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by Dave Rizzardo

Our second MWCC Lean Facility Tour of 2025 took us to the Lonza facility in Walkersville, Maryland. It was an insightful and educational morning as we learned about their Lean Business Management System (LBMS), which began deployment in 2022. Following an engaging presentation, we toured the facility to see firsthand how the LBMS is applied in daily operations.

What sets Lonza apart is the depth of commitment and engagement throughout the organization in their enterprise-wide Lean transformation. Their Walkersville location has been selected as a best practice model (lighthouse) to guide deployment efforts across Lonza’s global facilities—a testament to their success. In any Lean transformation, the word "journey" is often heard, and it’s clear that Lonza is excelling on every critical front. Their strong foundation, anchored by "Lean Leadership," ensures a sustained focus on continuous improvement and a culture of operational excellence.

During the tour, we observed solid 5S practices and learned about the systems in place to sustain them. One standout feature was their tiered huddle process, which ensures daily communication from the plant floor to upper management and aligns priorities across all levels. The LBMS effectively addresses both cross-functional strategic issues and plant-floor Kaizen activities—proving that small, localized improvements can be just as impactful as broader initiatives. Other highlights included their emphasis on Gemba Walks and their advanced digitization efforts, such as an innovative idea system that encourages continuous innovation.

We concluded the morning with a tour debrief, where attendees shared positive Lean takeaways and offered thoughtful suggestions for the Lonza team. The day wrapped up with lunch and networking—fueling both our bodies and our ongoing Lean learning.

A huge thank you to all who attended, and especially to our gracious hosts at Lonza for sharing key aspects of their Lean journey through the lens of their LBMS. It was truly a Lean-filled morning of inspiration and learning!

🚀 Over the past two weeks, 17 professionals from nine different organizations dove into the world of Lean during two action-packed One Day Lean Overview sessions led by Dave Rizzardo.

📍 One session took place at Chesapeake College on the Eastern Shore, while the other was hosted by Hub Labels in Hagerstown. Both events were filled with hands-on learning, real-world insights, and plenty of fun!

🔧 A highlight of the day was the simulated product assembly line, where participants rolled up their sleeves and tackled three rapid-fire production rounds spread throughout the day.

💡 This "learn by doing" approach—learn, apply, improve, and repeat—kept the energy high and the lessons practical. With each round, teams worked together to refine their processes, and by the final round, they successfully met the customer’s requirements! ✅

🤔 How did we fit all that learning and production into a single day?
Simple—the production "shifts" were just three minutes long. (No sore muscles here! 💪) But the real magic happened during the debriefs, where participants analyzed their results and planned improvements for the next rounds.

📊 By the end of the day, attendees didn’t just walk away with a deeper understanding of Lean principles and powerful tools—they experienced firsthand how small, continuous improvements drive big results.

👏 A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for these dynamic sessions—your engagement and teamwork made it a day to remember!

by Dave Rizzardo, Associate Director, MWCC

On February 20th, we kicked off our first MWCC Lean tour of 2025 at Saft Batteries in Cockeysville, Maryland. It was an inspiring and informative Lean morning that began with an overview of Saft and their products. Their advanced batteries power applications across land, sea, air, and even space. In addition to their commitment to Lean excellence, Saft's sustainability practices and results are world-class.

Following the company overview, we learned about some of the impressive Lean initiatives within their Saft Excellence System before starting the tour of their facilities.

Several key Lean takeaways stood out during the visit. One highlight was their organizational structure, which effectively aligns the entire company—from the plant floor to the leadership team—around key issues. This alignment happens not just monthly, but every day, allowing problems to be quickly surfaced, addressed, and resolved.

Another impressive aspect was their use of automation. Automated processes ensure the high precision required for their products while enabling them to meet increasing sales demands. Their automated data collection system provides timely information in a visual, easily understood format, which supports ongoing improvements. Throughout the facility, we observed visual systems and controls reinforcing Lean practices.

These are just a few of the insights we gathered. As with any true Lean organization, Saft recognizes that the journey is never-ending, with continuous opportunities for improvement.

Overall, it was an educational and engaging Lean morning, offering valuable lessons and inspiration for all who attended.

Leadership should view evaluations as an opportunity to supercharge their greatest asset—their people.

Carl Livesay

A positive corporate culture is built on a foundation of trust.

To enjoy the long-lasting benefits of a positive culture, a team must trust its leadership. For that to occur, leadership must first demonstrate trust in the team. This is no easy task. The cornerstone of trust is communication. Without good communication, trust is conditional, and gains in corporate culture are temporary. The challenge, then, is how can a leader best communicate with their team?

The basics of communication are well-documented, effective tools that help increase and improve communication throughout an organization. However, one often-overlooked tool is the value of a well-thought-out performance review.

Continue reading 

Leaders can take multiple steps to provide a safe environment where continuous improvement can thrive.

David Rizzardo

One of the primary characteristics of a lean culture – which aligns with the “Respect for People” principle of lean – is a workforce that is engaged in improving processes to add ever-increasing value for customers. And leaders at all levels must collaborate with and listen to employees, so that problems can be surfaced and process improvements made.

However, there is an obvious prerequisite to this act of collaboration that should not be assumed … employees must be willing to contribute and speak up! Reluctance to participate usually has identifiable root causes that need to be addressed. Here we will discuss a few of these issues.

Read full article here 🔗

There are real steps leaders can take to break functional experts out of their hidey-holes.

David Rizzardo

Let’s start by defining silo-building. It’s the mindset and actions that create isolated departments or work areas that do not collaborate well, neither with other areas of the company nor with other parts of the value stream.

The focus of the silo is optimization of the silo, nothing else. In manufacturing, a silo might be a fabrication area that supplies components to the assembly department. Or more often, silos develop in support or administrative departments; e.g., engineering, IT, quality, sales.

Read full article here 🔗

Authored by Dave Rizzardo, Associate Director, MWCC

What are the highest-performing lean organizations doing that others are either unable or unwilling to do? What enables them to develop what can accurately be described as a lean culture of continuous improvement?

In short, the highest performers have more employees moving the company forward towards its goals—their  folks are engaged. Engagement refers to employees’ motivation to support the company’s mission, and their willingness to act and utilize their brainpower to help fulfill that mission. Engagement is action-based; actions aligned with lean principles.

Engaged employees are highlighting and solving problems; following standard work and experimenting to improve to new standards; and collaborating with teammates throughout the organization to add more value for the customer. These are just a few behaviors of the engaged associates, and this naturally leads to improvements in a multitude of business-performance measures.

Developing this engaged workforce is probably the most challenging part of the lean journey, but also the most impactful and rewarding. So, what are the keys to developing an engaged workforce?

There’s not a short simple answer to that question. One of the complicating factors is the variation in what motivates each one of us humans.

Click here to continue reading!

Authored by Dave Rizzardo, MWCC Associate Director

On July 25th, 2024, we took our members and guests to tour the Holmatro facility in Glen Burnie, Maryland.  We were hosted by Karol Siozon, Craig Carassanesi, Michelle Leroy, and Timo Gerlings. Holmatro isn’t your typical company; they’re in the business of saving lives—not through hospitals or medical equipment, but by creating top-notch rescue gear used by first responders, SWAT teams, and Special Operations Forces. It’s clear that their mission fuels a deep pride and dedication among their team, and it was inspiring to witness firsthand.

They started by letting us see the finished products and they are indeed impressive!  As we embarked on the tour, the impeccable cleanliness and organization of the facility stood out, reflecting their strong commitment to 5S practices that eliminates waste. Their daily Gemba Walks are a testament to their support for plant-floor employees, swiftly addressing any issues that arise. One of the Lean applications that stood out to me is their impressive kanban replenishment system. Each machine in their shop handles various parts that contribute to the final products, and their system ensures efficient inventory management. Thanks to their thorough audit process, they keep inventory low while boosting on-time delivery performance—and they do it with less stress!

Holmatro’s dedication to continuous improvement is further evidenced by their internal targets for on-time delivery, which are weeks ahead of customer promises. This forward-thinking approach underscores their commitment to excellence.

A strong foundation of teamwork and employee engagement has made these advancements possible. With many long-tenured employees, it’s clear that Holmatro values its workforce and embraces change with enthusiasm. The involvement of employees in the kanban process, along with their use of performance metrics, highlights a proactive approach to operational efficiency.

In addition to the essential human element of change, Craig also emphasized that having accurate data is crucial for successful kanban system implementation.  Well said, Craig! Sure, the kanban system will run with poor data, but you will be making the wrong products. Or more of a product than needed, or not enough of another product, or all of these! Bottom line, it won’t work, so heed Craig’s warning. Remember, garbage in, garbage out!

In summary, this was an inspiring and educational Lean tour. Though their progress is impressive, what I feel is just as impressive is that they have systems in place which will be the catalyst for ongoing improvement to add more value for their customers who put their products to good use…to save lives!

Authored by Robert Schoenberger, Editor-in-Chief, IndustryWeek

No one will ever accuse Dave Rizzardo, associate director of the Maryland World Class Consortia of being shy or dispassionate about lean manufacturing and operational excellence. But, on a panel discussion at IndustryWeek's recent Operations Leadership Summit, the audience got an earful from the operations expert on treating people right, listening to your employees and how it's the leader's job to make sure everyone else can do their work.

Joining Dave for this particularly lively panel discussion was his friend (well, they were friends at the start of the conversation) Carl Livesay, general manager of Maryland-based Mercury Plastics. Also speaking was Sarah Tilkens, CEO of the KPI Lab and senior manager for operational excellence at GE Healthcare. The moderator is Robert Schoenberger, editor-in-chief at IndustryWeek.

Click the link to listen in! ➡️ Lean Manufacturing: It's Still All About People, Darnit!

by Dave Rizzardo, MWCC Associate Director

At our Quarterly Conference on July 12, 2024, Lorelei Vargo, President of Vargo Innovations, LLC, Doug Galeone, VP of Sales at Chutes International, and Suzanne Carney, Chutes Account Manager (and one of their Lean leaders), teamed up to make a compelling case for applying Lean to the Sales function of an organization. This was not a morning of theoretical concepts. It was a factual and implementation-based review.

First, as Lorelei pointed out, Sales consists of processes, and there is waste of all forms within Sales processes, as there is in any other type of process. These wastes are things which add time and cost, but no value to the customer. Lorelei went waste by waste and pointed out specific non-value adding activities associated with each waste category often found in Sales processing; wastes which she and her clients have attacked to eradicate or at least reduce. What’s the impact? Well, increased productivity, shorter lead-times, and increased sales and customer satisfaction are just a few improved performance measures.

Speaking of lead-time, during Doug and Suzanne’s presentation, they reviewed how Chutes reduced the Quoting lead-time by 57%! They did this by getting the team together, mapping out the process, identifying the wastes, and developing countermeasures to redesign the process…your typical Lean analysis, planning, implementation approach. Think about the impact of reducing the Quoting lead-time by over 50%. Sure, the waste removal and reduction will increase productivity, but getting the quote to the potential customer in half the time, and likely before the competitors have even given a filename to their quote document. This has increased sales for Chutes written all over it!

One of the key words that Lorelei and Doug/Suzanne mentioned a few times throughout the morning was collaboration. Not just improved collaboration amongst the Sales Team, but also collaboration with other company functions such as Manufacturing. Our businesses are systems, so collaboration and coordination among the components of the system is critical, and Chutes has intentionally made huge strides in strengthening the broader Value Stream team. This won’t happen by itself. It takes purposeful effort. Chutes did it! Something all companies should heed.

One other improvement, amongst many, that I would like to highlight from the Chutes story is one which we do on the factory floor all the time but is unfortunately, not done often enough in the office environment. And that is experimenting with the physical layout of the office to facilitate information flow. Even when informal discussions between teammates take place due to improved proximity, value is often gained. Again, layout experimentation in the office, not done as often as it should to create a more collaborative environment. Great job Chutes!

There were many more examples that Lorelei, Doug, and Suzanne reviewed, but I will just end with the comment that the Sales organization, can and must, be interconnected with the rest of the organization, and they can and must, be waste busters like every other component of the system, and Lorelei, Doug, and Suzanne clearly showed how this is not a theoretical aspiration. They have done it and continue to do it! And that is what Lean is all about.