If you haven't already, wish Modine Manufacturing Co. a happy anniversary.
Established in 1916, the Racine, Wisc.-based manufacturer of thermal management technology and solutions turned 100 this year. It's a celebratory feat, but proving that hitting the century mark is no reason to rest on one's laurels, Modine earlier this month announced an agreement to acquire Luvata Heat Transfer Solutions. It also began the year by assuming controlling share of a joint venture in China.
IndustryWeek, which takes great pleasure in saluting century-old (or perhaps century-young) manufacturing companies, recently caught up with Thomas A. Burke, Modine's president and chief executive officer. Burke joined Modine in 2005, following a career that included stays at Visteon Corp. and Ford Motor Co., (another century-old manufacturing company).
Here are insights and excerpts from that conversation.
On leadership and Burke's leadership style: Modine's CEO says his style is driven by the company's core values of selflessness, integrity, development, accountability, and communication and conflict resolution. "These are very clear, well-established values that we expect all of our leadership to follow. In my position, my job is to make sure I follow those as closely as I can. The whole point is to gain the confidence and trust and alignment across the organization because that's when you can really expect things to improve faster. That's my approach."
"Our leaders have what we call a mentoring role, and the mentor's job is to make sure that the mentee is developing his or her capabilities, is engaging in our processes to improve, in bringing forth the obstacles that need to be addressed. You can color my style as being one of a mentor. If I don’t take that approach, it will break down.
"It's all about building trust in the organization. That's a firm belief of mine. That means open and honest communication, and that means being able to take the bad news with the good news. If you're not doing that, you can't address issues that drive the company forward."
On continuous improvement: The Modine CEO has an engineering degree from Purdue University. Burke says the engineering mindset is helpful in any discussions about improvement. "For true continuous improvement, you have to be system-oriented, process-oriented, which I think engineering helps you understand -- the flow of things. It is all about flow, whether it is through the plant floor or through administrative processes. Our mentors have to be able to teach what we call our continuous improvement principles to our mentees, and it starts with me."
"It's all about leaders understanding and being able to teach, and then being able to mentor and build the capability of their team."
"Building capability" is a key refrain of Burke's, and executives are expected to build the capability of their teams. One approach is "go and see" observations, in which executives ask key questions, "not rhetorically but to really make sure there's an understanding of not only what the output is supposed to be, but how is the process is supposed to run, and what keeps the process from running that way."
