Monogram Foods

Leadership in Engineering

My primary responsibility is the management and execution of the portfolio of capital projects across the enterprise. We execute projects for two primary reasons: to grow the business and make the Company more profitable and to enable all our manufacturing plants to be able to operate in a safe, food-safe, legally compliant and efficient way.

My team also provides oversight and governance of maintenance execution across all manufacturing facilities and ensures we stay compliant with all environmental regulations across all operations.

Implementing systems only works when we take the time to make sure the organization can truly internalize the concepts behind the new system or methodology. It cannot be approached as a “one and done” swat team implementation, where corporate resources and consultants descend on a factory to brute-force the use of a new tool kit. When this happens, the organization will revert to its “old ways” the moment the swat team walks out the door.

Implementation of a new toolkit or work process must focus on changing the actual “way of working”. The organization must understand how the new system helps to deliver better business results and how to work more effectively using the new tool kit. Only then will the organization get past the phase where there is resistance to adoption and get past the perception that it is “extra work” to follow the new work process. Once the new process becomes second nature and it is evident that the new tool kit is actually helping drive performance improvement, then the organization will fully embrace long-term adoption.

Innovating and Guiding the Next Generation of Engineering Leaders

There is no “silver bullet” and this is indeed one of the greatest challenges that we face every day. Agility is key to our success, but there is a common misconception that agility means moving fast at all costs. In many cases, we have to “slow down to go faster” take the time in the front end to properly understand and scope any new requests and determine what processes, checks and balances will be important to ensure our success. Then, once the disciplined approach has been “right-sized”, we can jump right into execution and at that point, we are truly ready to go fast without compromising the quality of the outcome.

Never assume that discipline will slow you down, it will only if you do not understand the true intent of the systems you are using and if you fail to right size them for the particular project or challenge you are dealing with.

Recognizing Technology Maturity

There are many indicators of the level of maturity of any new technology, but a good place to start is pricing and level of adoption amongst leading OEMs. If you have to pay a high premium for any given technology, it means it is still early in its maturity curve. If it is hard to find readily available technical support or if there are only a few OEMs or integrators that offer solutions involving these technologies, then it is probably still early in the maturity curve.

Always be clear on what objective you are tasked with delivering, and from there identify what are the fundamental processes that are needed to ensure success. Stay disciplined on the “must have” aspects of the work, do not take shortcuts. Be flexible and agile with everything else but never compromise execution of the “must have” aspects of project delivery. That is a good recipe for delivering operational excellence and a lasting business impact.