
Better every day: How process discipline fuels business momentum
In today's margin-pressured environment, manufacturers can't afford chaos. Here's how continuous improvement builds resilience, increases capacity and creates momentum.
Uncertainty is the only constant in the current manufacturing landscape. From rising labor costs and global supply chain disruptions to unpredictable freight and material expenses, manufacturers are navigating a turbulent environment where margins are tight and execution must be precise.
The manufacturers that thrive in this environment, the ones scaling effectively, innovating confidently and outperforming competitors — have one key advantage: Process discipline.
Why process is the foundation of profitable growth
Top-performing manufacturers understand that the process is not just a function of the factory floor, it's the heartbeat of the business. Continuous improvement (CI) frameworks like Lean are not simply checklists or workshops, they are mindsets embedded deep within the company's culture.
When manufacturers commit to CI principles, they unlock new capacity without major capital investments, reduce waste, improve quality and elevate employee engagement. Most importantly, they create an operational rhythm that allows their business to adapt and evolve quickly, no matter the market conditions.
In short: Process drives performance.
Embedding continuous improvement into daily operations
The key to unlocking the full value of continuous improvement is making it an organizational and cultural habit, not a one-time initiative. That starts with leadership.
Manufacturers that succeed with CI initiatives typically focus on three areas:
Leadership buy-in: Executive teams must model the behaviors they expect to see, supporting standard work, visual management and a focus on data-driven decision-making.
Frontline engagement: Improvement doesn't happen to people, it happens with them. Successful CI cultures are built on trust, input and engagement from frontline workers who see opportunities every day.
Clear metrics: What gets measured gets improved. Organizations need aligned KPIs and tracking tools to measure performance, sustain momentum and demonstrate results.
By moving continuous improvement from the boardroom to the break room, manufacturers embed excellence at every level.
From measurement to momentum
CI efforts only gain traction when they align with company culture and strategic objectives. It's not about implementing a system, it's about building a shared language of progress.
At TechSolve, we've helped hundreds of manufacturers operationalize continuous improvement. We've seen firsthand how a focus on process can drive better delivery times, stronger customer satisfaction and improved profitability. More importantly, we've seen it restore confidence in teams who were stuck in firefighting mode.
When manufacturers commit to doing the small things right, every day, they build resilience. They develop the muscle to respond, adapt and grow. That's not just improvement. That's momentum.
The bottom line
In this high-pressure environment, operational chaos is no longer sustainable. The manufacturers that will lead the next decade are the ones who embrace discipline as their strategy and process as their path.
Have you tried big initiatives in the past and run into a wall of resistance to change? At TechSolve, we believe that better every day isn't just a motto, it's a movement. Let's build momentum together. Visit our website to learn more about TechSolve.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Business Journals
2 days ago
- Business Journals
South Florida ORBIE Leadership Award recipient: For World Fuel's Jeff Smith, innovation and a people-first culture are key to making an impact
Jeff Smith, who retired as chief operating officer of World Fuel Services at the end of 2023, has been named the recipient of the 2025 South Florida ORBIE Leadership Award. The honor recognizes a global career built on pioneering digital transformation and cultivating high-performing teams. Smith's leadership philosophy centers on a simple, yet powerful, idea: Talent and culture are the true differentiators of great companies. As COO of World Fuel Services, he turned that belief into action, cultivating efficiency and dexterity in how the company responded to challenges using LEAN principles and people-first decision-making. That operational precision was forged over more than 35 years of experience across continents and industries — from semiconductors to finance. Smith's career highlights, which he'll share during a keynote address at the South Florida ORBIE Awards celebration June 13 at The Diplomat Beach Resort, are a case study in iteration. At IBM, he led a global IT organization of 20,000 and spearheaded the company-wide Agile transformation. At Allied Signal/Honeywell, he launched a global SAP rollout across 17 countries, cutting projected timelines by more than half through an international team rooted in diversity of thought and unified by a shared goal. At Suncorp, following the economic downturn that started in 2008, he architected a transformation of the company's digital insurance self-service platform. His teams built it using the cloud, making the financial services provider one of the first to use cloud technology. In every challenge, Smith consistently applied what he learned early in his career at LSI Logic: that shared sacrifice, collective learning and scalable simplicity often outperform hierarchical command-and-control. 'My view is you should always give preference to the people doing the work over people leading the work,' he says. 'We're paid a premium to lead, so we should be homing in on creating a productive environment for them.' Smith breaks it down further: 'What does great mean? Is that small teams that are building great software? Does that mean great customer service? Does it mean that we can take a problem and break it up? I've spent my career kind of chasing that — the more you can make it clean and simple, the easier it is to scale.' His formula for high-performing teams prioritizes building diverse teams who are engaged by meaningful work. The work must be distributed at a sustainable pace, and finally, results must be continually measured and tracked. At IBM, he implemented a quarterly leadership review system that evaluated every leader on six tangible dimensions — team formation, work distribution, measurement, talent development, learning from others and influence. He also published Net Promoter Scores for leaders, asking direct reports whether they would recommend their manager or their squad to a peer. The transparency raised expectations and elevated performance across the organization. Smith's influence is still felt globally. He currently serves on the boards of ANZ Bank, PEXA and Sonrai Security. A native of Ohio and graduate of Miami University and San Jose State University, he's lived and led in the U.S., Australia and around the world. And while his accomplishments are many, what sets Smith apart is his ability to scale not just systems, but people. His advice to business leaders aspiring to be true community partners is to believe in the potential of people. He recalls a transformative insight from Steve Jobs, who once shared how Pixar hired musicians and artists to become software engineers because they had the grit and logic to succeed. 'We applied that in South Florida, too,' Smith says, 'creating career paths for people with nontraditional backgrounds. Don't look at it as a cost or as a contribution, that you're there to help people with money. You're there to help them find a great career and have a happy life. If you build the right environment, anyone can thrive.' Asked what makes a great leader, Smith advises not to get caught up in the noise of the company landscape. 'You want to create clarity of purpose, put together a good, productive environment, and inspire people to do great things. It's pretty simple.' From building software that transformed a global semiconductor industry, to reshaping IT at IBM, to coaching next-generation talent in Miami, Smith's legacy is one of clarity, compassion and continuous reinvention. The 2025 South Florida ORBIE Leadership Award celebrates not just a career, but a mindset — one that will continue to shape teams, cultures and companies for years to come.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
National Lean Conference Comes to Winnipeg June 9-12 to Address Canada's Productivity Crisis and Supply Chain Resilience
WINNIPEG, MB, May 20, 2025 /CNW/ - Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) is proud to announce that its flagship Embracing Excellence Lean Conference will take place June 9–12, 2025, at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg, bringing together, over the course of four days, nearly 1,000 industry leaders from across the country to confront Canada's most pressing manufacturing challenges: lagging productivity, supply chain instability, and global trade uncertainty. "Canada's productivity crisis is directly impacting our competitiveness," said Otto Kemerle, CME Manitoba Advisory Board Chair and President of the International Truck Body. "Through Lean, manufacturers can take control of what they can improve. Operations, processes, and people. It's a strategic response to volatility that doesn't rely on subsidies or major capital injections." This year's program will explore how Lean methodologies can be applied to increase productivity without major capital investment, build resilient and responsive supply chains, and help Canadian manufacturers remain agile in the face of global economic shifts. It will also emphasize the importance of people and culture in sustaining long-term performance focusing on leadership, team engagement, and frontline empowerment. "Manufacturers are being squeezed by rising costs and increasing trade uncertainty," said Todd Leroy, Vice President of Manufacturing at Loewen Windows. "To stay competitive, we need to do more with what we already have. Improving productivity through Lean isn't optional; it's essential. It allows us to adapt quickly without relying on external support or massive infrastructure overhauls." This national event will offer immersive learning, practical case studies, and in-depth conversations on Lean manufacturing as a strategy to enhance competitiveness, agility, and workforce engagement. By gathering national voices in Winnipeg, the conference highlights Manitoba's strategic manufacturing and logistics role and supports regional efforts to build stronger, smarter operations that can weather uncertainty. Event Details:Dates: June 9–12, 2025Location: RBC Convention Centre, Winnipeg, ManitobaRegistration: ABOUT CME Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters is Canada's oldest and largest national trade and industry association. In Manitoba, CME works with manufacturers to help them grow with support and resources in the areas of Leadership & Executive Support, Lean & Productivity, Advanced Manufacturing & Innovation, Trade & Business Development, Workforce Development, Advocacy & Intelligence, Future Workforce, Safety and Networking. SOURCE Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters View original content to download multimedia: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Yahoo
How is C.H. Robinson turning things around? CFO Lee has a few ideas
The stock performance of the few 3PLs that are publicly traded tells a stark story in the past 12 months. RXO (NYSE: RXO), which in its most recent two quarters posted losses, is down about 31% in the past year. Landstar (NASDAQ: LSTR), which has yet to report its first-quarter earnings and is considered mostly a 3PL but with some unique characteristics, is down 25.5% during those 12 months. C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW), which a little more than a year ago was reported to be one of the most heavily shorted industrial stocks on Wall Street, is now five quarters into a turnaround that first showed signs of working with its first-quarter 2024 earnings. It's up about 9.3% in the past notable about a C.H. Robinson earnings call over an even longer period than just the more successful recent five quarters is an absolutely consistent message: The Lean principles expounded by CEO Dave Bozeman, now almost two years into his role, are working and have kept the company ahead of the rest of the brokerage pack. Executives like Bozeman and others on the earnings calls do not waver from citing these new practices as the reason for a turnaround that, if an elevator speech needed to be given about it, can be told in three figures. In 2023's second quarter, the last one before Bozeman took over, the company had gross profit of $656.7 million. In the first quarter just completed, the figure was almost identical: $657.4 million. But the adjusted operating margin in Q2 2023 was 19.9%. In 2025's first quarter, it was 26.3%. Diluted earnings per share two years ago in the second quarter was 81 cents. Most recently, it was $1.11 – $1.17 on an adjusted basis. C.H. Robinson CFO Damon Lee, in an interview with FreightWaves several days after the release of C.H. Robinson's earnings and its call with analysts, stayed on that message. 'The easy part of answering that question about the reasons for our performance is in our strategy,' said Lee, who joined the company last year, just about a year after Bozeman took the top job. Neither had been in brokerage: Bozeman came out of Ford, Lee from goals are not complicated, Lee said: 'We're going to grow our operating profit, and we're going to do that by outgrowing the markets we participate in.' That 26.3% margin compared to two years ago is the most obvious factor. But the margin a year ago was 19.3%, and 700 bps points of operating margin improvement didn't come from a stronger freight market. 'That strategy, as simple as it is, has really guided us through not just a transformation from a Robinson perspective but through one of the most difficult freight markets on record.' Lee said. C.H. Robinson and RXO management both compared different parts of their performance to the monthly indicators of the Cass Index, though they did not highlight the same comparisons. But benchmarking against the overall market represented by Cass, Lee said, is necessary. 'If your strategy isn't pegged to what the overall market is doing, you can find yourselves getting into bad behaviors,' he said. Lee cited an overarching example of a 'bad behavior': 'Where you overindex to volume at the sake of margins, and when that doesn't work the way you expected it to, you overindex to margins at the sake of volume.' The Lean principles that Bozeman and Lee both tout as key to the turnaround at C.H. Robinson have been described as having five points: Define value, map the value stream, create flow, establish pull and pursue perfection. No company would say it doesn't follow those principles. But when Lee was asked to give an example of how it might work at C.H. Robinson, he turned to the role of automation. 'I've gone through Lean transformations and it's not a one-year journey,' Lee said. 'It's not a two-year journey. Typically, around year three is where you end up with the personnel that's going to take you to the next level of evolution.'Some of it is culture, Lee said: 'I have to find a way to get better every single day, every single week, every single month.' But then he got specific. Applying Lean principles to C.H. Robinson's activities would start with a question, he said: 'What is a customer willing to pay for?' 'If you think about all of these steps that we do for a customer, there's only a handful of them,' Lee said. 'They'd say, 'I'm willing to pay for that and I'm willing to pay for that.'' Bringing Lean into the process, he added, would identify those services that are necessary but for which a customer is not willing to fork out money. The Lean solution, according to Lee: 'We need to find a way to automate them.' 'Either eliminate the process altogether, because it's not value add in the eyes of the customer, or find a way to simplify the process, by eliminating steps or automating the process altogether' is how Lee summed up the philosophy of Lean and how it might work at a 3PL. It goes to a bigger goal under Lean, which he defined as, 'We want our people spending their time on what the customer values versus what the customer doesn't.' The specifics of automating some of the processes – or even ones that customers actually want and need, like price quotes – were spelled out in the company's earnings call by Arun Rajan, C.H. Robinson's chief strategy officer. He said on the call that AI agents have performed more than 3 million 'shipping tasks,' which includes more than 1 million price quotes and processing of a similar amount. It has also been 'quickly scaled' in the C.H. Robinson LTL business, he said. The people who have been implementing the job on the ground have fallen into three categories, Lee said. 'You had some that were very excited that this was kind of a new day for C.H. Robinson,' Lee said. Another group was cautious: 'Were they in the right boat?' is how Lee described their attitude. But that group, Lee said, 'just needed to learn more about how to be successful in this new Robinson.' The result so far, he added, is, 'I think they've grasped what we're trying to do with the company.' And then there was a third contingent. As Lee described it, 'They said, 'This is not for me and is not really something I want to participate in.'' Many in that category have left the company, Lee said, 'but there are some that are still around and working through how they can get to the middle and can they move to the left?' Any gains a company makes by internal procedures can often run up against the reality that they can only go so far. If the market served is weak, that will ultimately impact the company's performance no matter the level of company efficiency. That's one way of looking at it. But that's not how Lee sees things. 'It's something we debate all the time internally,' he said. 'There is really no limit on how long we can continue this.' The C.H. Robinson strategy under Bozeman is 'set up and established, and the foundational elements are to perform regardless of the market trend we're in,' Lee said. 'That same set of principles and foundational elements translates to midmarket and peak market as well.' More articles by John Kingston For the first time in years, C.H. Robinson's debt rating is downgraded by S&P Global California deal with 16 states would end key parts of Advanced Clean Fleets rule 2 markets in 1 quarter: Auto-hauling demand volatile for Proficient The post How is C.H. Robinson turning things around? CFO Lee has a few ideas appeared first on FreightWaves.