Through methodical, and at times surgical, application of a continuous improvement framework, Snyder’s-Lance’s Columbus team made a full organizational transformation in only one year.
The Snyder’s-Lance Columbus, GA manufacturing site, originally established as the Tom Huston Peanut Company, has been in existence since 1925. In recent decades, the site changed ownership a number of times until Lance Inc. purchased the company out of bankruptcy in 2005. The many lean years had taken a tremendous toll on the site culture, infrastructure and ultimately, profitability. In January 2011, Snyder’s-Lance hired Chuck Staton and quickly promoted him to site director of manufacturing. Three months later, Staton hired a dynamic servant leader, Brian Dubak, as the Columbus bakery plant manager. What transpired over the next 21 months was a remarkable cultural and performance transformation.
The Columbus team applied a tried-and-true framework to nurture rapid, sustained organizational improvement. The process was focused on implementing continuous improvement (CI) tools and methodologies primarily from the total productive maintenance (TPM) tool box. CI tools were leveraged as a vehicle to drive culture change with sustainable performance improvement as an outcome, but not the specific focus. The framework, embodied by the three fundamental tenets of reliability, standard work and shared equity, was successfully applied to create a sustained, large-scale transformation in the Charlotte manufacturing site without directed capital (2009-2010).