Stories of Leadership, Lean, and Learning
Armstrong World Industries is the global leader in suspended ceilings. That might not seem like much to you, but when you sell over a billion square feet of ceiling tile and the grid to suspend it every year, you’re making a big impact in the construction and housing market.
Read MoreAmstrong World Industries and Worthington Steel combined forces to create the number one ceiling grid manufacturer in the world. It didn’t start out that way, as employees of both companies were feeling their way through the combination of cultures.
Read MoreI have been influenced by many pop-culture references over the years. During my Kaizen events, words or phrases come out of my mouth that are my attempt to make the situation relatable to the team and make them feel better about the situation they’re in and the problem they’re facing. I want them to realize it’s not the first time something bad happened in business and their problems aren’t insurmountable. I wasn’t always this way – maybe you can learn from my mistakes!
Read MoreSometimes, even though you know you could help a prospect, they don’t feel the same way. This is one of those stories about my inability to create alignment with a business leader.
Read MoreI have experienced two mergers/joint ventures in my corporate career at Armstrong. The first one was a ceiling grid venture between Worthington Industries and Armstrong. It was extremely positive and productive and is still doing well to this day. The second one was a ceramic tile venture between Armstrong’s American Olean Tile and Dal-Tile, based out of Dallas Texas. This one didn’t go nearly as well. I learned many lessons from the Dal-Tile experience, mainly about my ability to survive.
Read MoreMidway through my corporate career, I was a senior industrial engineer at Armstrong World Industries. I spent most of my time providing support to our many manufacturing facilities all over the world. I have always been fascinated by manufacturing and it never ceases to amaze me how good (and bad) decisions can immediately impact performance.
Read MoreLast year, Dave, a network connection, reached out to me to see if I could help him in his continuous improvement journey. His wife had worked with me at Armstrong, and one evening he was talking with her about some of his frustrations at work. She said, “If you want to get the right help, call Adam. He is tenacious and won’t let you or your team fail.”
Read MoreWhen you are in the heat of battle, you don’t realize the toll it’s taking on your health. I was the business unit manager for a vinyl flooring operation for Armstrong World Industries for two years. During that time, we were in a continual state of downsizing. This didn’t help the relationship with our union. It seemed like everything we tried to do to improve safety, cost, quality, or customer service was met with resistance.
Read MoreThere is always a compromise that can be made. You just must know what you want and figure out how it will benefit both parties. I have been negotiating since as far back as I remember. Sometimes it was bedtime, eating my dinner, or putting off homework to go outside and play. Parents don’t typically cherish those negotiations and kids rarely win (at least I didn’t most of the time).
Read MoreI was working at the American Olean ceramic tile facility in Olean, New York as the Industrial Engineering manager when we merged with Dal-Tile. I was offered a position as an industrial engineer at the corporate offices in Dallas, Texas. I was very impressed with the manager who I was going to report to, so I took the opportunity and moved my family south.
Read MoreIn the 1980’s, Thomasville Furniture was the market leader in high-end furniture. They were extremely focused on process improvement in all areas of the business. I worked on a staff of industrial engineers. Each of us supported one or more of the many manufacturing facilities. We were tasked with finding ways to improve safety, quality, productivity, and customer service.
Read MoreCritical problems seem to happen over a holiday weekend when there is less coverage. For me, Thanksgiving provided many challenges. Early in my career, I had to come into the ceramic tile factory the day after Thanksgiving to supervise a crew trying to clear a jam in the kiln. Many years later, a water main in St. Helens Oregon broke and shut down the ceiling tile plant. Once again, I was the one covering, and had to respond quickly and deal with a near disaster.
Read MoreDuring Armstrong’s Lean transformation, we took many benchmarking trips to learn from companies that were further along in their Lean journeys. One memorable trip included visits to Boeing and Nucor Steel in South Carolina on an extremely hot day in July.
Read MoreAdmit it. After reading the title of this story, some of you are hearing the famous Lionel Richie song in your head. This story isn’t about that, but rather it concerns a challenging Kaizen event I recently facilitated for CITY Furniture. The business problem we were trying to solve was a series of computer programs that ran after all showrooms closed each evening. There was a period of time where no revenue could be generated through their e-commerce website, until all programs completed their reconciliations. Our goal was to cut the time by 75%, so that we could free up overnight revenue generation.
Read MoreOn May 15, 2018, I registered Process Improvement Partners LLC as an official business. Since then, I have had so many adventures, made lots of mistakes, and hopefully learned from many of them!
Read MoreDuring my time living on the west coast, I wanted to give back to the community. Many of the staff at the St. Helens, Oregon plant participated in some way or another with the United Way of Columbia County. I was intrigued. I had participated in many United Way Days of Caring during my time in Pennsylvania.
Read MoreBefore I developed the Wheel of Sustainability, I had to find other methods to sustain the gains my teams worked so hard to develop during weeklong events. Here’s a story of the extreme lengths one team went to make sure no one could ever make a change to their improvements.
Read MoreI worked for an amazing manager during my time at Dal-Tile in Texas. Wayne treated people with respect, cared for them personally, and was true to his word.
Read MoreI was asked to create a discrete event simulation program for a planned factory expansion many years ago at Armstrong World Industries. What is that, you may ask? Basically, it’s a computer model of a process as it operates. It tries to mirror the behavior of the process, allowing the user to try various “what if” scenarios, such as adding capacity, downtime, resources, or speed. Having not built any simulations since my college days, I started doing research on options and whether or not I should try to build it myself or hire an outside vendor.
Read MoreI have been a small business owner for a few years. My company consists of me, my wife, my son, and my dog. I quickly learned I am responsible for everything that goes on. Nowhere is this more critical than customer acquisition.
Read More
