The new era of excellence: connecting people, process, and purpose
In American manufacturing, one truth has become impossible to ignore: the future of operational excellence is changing shape.
The old model, where improvement meant squeezing out seconds or cutting cost points, is giving way to something deeper. In 2025, operational excellence is about connecting people, process, and purpose to build resilient, intelligent, and human-centered operations.
That was the defining theme of the AME St. Louis 2025 conference, where hundreds of industry leaders, from aerospace and pharma to advanced industrials, gathered to share what’s working (and what’s not) on their continuous improvement journeys.
Across sessions by Conax Technologies, Duke Manufacturing, Minerals Technologies, Kaas Tailored, and Salem Metal, a new blueprint emerged:
Operational excellence is no longer just a system — it’s a culture that learns, adapts, and scales.
Here are the seven lessons that stood out.
1. Operations have laws — and great leaders understand them
Bill Fierle, COO of Conax Technologies, and Ed Pound from the Operations Science Institute reminded the audience of a simple, sobering fact: most organizations still run on intuition, not science.
Their talk introduced Operations Science, a discipline that defines the physical and mathematical relationships between variability, capacity, and flow.
They demonstrated how chasing “100% utilization,” a common management reflex, actually drives cycle time through the roof and amplifies bottlenecks.
“High utilization drastically increases cycle time. Variability magnifies it.”
By quantifying how flow actually behaves, leaders can make smarter trade-offs — balancing demand, resources, and throughput instead of reacting to every fire.
The takeaway: The future of operational excellence isn’t a slogan; it’s a physics problem.
The companies winning in the next decade will be the ones that master the science behind their systems.
2. Culture is the new operating system
If Conax gave the math, Duke Manufacturing gave the heart.
In their session Celebrating People, Strengthening Culture, Diann Gordon and John Wennemann shared how Duke has built engagement not through grand programs but through simple, consistent human gestures.
Monthly recognition meetings. Personal spotlights. Celebrating milestones. Creating spaces for people to talk about their work and their lives, even how they use AI to simplify their jobs.
The result? Employee engagement at Duke has reached its all-time high, with trust and participation growing year after year.
“Recognition is fuel. It doesn’t have to be flashy to be powerful.”
Their approach makes something clear: in an era of automation and turnover, connection is the true productivity multiplier.
The takeaway: Lean tools sustain improvement, but culture sustains people. And people sustain performance.
3. Design smarter, earlier: the 2P revolution
Alex Brown’s session, From Chaos to Clarity: Simplifying the 2P Process, felt like a wake-up call for every team that’s ever had to fix a broken launch.
The 2P (Process Preparation) method gives teams a way to design processes before building them to think through flow, ergonomics, and risk while ideas are still flexible.
Brown described how his teams sketch, tape, and simulate workflows on the floor — testing “seven ways” of doing the same job before choosing the best one.
“It’s cheaper to move tape than to move machines.”
When operators, engineers, and managers co-create the process, buy-in skyrockets, and rework plummets.
The takeaway: Excellence starts before production.
Design collaboration into your process, not just into your products.
4. Learning to see — and to think scientifically
Brian Tapajna from HII – Newport News Shipbuilding delivered a session that was part workshop, part mindset shift.
In Learning to See: Lean in 10 Pictures, he used vivid visuals to retrain participants to see waste — the unnecessary motion, excess inventory, and hidden friction that silently erode value.
Tapajna grounded every image in Lean fundamentals: 5S, ergonomics, flow, pull, and respect for people. But his message went beyond tools.
He challenged leaders to build a culture of curiosity and problem-solving, where every improvement follows the scientific method.
“Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher.”
The takeaway: Awareness comes before improvement. Once teams learn to see clearly, performance follows naturally.
5. Building an enterprise that never stops improving
Doug Dietrich, CEO of Minerals Technologies, offered a rare look at what it takes to make Lean an enterprise-wide system, not a departmental initiative.
MTI’s “Operational Excellence Architecture” is both decentralized and unified: every business unit, from finance to R&D, owns its own improvement agenda, while leadership ensures alignment through shared practices like Hoshin Kanri, standard work, and visual management.
Since 2008, the company has seen double-digit productivity growth, dramatic safety gains, and a cultural shift toward problem ownership at every level.
“Excellence isn’t a project. It’s an architecture.”
The takeaway: Sustainable improvement happens when every team owns it.
Centralized programs might spark change, but distributed leadership sustains it. That’s the future of operational execllence at scale.
6. Culture first. Lean tools second.
Thomas Lacey and Jason Vining from Salem Metal brought brutal honesty to the stage.
Their first Lean transformation? It failed despite the right tools and training.
The reason: the culture wasn’t ready. There was no shared trust, no consistent leadership behavior, and too little empathy for the human side of change.
So they started over.
They defined nine core behavioral standards — respect, compassion, active listening, and shared accountability — and made those the foundation of their new system.
The shift was transformative: performance climbed, retention improved, and engagement soared.
“What’s tolerated is enabled. Leadership sets the floor and the ceiling for every behavior in the organization.”
The takeaway: Tools can guide change. But culture makes it last.
7. Change that sticks is change that feels safe
The closing keynote by Tucker Kaas (Kaas Tailored) struck a chord across the conference hall.
In Change Without the Chaos, Kaas described the emotional reality of transformation: too many leaders still launch new systems as mandates, not movements.
His advice? Slow down. Build psychological safety first.
Create environments where teams can test new ideas without fear, where change feels like learning, not loss.
“If your team’s first reaction to change is fight or flight, it’s not a process problem. It’s a trust problem.”
Kaas’s talk was a perfect conclusion to a week centered on the human side of excellence, and a vision for the future of operational excellence built on empathy and trust.
Because at the end of the day, even the best systems are powered by people.
The takeaway: Change management isn’t about speed. It’s about safety. When people feel secure, they move faster, together.
The new blueprint for U.S. manufacturing
Across every session at AME St. Louis 2025, one message was clear: the future of operational excellence depends on visibility. Visibility into flow, into culture, and into performance.
That’s where fabriq fits in.
Our platform helps manufacturers see their operations in real time, not just to measure what’s happening, but to empower teams to act on it.
We make performance visible across shifts, plants, and business units, creating the shared clarity that drives improvement forward.
With fabriq, manufacturers can:
- Reduce cycle time and variability with real-time insights
- Build engagement through transparent performance data
- Empower teams to solve problems faster, together
- Connect people, process, and results — in one shared system
Operational excellence is no longer about chasing perfection.
It’s about building systems and cultures that get better every day.
🚀 Ready to See Operational Excellence in action?
The best manufacturers aren’t waiting for change; they’re building it.
Join the growing community of leaders using fabriq to connect their people, processes, and performance.