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Operations

Podcast: Entering Contests for Benchmarking, Employee Engagement

Feb. 12, 2024

This audio version of the Feb. 8 episode of our Production Pulse livestream series offers insights into how companies can use contests to see how they measure up against the competition.

Robert Schoenberger,

Jill Jusko

Awards season is here with applications open for the IndustryWeek Best Plants Award, our annual recognition of manufacturing excelllence as measured by a stringent set of performance metrics. And while bragging rights for the winners are great, awards can also improve operations.

In this audio version of the Feb. 8, 2024, episode of our bi-weekly livestream Production Pulse, we talked to:

Rick Bohan, principal and CEO of Chagrin River Consulting, a frequent IW Best Plants Award judge, and the author of a recent story about the benefits of entering these sorts of contests.
Brandon Davis, vice president of Components at Dexter Axle Corp., a Northeast Indiana company that produces parts for trailers and RVs. Davis was a 2022 winner when he was plant manager at NOV Texas Oil Tools, and he co-wrote a piece about what you can learn from entering contests with Rick Bohan.
Jill Jusko, IndustryWeek's executive editor and director of the IW Best Plants Program.

About the Author

Robert Schoenberger

Editor-in-Chief

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robert-schoenberger-4326b810

Bio: Robert Schoenberger has been writing about manufacturing technology in one form or another since the late 1990s. He began his career in newspapers in South Texas and has worked for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland where he spent more than six years as the automotive reporter. In 2014, he launched Today's Motor Vehicles (now EV Manufacturing & Design), a magazine focusing on design and manufacturing topics within the automotive and commercial truck worlds. He joined IndustryWeek in late 2021.

About the Author

Jill Jusko

Bio: Jill Jusko is executive editor for IndustryWeek. She has been writing about manufacturing operations leadership for more than 20 years. Her coverage spotlights companies that are in pursuit of world-class results in quality, productivity, cost and other benchmarks by implementing the latest continuous improvement and lean/Six-Sigma strategies. Jill also coordinates IndustryWeek’s Best Plants Awards Program, which annually salutes the leading manufacturing facilities in North America.