Tudor Sariou heads continuous improvement at Steam Whistle Brewing, which is a BRC certified brewery in Toronto that produces 90,000 bottles of beer a day and sells across the whole of Canada. In this episode, Tudor and Ben talk about the challenges that he's faced in driving quality and continuous improvement in food processing companies as diverse as Campbell's Soup and Club Coffee, along with these other topics:
The challenges involved in driving continuous improvement across an organization with people from different geographic, educational and cultural backgroundsBringing alignment to continuous improvement objectives in production, packaging, marketing and sales.Specific...Why Robert Odhiambo believes that building trust with mid-managers is the key to enabling change
Originally from Kenya, Robert Odhiambo came to the US over 15 years ago and has made a career of driving change and continuous improvement at companies like USPS, Ingersoll Rand, and Spectrum Chemical, an FDA registered manufacturer of chemicals and lab products.
In this episode, Ben and Robert talk about:
How Chris Sidney uses personality testing to create the right environment for change
Chris Sidney manages quality, continuous improvement and metrology at the Winbro Group, a manufacturer of high-precision machining technologies in the UK, US and Taiwan. Starting his career in engineering as a Whitworth Scholar, Chris has spent more than 10 years managing quality and continuous improvement initiatives for the Winbro Group and Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery.
I talk to him about the cultural differences between how people handle change and leadership in the US & UK, how personality testing can be a useful part of creating the right environment for change, and how the Future of Processes will be...
How Gregory Ayers gets executives on board the CI journey by focusing on a single KPI
In this episode, I speak to Gregory Ayers, the Director of Operational Excellence at Innovative Hearth Products, a manufacturer of indoor and outdoor fireplaces headquartered in Nashville.
We speak about the importance of senior management in getting continuous improvement to stick and really impact the company in a meaningful way. We also talk about how CI has been turned into a farce and how it’s being undermined when leadership only provides lip service instead of an all out cultural transformation that includes quality and CI. In addition to this, we cover the following topics:
Why Gerald Heitmann believes Lean Six Sigma is the wrong approach to Continuous Improvement
Gerald Heitmann, formerly General Manager of Quality Operations at Panasonic Energies North America joins Ben Merton to talk about how people like Edward Deming, Kaouru Ishikawa & Dr. Wheeler shaped his understanding of Quality and Continuous Improvement and why they are still relevant today.
Gerald further explains where Lean Six Sigma falls short of helping people understand their own 'system of profound knowledge', and why AI is not going to bring about disruptive change in manufacturing, in spite of the apparently endless noise to the contrary from technologists. We also talk about:
Why certain elements of Lean S...
