Manufacturing Greatness | Productivity | Retention | Profits | Continuous Improvement | Safety | Workforce Development | Labo

Trevor Blondeel
  • 5.0 (128)
  • Management
  • Updated Biweekly

Whether you're a plant manager, operations manager, or frontline supervisor, you'll discover practical strategies for lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, and operational excellence. We cover critical topics like workforce development, employee retention, safety culture, and change management—helping you navigate challenges like labor shortages, skills gaps, and the evolving manufacturing landscape including Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing. Trevor Blondeel invites guests from the manufacturing industry (and beyond!) to have candid discussions about leadership and share stories from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. You'll find new ways to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have acheiving greater retention, productivity, and profits.

  1. 1d ago

    The Book Cover I Loved Wasn't the One My Readers Needed | Change Management | Ep. 198

    After four months of work with his publisher's design team, Trevor had two book covers and a favorite. Then he asked the people the book is for. More than 60 people voted, and two out of three picked the cover he liked less. The split told the story. Newsletter readers and people who work in manufacturing chose the orderly cover, with puzzle pieces holding the title together. Marketers, speakers and authors chose the bold one. What does that mean for change management in your plant? Trevor's answer: the change you love can still miss if the people it's for see it differently. He shares what an author coach taught him, "A book is not about someone. A book is for someone," why a supervisor once told him "bring me along for the ride," and what the Minnesota Vikings' patience with Dallas Turner says about developing people. Manufacturing Greatness releases May 11, 2027. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    The Book Cover I Loved Wasn't the One My Readers Needed | Change Management | Ep. 198

  2. Oct 14

    Why Perception Isn't Reality with Shawn Herbig | Plant Leadership | Ep. 197

    As a young engineer on the Ford Explorer line, Shawn Herbig chased a strange complaint. Drivers said their radios were changing stations on their own. Dealers swapped the units, and every one passed the bench test. The cause: in cold-weather states, drivers wearing thick winter gloves were hitting two of the small buttons at once. Nothing was wrong with the radio, and to the customer, it was still broken. That moment started a career. Shawn founded IQS Research more than 25 years ago and his team runs the Kentucky Association of Manufacturers Wage and Workforce Study. He and Trevor get into why perception isn't reality but still changes behavior, what people outside manufacturing get wrong about what's behind the door, and why child care is underreported in workforce data. What does it mean to be a good consumer of data? Shawn's answer: confirming data deserves the same scrutiny as contradicting data. You never run a study to confirm a hypothesis. You run it to test one. For plant leadership and manufacturing workforce development, that's curiosity applied to the numbers. Shawn and Trevor share the stage at the Kentucky Industry Conference this week. IQS Research 👉 iqsresearch.com Bluegrass Bitters 👉 bluegrassbitters.net Frequency Matters, by Kristin Mackey and Shawn Herbig 👉 amazon.com/dp/1504332938 Shawn on LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/shawnherbig Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Why Perception Isn't Reality with Shawn Herbig | Plant Leadership | Ep. 197

  3. Oct 7

    Nobody Quits Over Onboarding | Manufacturing Employee Retention | Ep. 196

    An HR professional in manufacturing told Trevor her onboarding program is strong for ninety days, and then it starts to dip. Her instinct was to extend it. The research says something else. Once somebody is past three months, lack of onboarding is the last reason they leave. Toxic culture, unsafe conditions and feeling disrespected are at the top of that list. And on the stay side, job stability and competitive pay are almost tied, with a cluster right behind them worth nearly a third of first place answers: feeling valued by your manager, a positive team culture, and clarity of expectations. Not one of them is an SOP. Trevor walks through what changes on day ninety-one, why pay climbs in importance with age while stability stays flat across every generation, and why the youngest workers rank being heard above being paid. Onboarding has an end date. The conversations do not. Based on national research with The Center for Generational Kinetics and Crossover Solutions, 1,250 U.S. and Canadian adults open to working in manufacturing. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter!

    Nobody Quits Over Onboarding | Manufacturing Employee Retention | Ep. 196

  4. Sep 30

    Your Best People Are Burning Out on Work They're Good At | Frontline Leadership with Greg Harrod Ep. 195

    Greg Harrod noticed something strange partway through a career leading cross-functional teams in manufacturing. He was getting more and more of the work he was best at, and enjoying it less and less. That is not a workload problem. It is a sorting problem. We hand out work based on two things. Is this person good at it, and are they available. We almost never ask whether the work gives them energy or takes it away. So the most dependable person on the floor gets handed more of what they are dependable at, and nobody notices what it costs until they quit. Greg is a business coach, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and he spent more than thirty years in manufacturing, including Johnson Controls and Caterpillar. He grew up in his family's welding shop. He and Trevor get into why the blue-collar instinct to just get it done eventually turns on you, what a design review taught him about who is actually in the room, and the simplest question a leader can ask on a Monday. His line to sit with: that is okay until it isn't. The Six Types of Working Genius is Patrick Lencioni's model, available through The Table Group at workinggenius.com. Take Greg's free Leadership Clarity Scorecard at leadershipclarityscorecard.com. Find him at GregHarrod.com and on LinkedIn. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Your Best People Are Burning Out on Work They're Good At | Frontline Leadership with Greg Harrod Ep. 195

  5. Sep 23

    Your Veterans Want Clarity More Than Your New Hires Do | Frontline Leadership | Ep. 194

    Walk into most plants and you'll hear the same thing. The new, younger people need everything spelled out. The veterans just go do it. New research says that's backwards. Seventy-six percent of Gen Z expect clear expectations of their performance and responsibilities. Among Boomers it's 98 percent, and it climbs through every generation in between. The longer someone has worked, the more certain they are that clarity is the leader's job. Trevor's take is that the quieter half of that finding is the one to worry about. The veteran who isn't clear will push back and ask. The new person often won't, because they don't know yet what to ask. The absence of questions doesn't equal clarity. He also tells the story of a three o'clock meeting invite from his boss that threw off his whole day, and what a clear invite looks like instead. Source: national research study by Crossover Solutions and The Center for Generational Kinetics, 1,250 U.S. and Canadian adults willing to work in manufacturing. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Your Veterans Want Clarity More Than Your New Hires Do | Frontline Leadership | Ep. 194

  6. Sep 16

    Silence Is Not Agreement | Psychological Safety and Manufacturing Team Leadership with Dr. Sunita Sah | Ep. 193

    Dr. Sunita Sah asked nurses in a large hospital what stopped them from speaking up about medical errors. They gave her two answers. They were afraid of the repercussions, and they had learned that speaking up changed nothing. Then she asked their managers the same question. The managers did not name fear or effectiveness. They said the nurses were not taking responsibility, and did not have the skill set. Same floor, two completely different stories. That gap is why near misses go unreported in your plant. Sunita is a physician turned organizational psychologist, a professor at Cornell, and the author of Defy, a USA Today national bestseller. She joins Trevor to talk about insinuation anxiety, the reason we go quiet because speaking up would imply someone else is wrong, and about the piece almost every plant skips. We train for safety and we never practice the conversation. As she puts it, under duress you do not rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your practice. Trevor tells the story of a termination he carried out because he did not say no, and it is still the worst one of his career. Her line to sit with: compliance might be our default, but it is not our destiny. Defy is available in hardcover as Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes and in paperback as Defy: How to Speak Up When It Matters. Find Sunita at sunitasah.com. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Silence Is Not Agreement | Psychological Safety and Manufacturing Team Leadership with Dr. Sunita Sah | Ep. 193

  7. Sep 9

    It Was Due Thursday and It's Still Sitting There | Manufacturing Accountability | Ep. 192

    You walk in Friday morning and the material is still sitting in quarantine. It was supposed to be relabeled and moved out Thursday, and you need that space today because corporate is walking the floor tomorrow. What happens in the next ten seconds decides the whole conversation. Trevor takes one real scenario from a manufacturing leader he was working with and runs it through all three gaps. How you show up, because how people feel determines how much they can engage with you. Whether Thursday was ever an agreement or just a date somebody said out loud. And what a real accountability conversation sounds like, which starts with what got in the way rather than why it wasn't done. The question to steal: if this had been done, what would have been different yesterday? It will not move the material any faster. But there is going to be another Friday morning. Also in this one, a short update on the book, out May 11, 2027. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    It Was Due Thursday and It's Still Sitting There | Manufacturing Accountability | Ep. 192

  8. Sep 2

    Be Curious Rather Than Furious | Manufacturing Team Leadership and Culture with Karin Lindner | Ep. 191

    Karin Lindner has spent fourteen years trying to make manufacturing attractive to the people who work in it, and she says it is still not there. Her new book, Making Manufacturing Sexy, argues that most manufacturing leaders are not leading. They are surviving, stuck in a system that rewards firefighting. Karin and Trevor both worked at Magna. In this conversation they get into what actually changes a plant, and it is not the equipment. Karin shares the coaching tagline she uses with every client, be curious rather than furious, and the story of a general manager who described himself as passionate when what he meant was that he lost control under pressure. Trevor tells the story of the whiteboard he once wrote on, and the shop floor leader whose feedback stopped him cold. They walk through the five non-negotiable shifts from the book, starting with the way you open your very next production meeting, and finishing with the one every leader avoids: stop tolerating what hurts performance. Karin's line to sit with: we judge ourselves by our intentions and we judge others by their actions. Making Manufacturing Sexy by Karin Lindner is available now. Find Karin on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/karinlindner and at karicosolutions.com. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe at manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Be Curious Rather Than Furious | Manufacturing Team Leadership and Culture with Karin Lindner | Ep. 191
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5
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About

Whether you're a plant manager, operations manager, or frontline supervisor, you'll discover practical strategies for lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, and operational excellence. We cover critical topics like workforce development, employee retention, safety culture, and change management—helping you navigate challenges like labor shortages, skills gaps, and the evolving manufacturing landscape including Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing. Trevor Blondeel invites guests from the manufacturing industry (and beyond!) to have candid discussions about leadership and share stories from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. You'll find new ways to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have acheiving greater retention, productivity, and profits.

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