Welcome to the Industrial Executive!
I’m super glad you’re here.
Let’s get to it!
🚨 In the News
GSK just dropped $30 billion on U.S. operations over the next five years.
They're doubling down on drug production, discovery research, and clinical trials stateside while the U.K. makes it harder to do business with reimbursement fights and government penalties.
Smart move. When your home country starts penalizing your industry, you invest where the money is. The U.S. is GSK's biggest market, and they're not stupid enough to let politics hurt their bottom line.
For manufacturing leaders watching this: Notice how GSK didn't announce a "digital transformation initiative" or promise to "revolutionize pharma." They're putting $30B into concrete assets that make products and generate cash flow.
That's how you actually grow a business. Build stuff. Make things. Sell them where people will pay.
When regulatory headwinds hit your core operations, you have two choices - fight the system or move your investments somewhere more business-friendly. GSK chose option two.
🦾Tactical Tip: Stop Measuring Everything Except What Actually Matters
Here's the real deal...
Most manufacturing leaders I talk to are obsessed with OEE metrics and downtime minutes.
They'll spend hours in meetings dissecting why Line 3 was down for 47 minutes last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, their plant managers are putting in 70-hour weeks and burning out faster than a bad bearing.
I just wrapped up a consultation with a VP of Operations who was proud his team "worked around the clock" to hit their monthly numbers.
Great.
Now tell me about your employee turnover rate.
The Hidden Cost of Hero Culture
We've built an industry that celebrates the weekend warrior mentality.
The plant manager who comes in on Saturday to fix what broke on Friday gets the hero treatment. The operations director who answers emails at 11 PM gets labeled "dedicated."
But here's what nobody talks about: these same heroes are making critical decisions while running on four hours of sleep and too much coffee.
They're approving capital expenditures when they should be approving their own time off.
I've seen this movie before. The "indispensable" plant manager who knows every quirk of every machine eventually hits a wall. When they burn out or move on, they take all that institutional knowledge with them. Suddenly, that 98% OEE drops to 85% because nobody else knows why you have to hit the reset button twice on Line 4.
What High-Performing Operations Actually Look Like
Here's what I've learned from 15 years in manufacturing operations: The plants that consistently outperform aren't the ones where everyone's working themselves to death.
They're the ones where leaders have figured out how to eliminate the noise.
Three things high-performing operations leaders do differently:
They ruthlessly prioritize. Not everything is urgent, despite what your inbox says. The best operations leaders I know have a simple rule: if it's not directly impacting safety, quality, or delivery, it waits until Monday. They've trained their teams to distinguish between genuine emergencies and manufactured urgency.
They build systems that work without them. If you're the bottleneck, you're the problem. These leaders document processes, cross-train operators, and create decision-making frameworks that don't require their constant input. They ask themselves: "If I was unreachable for 48 hours, would my plant still run smoothly?"
They protect their team's time like they protect their safety budgets. Both are finite resources. They say no to the vendor lunch that could be an email. They push back on corporate initiatives that don't align with operational priorities. They understand that every meeting is an investment decision.
The Real ROI of Sustainable Operations
Your equipment efficiency matters. Your team's mental efficiency matters more.
The best plant managers I know work 50 focused hours, not 70 scattered ones. They go home at reasonable times. They take vacations without their laptops.
And their plants run better because of it.
Why? Because sustainable leaders make better decisions. They see patterns instead of just problems. They invest in preventive maintenance instead of constantly fighting fires. They build cultures where problems get surfaced early, not hidden until they explode.
The Bottom Line
If you can't run your operation without being there 24/7, you haven't built an operation. You've built a dependency.
The question isn't whether you can grind through another 70-hour week. The question is whether you're building something that can thrive without the grind.
Start measuring the metrics that actually matter: employee retention, knowledge transfer effectiveness, and decision-making speed. These are the leading indicators of operational excellence.
Your OEE will follow.
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And that’s all folks!
Till next week,
The Industrial Executive