Kendall Henry
Kendall Henry is the plant manager of MWV/Slatersville in Slatersville, Rhode Island. With over 16,000 employees, 125 offices, sites in 30 countries, and over $5 billion in sales, MeadWestvaco (MWV) is a leading global packaging company for the food, beverage, tobacco, beauty and personal care industries as well as for healthcare and home and garden markets around the world.
The Slatersville facility was in operation for nearly 50 years when MWV acquired it in 2011. In 2014, Kendall Henry became plant manager. Under his leadership, the facility and its highly experienced workforce are poised for a lot of growth. To prepare for it, Mr. Henry is focusing on developing small groups of local experts—self-leaders—to move the enterprise forward. He and the Slatersville improvement team are focused on cultivating a stable, accountable, and empowered workforce.
Already an avid technical reader, Mr. Henry’s search for a new way to manage and make stability and accountability part of the operational landscape brought him to David Mann’s book, “Creating a Lean Culture,” and to Galsworth’s “Work That Makes Sense/Operator-led Visuality.” Inspired by a new logic—and the previous lean experience of key managers in Slatersville and across MWV— he expanded his set of operational assumptions to include respect, standard work, visual information sharing, daily problem solving, and personal accountability. Instead of relying exclusively on technical solutions parceled out by a small handful of highly-informed experts, he widened the participation to include—everyone.
