John S McClenahen former IndustryWeek editor

Fear the Turtle

Sept. 25, 2012

Although each manufacturing company and each manufacturing plant is in some way unique, three principles of operating excellence apply to all the best companies and plants.

John McClenahen

As a new academic year commences, the very large sculpture of a terrapin dominates one end of the quad at the University of Maryland at College Park. It’s the proud subject of the campus slogan, “Fear the Turtle.”

The College Park terrapin, however, is not the plodding turtle that serves as foil to an overly confident (and ultimately unsuccessful) hare in Aesop’s ancient tale. Rather the College Park terrapin symbolizes the enlightened application of knowledge, skills and energy that has taken the University to leading positions in the arts and humanities, science, engineering, information technology, and business.

More men and women in manufacturing companies across the U.S.—and in American companies overseas—would be well advised to emulate Maryland and make the turtle symbol of their strengths and achievements. Manufacturing managers operating in our dynamic and highly competitive world of commerce and capital literally cannot afford to dismiss the turtle as an academic curiosity, a symbol perhaps fitting for a university campus, but not for their companies.

Where to begin? (And how to continue?)

Although each manufacturing company and each manufacturing plant is in some way unique, three principles of operating excellence apply to all the best companies and plants:

The creation of a culture of continuous improvement is as important as operator-led process control, LeanSigma councils, production cells and the other tools of continuous improvement.
Seemingly good ideas sometimes fail. Learn from failures. Even Jack Welch, the legendary former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co, once (accidentally) blew up a plastics plant.
Ask—and ask again and again—the critical questions about delivering customer value, working with suppliers to reduce costs and boost quality, and involving the entire workforce—including senior company management—in the relentless pursuit of excellence.

During many years of visiting manufacturing plants in the United States and abroad, and several years of judging North American facilities as part of The IW Best Plants program, I saw these principles in action. For the very best plants these principles were not—and are not—an academic exercise.

Even if you believe your company and its manufacturing plants are already doing a great job of applying these principles, study them again. Think about them not only in terms of the business challenges that you currently face, but also in the context of what’s to come. Sweat the small stuff, the big stuff, and all the stuff in-between. Create new practices. Prove their worth—even at the risk of finding their value is less than you thought.

The global competitive manufacturing race is still very much on.

Make the College Park turtle your symbol of continuous improvement.

Fear the turtle.

This is the first of a series of occasional essays by John S. McClenahen, who retired from IndustryWeek in 2006 and remains a keen observer of the global manufacturing environment.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.