CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Culture
transformation
Through methodical, and at times surgical, application of a
continuous improvement framework, Snyders-Lances Columbus
team made a full organizational transformation in only one year.
Performance was not the focus, but became the outcome.

} Greg Flickinger, Vice President, Manufacturing and Corporate Engineering, Snyders-Lance Inc.
} Thanks to
the incredible
transformation,

T
the Columbus he Snyders-Lance Columbus, GA The Columbus team applied a tried-and-true
site earned the manufacturing site, originally estab- framework to nurture rapid, sustained organiza-
credibility as well as lished as the Tom Huston Peanut tional improvement. The process was focused on
the opportunity for Company, has been in existence implementing continuous improvement (CI) tools
capital investment. since 1925. In recent decades, the site and methodologies primarily from the total pro-
The team installed changed ownership a number of times until Lance ductive maintenance (TPM) tool box. CI tools
a new sandwich Inc. purchased the company out of bankruptcy in were leveraged as a vehicle to drive culture change
cracker line in 2005. The many lean years had taken a tremendous with sustainable performance improvement as an
July and began toll on the site culture, infrastructure and ultimately, outcome, but not the specific focus. The frame-
commissioning in profitability. In January 2011, Snyders-Lance hired work, embodied by the three fundamental tenets
August. Shown left Chuck Staton and quickly promoted him to site of reliability, standard work and shared equity, was
to right are Nikki director of manufacturing. Three months later, successfully applied to create a sustained, large-scale
Lofton, Pat Sleem, Staton hired a dynamic servant leader, Brian Dubak, transformation in the Charlotte manufacturing site
Vic McCallister and as the Columbus bakery plant manager. What trans- without directed capital (2009-2010).
Erik Jenson. Source: pired over the next 21 months was a remarkable The Columbus site transformation was also
Snyders-Lance. cultural and performance transformation. accomplished without directed performance-

www.foodengineeringmag.com | Food Engineering | September 2013 79

continuous.indd 79 8/28/13 5:32 PM

 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

operation. Leaders also must have the courage

Columbus Results and confidence to elevate those under them to
an equal or higher status, while treating them
Conversion & Controllable Variance Percentage with the utmost respect.
% Var The role of leadership is about creating an
6.0% environment of relevance since people who
Favorable

4.3%
4.0% feel relevant are willing to engage. Leaders
1.9% must have the capability of leveraging basic
1.2%
2.0% 1.0% CI processes as vehicles to educate and train
0.0% personnel as well as build teamwork across
-2.0% teams and functions. They must be able to
Unfavorable

-4.0%
instill the tools and knowledge into the teams
-4.5% they serve, providing support without remov-
-6.0% -5.7% ing accountability. Leaders also must be strong
-8.0%
-7.5%
communicators who are truly engaged with
-8.3%
-10.0% the problems and issues faced by their team.
Q1 11 Q2 11 Q3 11 Q4 11 Q1 12 Q2 12 Q3 12 Q4 12 The ultimate measure of the leaders value is
his or her ability to create an environment that
} The Columbus enhancing capital expenditures. The facility, how- promotes engagement.
Bakery showed ever, was able to make an even larger performance It also is important that the leaders are given
an incredible step change in a shorter period of time. The tools/ opportunities to develop skills. In many instanc-
improvement processes are applied specifically to create experi- es, such as a significant organizational change
in conversion ences and develop the capability of the organiza- effort, they may have to change themselves. The
and controllable tional stakeholders. It is all about the people. The most effective approach is one where manage-
costs. Shown is result of the overall process nurtures engagement ment provides the education and tools to be suc-
quarterly variance and ownership, and taps directly into individual cessful, and selectively hires role model leaders
performance against and organization-wide discretionary effort. Perfor- who already possess many of the desired leader-
a common baseline. mance is not the focus, but becomes the outcome. ship attributes. Often, new leaders model the
Source: Snyders- leadership, while existing leaders, together with
Lance. Key elements of the framework the associates, provide the technical knowledge.
A number of key elements are required to suc- Ultimately, a portion of the pre-existing leaders
cessfully create a performance culture: leadership, may not make the journey, but they will have
change management, reliability and standard work been given every opportunity to successfully con-
principles. In addition, these foundational elements tribute, and the final choice will have been within
must be sustained and supported to allow for pro- their control.
gram expansion to more advanced future elements. Throughout the process, each leader must main-
Too many organizations attempt to gain instanta- tain the long-term vision to create self-sufficient
neous performance improvement by management teams with the capability of running day-to-day
edicts, computer systems or advanced programs. operations without supervision. At the beginning
This often leads to spikes in performance improve- of the journey, boundary conditions may need to
ment that are rarely sustained. Worse yet, many be tightened to gain alignment. The objective is
organizations see improvements and think they are to continually relax the boundary conditions until
creating significant improvement. In reality, these they are no longer apparent. The definitive mea-
scenarios may achieve a relatively small percent sure of a leaders success is the teams ability to run
improvement compared to the improvement the the daily operation without him or her. Leadership
same tools might have yielded if the organization is the first element and the prerequisite for all
applied a holistic approach. other framework processes.

Leadership Change management

The selection and development of servant leaders
is critical to the change effort. Leaders must have a
passion for people, as well as the ability to develop
teams by allowing them to have authority, account-
ability and responsibility for their portions of the
The leadership group must understand how to
navigate change since every organization is faced
with change on a daily basis. Nurturing effective
change is a key differentiator between a manager
and a leader. It sets the good apart from the aver-

80 September 2013 | Food Engineering | www.foodengineeringmag.com

continuous.indd 80 8/28/13 5:32 PM

 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Reliability
Columbus Line 1 Results Reliability is a foundational element of orga-
System Efficiency vs. Theoretical Maximum (Tmax) nization success regardless of the business
segment. In the manufacturing environment,
90.0%
82.0% reliability is a tangible entity that can be mea-
85.0%
79.0% sured in major and minor stops (downtime).
System Efficiency

80.0%
With people-focused leaders and effective
75.0% change management, organizations can quick-
66.0%
70.0% ly garner support and effort from their associ-
65.0% ates. Organizational trust is built when the
60.0% teams can not only see the results in the num-
55.0% bers, but also experience the improvement in
50.0% their daily activity.
45.0% System and equipment reliability is a key
40.0% support for the overall change and improve-
2011 2012 2013 YTD
ment effort. If people experience poor reli-
Year ability on an ongoing basis, they will begin to
lose trust in the vision. Reliability is not only
} This graph shows age and can be the difference between success experienced; it is easily measured in system perfor-
the performance and failure. Two valuable change management mance numbers such as efficiency against theoreti-
improvement models are John Kotters eight-element model cal maximum output (Tmax), schedule attainment
against Tmax for the from his book, Leading Change, and Proscis and scrap. Reliability is also the root cause or driver
primary Columbus ADKAR model. for many other consequences such as safety, product
sandwich cracker Effective change management can mean the quality and associate morale.
line (Line 1). Source: difference between pushing a program against The Columbus team was faced with a tremen-
Snyders-Lance. resistance or establishing organizational pull. To dous challenge because a large portion of their
initiate rapid and sustained change, pull must be equipment was old and lacked sustained, effective
established. The Columbus team knew creating maintenance. One important, initial step in rectify-
organizational pull was the key to success. As a ing this situation was hiring Nikki Lofton to lead
result, they leveraged Lifecycle Engineering (LCE) the transformation of the bakery maintenance team.
from Charleston, SC to teach the group how to The next critical step was gaining a level of control
effectively use ADKAR. and stability in daily operation by eliminating reoc-
The premise of ADKAR is to ensure leaders are curring issues. This meant resolving problems to the
effectively and intentionally generating awareness, root cause reactively and, at times, ignoring some
desire, knowledge, action and reinforcement (sus- issues to allow resources to sustainably eliminate
tainment), regardless of the specific project or effort others. Once the team created enough available
underway. For example, the ADKAR approach was time, they began to rebuild the preventative main-
applied to the effort to create an employee-centric tenance (PM) program. The PM program rebuild is
safety culture. Prior to the new leadership, safety ongoing and encompasses continuous updating of
was approached by the prototypical program model job plans, identification and elimination of defects,
with average results. By leveraging ADKAR, the reevaluating parts inventories and installing a new,
team was able to generate organization-wide owner- computerized maintenance management system
ship with commensurate results. (CMMS).
Brian Dubak sums up the results of the organi- The core maintenance team supported enhanced
zational pull that was created: Originally, I was reliability, but effectively moving the organization in
involved in all of the meetings and engaged with the right direction required ownership by everyone.
every activity. Now so many people are involved The operations and maintenance teams engaged in
that I could not keep up with all of the progress. I basic root cause analysis (RCA). They learned and
am still very supportive, but now safety just hap- began to leverage a few key tools such as Why-Why
pens. Safety has become an outcome generated (also called 5 Why) as well as focused improvement
by the culture. This simple change management (FI) and A-3s. Once the constant white noise of
approach and philosophy is often overlooked various issues began to dissipate, the teams could
by organizations, but it was a cornerstone of the begin to solve the reoccurring issues that plagued
Columbus transformation. system reliability.

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continuous.indd 82 8/28/13 5:33 PM

 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
} The site As the level of system control was enhanced,
communication the production systems were center-lined, and the
continuum created teams began to leverage production control charts
visibility and to not only gain visibility into performance on the
accountability, floor, but also to take active ownership and control
enabling rapid of their systems. At the onset of the effort in 2011,
organizational LCE was engaged in supporting the education and
change and development of a small team dedicated to a single
performance line. The plant team under Brian Dubaks leadership
improvements. quickly took the process and spread it across the
Plant Manager Brian entire bakery, customizing and enhancing the basic
Dubak is pictured at philosophies.
the Daily Direction As control was established, the plant operations
Setting venue. and maintenance teams were able to dedicate time
Source: Snyders- to the next level of reliability enhancements, mul-
Lance. tiplying the performance results. They began to
selectively rebuild and, where needed, redesign
equipment. Equipment transfer points driving vis-
ible reliability and performance issues were also
addressed and improved. The Columbus team
pulled in a few expert resources to help them get
to the next level, such as Tommy Snipes from the
Charlotte plant to support a rebuild and timing
calibration on the circa 1970s flow wrappers; Jim
Hartschuh, a company commercialization expert
to support the technical education of the associates
and the redesign of the cookie production line; and
Erik Jenson from corporate engineering to redesign
transition points on one of the newer cracker lines.
Only after enough stability was achieved to gain
the full value of the time and effort, were resources
pulled in. Many organizations force resources upon
plants in an effort to drive immediate improvement.
However, for resources to be effective, the plant
must have basic stability and, most importantly,
should pull the resources as opposed to having them
forced upon them. The plant team has now reached
a point in their journey where they are starting to
84 September 2013 | Food Engineering | www.foodengineeringmag.com
continuous.indd 84
utilize what may be the most important and most
effective tool in the entire TPM tool box, autono-
mous maintenance (AM).
The operations team began to use AM in the
second half of 2012. As with other tools used
throughout the transformation, AM is being applied
intentionally to build and enhance the culture with
performance as the outcome. From the transforma-
tion perspective, AM teaches technical skills while
building equipment knowledge. When executed
to the fullest benefit, a diverse group of operators,
technicians, maintenance and support functions
have the opportunity to experience and develop cul-
ture through teamwork. The outcomes of success-
fully led AM efforts are ownership, shared equity,
enhanced equipment reliability and performance.
The performance numbers are the outcome, but the
true value is clearly generated from cultural develop-
ment combined with practical learning experiences
provided by hands-on activity. Too many organiza-
tions become fixated on the what and lose sight of
the how. But the how is the most important aspect
of any effort, whether it is a complete transforma-
tion, an improvement or simply sustainment.
Standard work
Standard work is a key contributor to building not
only a sustained, but a continuously improving,
organization. A well-developed, comprehensive
standard work program is also a key enabler for
organizations that must be able to adapt quickly.
On the surface, the concept of standard work may
appear like an authoritarian or management-driv-
en approach. How it is applied is what differenti-
ates it as a key element supporting the growth of
an empowered, high-performing organization as
opposed to a constrictive management tool.
Standard work is empowering when the associ-
ates and the teams own and develop it. It can be
divided into two types: associate standard work,
often called CIL or CILT (clean, inspect, lubricate,
tighten), and leader standard work (LSW). CILTs
are used to document and guide the efforts on the
floor. The CILT line items should always be created
and owned by the associates. Subject matter experts
and other leaders are responsible for supporting and
facilitating the programs development.
In the manufacturing world, a fully developed
standard work program encompasses cleaning,
inspection, lubrication and basic maintenance, all
performed on the floor by the associates. It includes
steady-state operation as well as unplanned down-
time events. It covers hourly, shift, daily, weekly and
monthly activity. Since the program is developed
8/28/13 5:33 PM
 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
and executed by the associates, change management is built in.
The teams take ownership of their work and take responsibility
for continually updating the procedures as their acumen grows
and the business needs change. It is important for the program
to meet the needs of each function to eliminate one-offs created
by functional silos.
The benefits of the program are extensive. At the Columbus
site, the program documented the critical tasks and created
consistency between team members and across shifts. Previ-
ously, much of the knowledge was experiential and not for-
mally documented. Standard work programs are essential to
maintaining system center-lines and documenting activity fre-
quency. The program can be updated quickly and easily, allow-
ing an organization to rapidly adopt new or better approaches.
Additionally, the system allows new hires or inexperienced
associates to quickly come up to speed with the key elements
of running a line.
As time progresses, these types of programs will become
even more important for documentation with regard to the
evolving requirements of the Food Safety Modernization
Act (FSMA). From a regulatory perspective, if an item is
not documented, it never happened. Standard work pro-
vides documentation. Standard work in the form of CILT
can also serve as a leading indicator. A study performed in
the Charlotte facility found CILT compliance was a leading
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86 September 2013 | Food Engineering | www.foodengineeringmag.com
continuous.indd 86
indicator for not only system performance, but also con-
sumer complaints.
Associate standard work must be complemented by a com-
prehensive LSW program. We have all heard the phrases trust
but verify and what is expected must be inspected. These
convey some level of truth, but the servant leader looks at asso-
ciate standard work through a different filter. The true leader
wants to be involved with the associate standard work program
to understand where he or she can better support the team, not
to audit and police. The objective is to ensure each team mem-
ber understands how the activity in standard work contributes
to the success of the overall plant organization. Leaders also can
check for understanding to uncover education opportunities
at the individual level and look for potential program gaps or
improvement needs.
The LSW is developed from the critical tasks of the leader-
ship group and must be strategically developed to support
and overlay the associate standard work program. The LSW
program ensures that leaders engage in the most important
focus areas and approach their role consistently across leaders
and shifts. It also ensures leaders hold impactful conversations
on the floor and engage in a meaningful way with all team
members. Plus, LSW documents the best current approaches
to leading in the organization. It serves as a template enhancing
the effectiveness of new leaders.
8/29/13 10:04 AM
 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
LSW is an activator for shared equity across functions. Even
leaders from other areas in the production facility, or other
functions, can perform a well-constructed LSW audit in an
area outside of their expertise. It allows associates to show a
non-expert performing the LSW what they do and how they
perform many of the activities. Teams educating others build
a true sense of importance and belonging. In this way, LSW
is an important component of instilling relevancy, which is a
foundational element of engagement.
In addition, LSW ensures alignment consistency and, when
done well, can begin to create the spark in many team members
to apply discretionary effort. As with associate standard work,
the LSW program should be designed with full input from the
leadership group as well as key stakeholders. Change manage-
ment should be built into the process.
Results
The Columbus manufacturing site provided the ultimate test
of the engagement and transformation framework. Through
methodical, and at times surgical, application of the frame-
work, the Columbus team made a full organizational transfor-
mation in only one year. The site leadership team coined the
objective of Grow Our People Grow Our Business. This has seven periods of 2012.
been the rallying cry to align the entire Columbus organization
behind the mission.
See Food Master, p. 57
88 September 2013 | Food Engineering | www.foodengineeringmag.com
continuous.indd 88
The team fully understood that business success and health
began and ended with the people on the Columbus team. The
focus on people is best reflected by the early emphasis on build-
ing a safety culture. The site showed a 53 percent decline in
recordable incidents in 2012 vs. 2010, the year prior to Chuck
Staton accepting the site leadership role. In comparing 2012
to 2011, the site has shown incredible safety results, includ-
ing a 34 percent decline in recordable incidents, a 53 percent
decline in lost time accidents (LTAs) and restricted duty and
a 90 percent reduction in days away from work. The focus on
people has taken the site to one of the best safety performances
in the company, surpassing the overall supply chain goals and
averages in each category.
From a business standpoint, the performance numbers are
equally impressive. Comparing 2011 to 2012, the site improved
its performance against controllable cost by an incredible 9 per-
cent. Material usage, direct labor, indirect labor, overtime and
all other controllable financials showed significant improve-
ments without any directed capital. The site performance
against Tmax (theoretical maximum output based upon the
system bottleneck when the system is running) improved from
69 percent in 2011 to an average of 80.4 percent over the last
The improvement in performance and the value of the
framework are best exhibited by Columbuss primary sandwich
Dry Ingredient
Dispenser with
Scarf Feeder
8/29/13 10:05 AM
 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

cracker line (Line 1). The flow wrappers, originally built in
the 1970s, were rebuilt in 1983 and were performing at 66.2
percent of Tmax in 2011. Most plants would have used the age
of the equipment as an excuse and lived with the performance
results. But the new leaders in Columbus who inherited the
issue accepted accountability.
The Columbus team understood they had to pay to play,
and the only way to gain future capital investment was to build
processes and programs to fully leverage the existing equip-
ment. The team had to build credibility with the organization
through performance. By fully leveraging the framework with
a focus on building team ownership, Columbus Line 1 hit an
average performance of 79.0 percent of Tmax for 2012 and
an average performance of 83.6 percent of Tmax for the last
seven periods of 2012, exhibiting incredible sustainment and
a continuously improving trend. As impressive as they are, the
numbers cannot reveal the level of ownership, moral, pride and
discretionary effort that is present today not only on Line 1, but
across the entire bakery. Success is contagious.
Strategic implementation of the framework described
and leveraged in the Line 1 example has allowed the bakery
to reduce first-pass scrap by 58 percent year over year. The
business performance improvements also have had impacts
well beyond the manufacturing floor. The site exceeded 99
percent service to sales for eight of the 12 periods in 2012.
The plant has continued to perform in 2013, meeting or
exceeding 99.6 percent service at the time of writing this
article. Additionally, consumer complaints have been
reduced well beyond internal goals, exceeding their con-
sumer complaint frequency goal for 2012 by 27 percent.
As is always the case for an organization where TPM is a
culture and not a program, the team will not be satisfied
until they approach zero: zero safety incidents and zero
loss. The journey of any CI-focused organization is long
and ever-developing, and the Columbus team has clearly
shown what is truly possible when servant-minded leader-
ship passionately focuses on engaging people and develop-
ing sustainable processes.
Greg Flickinger is vice president of manufacturing and cor-
porate engineering for Snyders-Lance Inc. He has worked for
Snyders-Lance for five years, focusing on transitioning the
culture from a traditional to a high-performance structure cen-
tered on total employee engagement. In his previous role as the
director of manufacturing , Flickinger led a team that achieved
an 11 percent reduction in total manufacturing cost through
people and process adjustments without any significant capital
projects. Prior to Snyders-Lance, he worked for General Mills
in strategic technology development, R&D, headquarters opera-
tions and plant operations.

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