LevelUp: Three Years of Promoting Peak Plant Performance

Three years after TRSA and Voluminant launched the LevelUp Supervisory Skills Training program in May 2023, nearly 200 plant leaders have completed this course. While that milestone is worth celebrating, the greater measure of LevelUp is how these graduates have applied what they learned after returning to their plants.

LevelUp was created for frontline supervisors and emerging managers, many of whom earned their positions because they were excellent operators. Those roles also require them to manage people, solve problems, plan production, communicate across departments and monitor for production issues. Those skills must be taught, practiced and reinforced.

Across 10 online modules in roughly 90 days, the LevelUp program asks participants to address real supervisory challenges. They learn to manage their time, compare planned performance with actual results, identify reasons for variances and develop practical solutions.

Their final Plant BOOST project serves as a capstone assignment by bringing those lessons together. Each participant identifies a tweak, modification or change that could help their plant, develops a plan to implement it, and evaluates the results. The benefits of four projects pursued by LevelUp students are highlighted below. They offer examples of the real-world impact of the program:

• Hand-towel folding: One participant discovered that a supplier had changed the hand towels entering the plant, while folding equipment was still running the old product codes. After tracing the problem and coordinating code changes, the supervisor reported a 110% improvement in hand-towel folding productivity.
• Flatwork productivity: Another participant addressed wet-linen reruns, wax-related downtime, overtime and inconsistent workflow. Changes included dryer conditioning, improved linen routing, line specialization and adjustments to machinery. Productivity reportedly rose from 90 to 112 pieces per operator-hour, a 24.4% gain, while bringing production back within the target shift.
• Late and mixed pieces: A third supervisor examined the roughly 50-100 late and mixed pieces disrupting workflow each day. Better labeling, loading and unloading practices, batch discipline and retraining reportedly reduced that figure to about 5-10 pieces daily, without new equipment or capital investment.
• Wash-floor workflow: Another operation was losing about 45 minutes of productive time because work flowing between departments was out of sync. The supervisor adjusted timing and reassigned existing labor, creating a steadier supply of work with fewer interruptions and improved quality.

These are not hypothetical classroom exercises. They show what supervisors can do when they have a disciplined problem-solving method, gain greater confidence and are encouraged to evaluate current practices.

In a review of four anonymized Plant BOOST projects, their potential annual economic value was estimated at roughly $156,000-$240,000, using consistent assumptions about labor time and operating days. These are modeled, annualized estimates based on participant-reported improvements, not audited savings or guarantees of similar returns.

Maximizing peak plant performance matters, but the benefits of these projects extend well beyond financial returns. Participants learn to gather evidence, collaborate with their teams and make a business case to management. Plant managers can apply these skills routinely to other issues, and thereby achieve even greater savings.

“We’ve had several individuals go through it from multiple locations in various (LevelUp) cohorts,” said Michelle McGough, director of human resources for Dempsey Uniform & Linen Supply, Jessup, PA, in a post-course interview. “We’re definitely seeing them really step up, take a better approach to the work they’re performing, and really taking ownership.”

Building on the success of LevelUp’s graduates, Voluminant is launching 10XMYPLANT.com, a 90-day performance improvement program that is the next step beyond supervisory skills and extends into other areas of the plant. Tiger teams of up to three employees are trained on the ‘X Matrix’ of 75 savings opportunities, learn from case studies of actual plant-improvement projects and – with outside guidance provided in live virtual ‘X Labs’-  implement solutions across the operation and measure financial returns.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s someone who is new to a position or has been there for years, it definitely benefited our company,” said Matt Shapiro, president of Walker Medical Linen Service, Kansas City, MO. “I would highly recommend other like-kind companies to enroll.”

Nearly 200 graduates represent an important milestone, but the stronger measure of LevelUp is what participants do differently when they return to the plant floor. Click here to learn more or to register.