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

Trevor Blondeel
  • 5.0 (127)
  • 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

    Why Nobody Pulls the Cord with Dr. Michael Gillespie │ Leadership Decision Making │ Ep. 189

    When was the last time somebody stopped your line and you thanked them for it? Toyota built the andon cord into the line decades ago and most plants still treat pulling it as a failure. Dr. Michael Gillespie, organizational psychologist at the University of South Florida and co-author of Distancing with David Marquet, studies why the person closest to a problem is often the least able to see it. Being locked inside your own point of view is the default setting, not an occasional lapse, which is how five people can walk up to one stopped line and each honestly see a different problem. Nobody is lying. Everybody is immersed. Mike walks Trevor through the three moves that create distance, be someone else, be somewhere else, be sometime else, and shares the research on why higher performing hospital units report more errors rather than fewer. Trevor brings the plant floor version, including the moment he admits he spent years defending his own department instead of the whole line, and applies temporal distancing live to a month-end budget decision every operations leader will recognize. Ends with one exercise you can try tonight, and it sounds cheesy until you read the research behind it. A practical conversation about decision making, critical thinking, and manufacturing team leadership for plant managers, operations directors, and frontline supervisors. 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Why Nobody Pulls the Cord with Dr. Michael Gillespie │ Leadership Decision Making │ Ep. 189

  2. Aug 12

    Nobody Inspects the Culture │ Safety Culture │ Ep. 188

    You inspect for hazards every single day. When did anybody last inspect the culture? In new research across the United States and Canada, a toxic or unhealthy work culture ranked above unsafe or hazardous working conditions as a reason people would leave a new manufacturing job inside the first three months. Forty-seven percent against forty-three. Most leaders hear that and file it under the soft stuff. Trevor takes a different position. Four points apart is not two problems, it is one. Culture is a safety system. A plant where people do not speak up is a plant where near misses go unreported, and an unreported near miss is an incident waiting for its turn. He walks the mechanism one link at a time, from the grinding shield nobody wants to cross the plant to get, to the fork truck rolling a stop sign on midnights when nobody is watching. Then four questions to take back to your plant, starting with the one most leaders never think to ask: what does your near-miss reporting rate look like next to your incident rate? Also inside, why the most experienced workers are the most certain that culture is the dealbreaker, and a confession from fifteen years as a materials manager about what really gets communicated when the truck is late. A practical look at safety culture and manufacturing team leadership for plant managers, operations leaders, and frontline supervisors. 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Nobody Inspects the Culture │ Safety Culture │ Ep. 188

  3. Aug 5

    Your Best Worker Is Already Halfway Out the Door with Darcy Eikenberg │ Employee Retention │ Ep. 187

    Your best people rarely quit in a dramatic moment. They leave a little at a time, and by the time they give notice the decision was made weeks ago. Gallup ties about 75% of voluntary turnover to the manager, and our own national research found that 35% of workers open to manufacturing have never had a single one-on-one development conversation with their manager. You can't keep people you never really talk to. Darcy Eikenberg, executive coach and author of Red Cape Rescue: Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job, joins Trevor to turn the retention problem around: instead of replacing the people who leave, how do you help a good employee rescue the job they already have? A practical look at employee retention and manufacturing team leadership for plant managers, operations leaders, and frontline supervisors tired of watching good people walk out the door. 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Your Best Worker Is Already Halfway Out the Door with Darcy Eikenberg │ Employee Retention │ Ep. 187

  4. Jul 29

    Why Your Best Technician Fails as a Supervisor | New Leader Onboarding | Ep. 186

    Why do six in ten of your people feel unheard at work? Trevor goes one level up from the first-week mentor: the new leader nobody onboards. He unpacks why a badge and a shift turn your best technician into a command-and-control boss, what the study of 1,250 manufacturing workers with Crossover Solutions and The Center for Generational Kinetics says people actually want from a leader, and what to build into a new supervisor's first 30 days so the concerns keep coming. 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Why Your Best Technician Fails as a Supervisor | New Leader Onboarding | Ep. 186

  5. Jul 22

    Why Your Plant Manager Can't Solve Complex Problems | Time Management for Manufacturing Leaders | Ep. 185

    What if the only machine in your plant with no maintenance plan is you? Trevor sits down with productivity expert Marcey Rader, author of Reclaim Your Workday, to bring health-powered productivity to the shop floor: the red headphones rule that protects deep focus without an office door, why burnout comes from lack of recharge rather than workload, the burn-it-down audit nobody runs on the supervisor's role, and the rule of three that separates relentless prioritization from endless optimization in manufacturing team leadership. Connect with Marcey: Website 👉 helloraderco.com Book 👉 reclaimyourworkday.com 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Why Your Plant Manager Can't Solve Complex Problems | Time Management for Manufacturing Leaders | Ep. 185

  6. Jul 15

    The Week-One Blind Spot Costing You New Hires | New Hire Onboarding | Ep. 184

    What if your newest hire decides whether to stay in their very first week? Trevor opens a new solo series built on a national study of 1,250 manufacturing workers, run with Crossover Solutions and The Center for Generational Kinetics. The frontline wants a first-week mentor far more than the leaders who sign off on one, and that blind spot is feeding turnover. He names the Expectation Gap and shares the near-zero-cost move in manufacturing team leadership that closes it before your next hire walks in the door. 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    The Week-One Blind Spot Costing You New Hires | New Hire Onboarding | Ep. 184

  7. Jul 8

    A Reporter Calls Me Every Week Asking Who's Laying Off with Jason Bates │ Manufacturing Community │ Ep. 183

    A reporter calls Jason Bates every week looking for the big layoff story. The five-hundred-people-let-go story. Jason keeps telling him the truth: layoffs are happening, in small numbers. So is hiring. But the catastrophe the headlines want isn't what he sees across hundreds of Ontario plants every day. Trevor sits down with Jason, Manufacturing Consortium Manager at EMC, Canada's largest manufacturing consortium, to unpack what's really going on, the plants that are quietly adjusting and diversifying, and the peer community most owners haven't tapped into. Growth doesn't sell papers. Manufacturing team leadership doesn't happen inside your four walls. The vast majority of plants are doing just fine. Most owners don't know that. Connect with Jason: LinkedIn👉 https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jasonbates3 Website 👉 emccanada.org 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    A Reporter Calls Me Every Week Asking Who's Laying Off with Jason Bates │ Manufacturing Community │ Ep. 183

  8. Jul 1

    Every Time You Say Yes, You're Saying No to Something │ Manufacturing Team Leadership │ Ep. 182

    When's the last time you said yes when everything in you wanted to say no? Every yes is a no to something else, usually the work that mattered more, and we end up drowning in our own yeses. Trevor breaks down the hidden math of saying yes, why productive beats busy, and how to say no without burning the relationship, even when it's your boss asking. You don't refuse, you reframe: I want to help, here's what I'd have to move, which option works best. It comes down to capacity and priorities, the heart of manufacturing team leadership. 🎁 Free: 10 great questions to ask your leadership and drive engagement → manufacturinggreatness.com/subscribe and get bonus content in our newsletter! Connect with Trevor:  LinkedIn 👉 linkedin.com/in/trevorblondeel  Website 👉 manufacturinggreatness.com

    Every Time You Say Yes, You're Saying No to Something │ Manufacturing Team Leadership │ Ep. 182
See All (189)

5
out of 5
127 Ratings

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.

Information