What it means to ‘think like an owner’ during a Clif Bar renovation

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What it means to ‘think like an owner’ during a Clif Bar renovation

30 Jan 2021

Joanie Spencer

Since 2008, Joanie Spencer has covered the retail and wholesale sides of the baking industry.
Serving associations such as the American Society of Baking (ASB) and BEMA, Joanie is also in demand as an industry presenter on bakery operations and trends. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Rockhurst University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

When she’s not running or playing soccer, Joanie spends her time with her husband and 11-year-old son.

INDIANAPOLIS — In the manufacturing world, the culture at Clif Bar & Company has a notable reputation, starting with the company’s Five Aspirations: sustaining people, planet, community, brands and business.

At Clif Bar Baking Company of Indianapolis, fostering an ownership mentality is a high priority for Dave Tintelnot, the facility’s general manager. From a corporate perspective, the company offers benefits such as Clif Employee Stock Ownership Program available to all employees, in the office and on the plant floor.

In the manufacturing setting, Tintelnot encourages employees to think like an owner with programs such as continuous improvement suggestion initiatives that have yielded big savings for the bakery.

“We ask employees for suggestions on improvements, and they’re bringing ideas right off the floor,” he said. The plant’s CI suggestion program has inspired improvements that have garnered cost savings of anywhere from $5,000 to several hundred thousand dollars.

“We ask employees for suggestions on improvements, and they’re bringing ideas right off the floor.”

The Indianapolis bakery also instilled the ownership mentality by training workers to understand the financial implications of loss by empirically showing them the results from variations.

“We’ve taken Play Dough and cookie cutters to show the impact of weight variations and run ingredients through PVC pipes to demonstrate yield loss,” Tintelnot said.

Every year, the Indianapolis plant gives awards to the Top 10 Smart Champions for the most effective continuous improvement suggestions.

Supporting workers’ ownership mentality is only the beginning. The truth is that this philosophy only works when management takes mindset in the other direction too.

“The way I see it, the operators are the experts,” Tintelnot said. “The shop floor is their house We encourage them to tell us how things are going or if they think something’s wrong on the line.”

On the flip-side, Tintelnot noted that there have been times where leadership had to take ownership of mistakes as well because providing workers ownership doesn’t mean leaving them to fend for themselves completely.

“We’re all owners, “Tintelnot said. “We want to connect with people and show them that they matter; their safety matters and their voice matters, and we want their input on the process. We’re all owners here, and it’s about fostering that mentality that we all have a voice in this.”

The ownership mentality is what led the Indianapolis operation to shatter its production records in the midst of a total building overhaul in 2019, improving its year-over-year record by 5%. Learn more about Project Reveal at the Indianapolis facility in the inaugural issue of Commercial Baking.

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