Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Change management is the reason most manufacturing improvement projects quietly stall, even when the technical work is sound and the tools are right.
Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith unpack their own change management war stories from across two decades in industrial automation. Vlad frames change management as understanding risk to the business and to every stakeholder, then putting the process in place that lets the organization absorb that risk. Technical feasibility is the easy half of any project. Getting humans to consistently work the new way is the half that wins or loses the budget.
Vlad joined Procter & Gamble at a site rated four on P&G's Integrated Work Systems maturity scale, the highest in North America at the time. Every loss event triggered a structured root cause analysis cascade. Operator, mechanic, operations engineer, and only then the engineering department. He later moved to Kraft Heinz, which had purchased the same IWS toolkit from P&G. The tools were on the shelf. The site rating was effectively zero. He had spent his early career learning to use the tools without having to deploy them, and that gap is where most transformation programs die.
Dave's lens is more political. Change management starts with one question engineers rarely ask. What is in it for the person you are asking to change? He tells the Joe story, a lead operator with more than 35 years on the floor who interrupted a connected workforce rollout meeting to point out that his team had cycled through every methodology fad of the last two decades. None had stuck. Dave's team asked what hurt the most. Joe kept training new operators who left for a dollar an hour more down the street. The fix was QR codes on equipment linked to procedures Joe recorded once. Joe went from skeptic to evangelist in one session. Find the operator with the deepest tenure, solve their pain, and let them carry the change.
The episode is also honest about what well intentioned incentives do when they miss the mark. Vlad walks through an RCA rollout where management offered a fifty dollar gift card to whoever submitted the most reports each week. The team got a stack of paper. None of it shortened downtime. When real process change goes through a plant, throughput typically drops twenty to thirty percent for weeks or months. That cost has to be visible to leadership before the project starts.
Two practical heuristics close the episode. As a systems integrator deploying MES and SCADA across food and beverage plants, Vlad could often predict success within the first demo by how the room reacted. Continuous improvement teams leaned in. Whiteboard sites pushed back. Dave reinforces that change has to start at the top. If the executive sponsor blows off steering meetings, the floor reads that signal. Change management is a habit, not a project, and habits are built small. Pick one workflow, prove it works, and let the next one earn its slot.
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction and Automate trade show preview
1:30 Booth commitments: Siemens, Horner, and Tigoor
6:00 Dave's Automate session and 4IR booth duty
8:10 Predictions for Automate: physical AI, cobots, and the AI conversation
13:10 Defining change management in manufacturing
22:30 From P&G IWS to Kraft Heinz: tools versus deployment maturity
28:30 What is in it for the person you are asking to change
35:30 The RCA cascade at P&G compared to no process elsewhere
42:30 The fifty dollar gift card incentive that backfired
46:00 The Joe story: QR codes solving real operator pain
58:30 Reading change management success in the first meeting
1:07:00 Start small: the closing takeaway
About Your Hosts
Vladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.
Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/
Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:
Lean Six Sigma: https://www.joltek.com/blog/lean-six-sigma
7 Different Root Cause Analysis Techniques in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/7-different-root-cause-analysis-techniques-manufacturing
Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.
Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/
Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-network
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub
Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith unpack their own change management war stories from across two decades in industrial automation. Vlad frames change management as understanding risk to the business and to every stakeholder, then putting the process in place that lets the organization absorb that risk. Technical feasibility is the easy half of any project. Getting humans to consistently work the new way is the half that wins or loses the budget.
Vlad joined Procter & Gamble at a site rated four on P&G's Integrated Work Systems maturity scale, the highest in North America at the time. Every loss event triggered a structured root cause analysis cascade. Operator, mechanic, operations engineer, and only then the engineering department. He later moved to Kraft Heinz, which had purchased the same IWS toolkit from P&G. The tools were on the shelf. The site rating was effectively zero. He had spent his early career learning to use the tools without having to deploy them, and that gap is where most transformation programs die.
Dave's lens is more political. Change management starts with one question engineers rarely ask. What is in it for the person you are asking to change? He tells the Joe story, a lead operator with more than 35 years on the floor who interrupted a connected workforce rollout meeting to point out that his team had cycled through every methodology fad of the last two decades. None had stuck. Dave's team asked what hurt the most. Joe kept training new operators who left for a dollar an hour more down the street. The fix was QR codes on equipment linked to procedures Joe recorded once. Joe went from skeptic to evangelist in one session. Find the operator with the deepest tenure, solve their pain, and let them carry the change.
The episode is also honest about what well intentioned incentives do when they miss the mark. Vlad walks through an RCA rollout where management offered a fifty dollar gift card to whoever submitted the most reports each week. The team got a stack of paper. None of it shortened downtime. When real process change goes through a plant, throughput typically drops twenty to thirty percent for weeks or months. That cost has to be visible to leadership before the project starts.
Two practical heuristics close the episode. As a systems integrator deploying MES and SCADA across food and beverage plants, Vlad could often predict success within the first demo by how the room reacted. Continuous improvement teams leaned in. Whiteboard sites pushed back. Dave reinforces that change has to start at the top. If the executive sponsor blows off steering meetings, the floor reads that signal. Change management is a habit, not a project, and habits are built small. Pick one workflow, prove it works, and let the next one earn its slot.
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction and Automate trade show preview
1:30 Booth commitments: Siemens, Horner, and Tigoor
6:00 Dave's Automate session and 4IR booth duty
8:10 Predictions for Automate: physical AI, cobots, and the AI conversation
13:10 Defining change management in manufacturing
22:30 From P&G IWS to Kraft Heinz: tools versus deployment maturity
28:30 What is in it for the person you are asking to change
35:30 The RCA cascade at P&G compared to no process elsewhere
42:30 The fifty dollar gift card incentive that backfired
46:00 The Joe story: QR codes solving real operator pain
58:30 Reading change management success in the first meeting
1:07:00 Start small: the closing takeaway
About Your Hosts
Vladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.
Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/
Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:
Lean Six Sigma: https://www.joltek.com/blog/lean-six-sigma
7 Different Root Cause Analysis Techniques in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/7-different-root-cause-analysis-techniques-manufacturing
Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.
Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/
Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-network
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub
Creators and Guests
What is Manufacturing Hub?
We bring you manufacturing news, insights, discuss opportunities, and cutting edge technologies. Our goal is to inform, educate, and inspire leaders and workers in manufacturing, automation, and related fields.