Leo Watts Brings ‘Continuous-Improvement’ Mindset

Changing a company’s culture is never easy. But taking on that challenge was the magnet that drew Leo Watts in July of 2009 to the job of warehouse operations manager at Port Wentworth.

“When I interviewed, I was told, ‘We’re going through a culture change,’” says Watts, who is one of five on a management team that’s just over six months old. “I knew the idea was to bring in managers who had a continuous-improvement mindset, managers who were passionate. I liked that the company understood it had an opportunity to be even better. I wanted to be part of that.”

A data-driven veteran of the manufacturing industry who believes there’s always room for improvement, Watts would seem to be in the right place. Having recently received a $220 million state-of-the-art renovation, the Port Wentworth refinery is perfectly positioned to add a layer of tools and processes that will further improve the safety, quality and productivity of its operations.

Watts’ work won’t only affect the way Port Wentworth operates, though. His work extends beyond his ZIP code to Imperial’s network of six warehouses. The warehouse operations manager position used to be based at Imperial’s headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas. Now, though, with Port Wentworth serving as the primary manufacturing facility for Imperial Sugar Company, the job has relocated here.
With one eye trained on local operations and another on the external network, Watts’ ultimate goal is to optimize the entire warehouse distribut

ion network.

“If I’m doing a really good job, we are minimizing our distribution cost to our customer, delivering the right product at the right time, and ensuring that the integrity of product meets or exceeds expectations,” he explains.

To achieve that goal, Watts and others on the management team have taken the lead in developing standard operating procedures for the warehouse and packing department. The team is also putting in place an operator certification process. Leo’s next step will be to create a standard warehouse balance scorecard to measure critical processes to determine where to make improvements and better engage the employees in this continuous improvement journey.

It’s an example, says Vice President George Muller, of the way this new team is “bringing in a lot of new ideas, enthusiasm, discipline, a structured approach to problem-solving and a vision for where they want to go in their areas, that supports where the plant wants to go.”

Watts brings a rich background to his current role. He spent the last 19 years of his career at Eaton, a company that manufactures electrical equipment, auto transmissions, and hydraulic power systems for fighter jets, among other things. There he served as an operations manager, supply-chain manager, distribution center plant manager, human resources manager, and service business operations manager for the US and Canada.

The bundle of experiences taught him a few critical things: People are your greatest asset. Treat people the way you’d want to be treated. The data will tell you if what you’re doing makes good business sense for stakeholders.

“I’m a very fact-based decision maker,” he explains. “I like to analyze the information and make sure that everything we do is being optimized for all four of our stakeholders — shareholders, customers, employees and the community.”

When he came to the facility, Watts noticed a lack of systematic processes and set about putting them in place. As an experienced practitioner of Six Sigma and lean management, Watts believes standard operating procedures allow an enterprise to engage in continuous change and improvement.

“Standard operating procedures will ensure reliability and consistency in the way the sugar is manufactured and produced from a quality and safety perspective. We now have written documents with pictures and instructions. Once we have metrics in place, we’ll be able to see how we’re improving.

“Just think of the potential upside,” he says. “This is a stable industry with a state-of-the-art facility. It’s an exciting time.”