IndustryWeek Best Plants Awards Winners: Lessons in Operational Excellence

Representatives of Raymond Corp, Sandvik Coromant, Intertape Polymer Group and Toyota Material Handling discuss how they achieve and maintain operational excellence in manufacturing.

Robert Schoenberger

Oct. 21, 2024

While consultants and suppliers can offer all sorts of suggestions on how to improve manufacturing operations, some of the best advice typically comes from people in the field, doing the work. That's why IndustryWeek has for decades awarded companies with IW Best Plants recognition -- it's as much about offering lessons from the best as it is recongizing operational excellence.

At the IW Operations Leadership Summit in Indianapolis in June, four recent winners of that award gathered to discuss how their plants achieved excellence, how they're maintaining it and how they're hoping to set quality, efficiency and innovation standards in the future.

Speaking at this panel discussion were:

Jill Jusko, Executive Editor of IndustryWeek and the edtor in charge of managing the annual awards program
Tom Lego, Brand Ambassador of Toyota Material Handling, 2011 winner of the award
Aaron Christ, Director of Operations at Intertape Polymer Group (IPG), a 2023 winner
Tony Topencik, VP of Operations, Quality & EHS at 2022 Best Plants winner Raymond Corporation
Ben Johnson, Production Manager at Sandvik Coromant, also a 2022 winner

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.