West Liberty Foods wins Manufacturing Leadership Award

West Liberty Foods, one of the largest turkey processors in the US, has won a Manufacturing Leadership Award in Enterprise Technology Leadership from the Frost & Sullivan Manufacturing Leadership Council.

As the technology that powers West Liberty Food’s lean manufacturing system, Leading2Lean was also recognized for its significant role in enabling the food processor’s award-winning project.

The Manufacturing Leadership Awards recognizes organizations and individuals that are building the future of national manufacturing.

West Liberty Foods exemplifies the Manufacturing 4.0 transformation through its implementation of Leading2Lean, a cloud-based system providing critical real-time information to help rank-and-file workers do their jobs better and take ownership of their work.

Since employing Leading2Lean, West Liberty Foods saved $2 million in maintenance costs by improving operations at its plants and achieved 89 percent utilization of its maintenance workforce. It also improved operational availability in at least one of the plants to 96 percent—an increase of nearly 10 percent.

With Leading2Lean, along with other corporate training, maintenance employee turnover at the Mount Pleasant plant of West Liberty Foods, specifically, has been reduced by 50 percent.

“West Liberty Foods now has real-time visibility into our operations to quickly diagnose the root cause of inefficiencies,” said Chad Williams, corporate maintenance manager at West Liberty Foods. “In large part thanks to our working closely with Leading2Lean, we’ve saved money, improved our processes and increased production.”

“We are honored to be part of West Liberty Foods’ transformation in lean manufacturing,” said Keith Barr, president and CEO of Leading2Lean. “As exemplified by what they’ve recently accomplished to win this award, we’re proud to be working with West Liberty Foods and other manufacturers in helping them break out of the old ways of doing things and getting a real-time view into how they can improve their processes.”

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Debra Schug was Editor-in-Chief of Food Engineering. She began her media career over a decade ago writing and producing broadcast news for both television and radio at the local and national level. She spent many years as the managing editor for two trade magazines in the oil industry and the research editor for an annual petroleum report. She has a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University.