Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc. is the quintessential “great American manufacturer.” While other organizations were sending production overseas to take advantage of low-cost labor, the St. Louis-based maker of packaging, corrugating, and paper converting equipment kept all of its manufacturing in the United States and has grown 20% per year for the past 20 years.
Even in 2009, the worst recession since the Great Depression, Barry-Wehmiller didn’t crumble under the pressure. The company completed three acquisitions last year, although revenue dipped ever so slightly, to just under $1 billion from $1.2 billion in 2008.
“But we are already showing signs of recovery,” says Craig Hergenroether, the company’s chief information officer.
Much of Barry-Wehmiller’s ability to thrive, even amid a recession, is directly related to lean initiatives, Hergenroether says, but not lean in the literal sense of merely eliminating waste. Following that rule too closely weakens the fundamental principles of what lean strategies are meant to do: create efficiencies and value in the organization through a coordinated effort of people, processes, and technology. Starting with a mandate to simply remove waste from the organization is the wrong value proposition, he believes.