Baking & Snack - December 2017 - 24

OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR

After the sale, the company moved Mr. Holland into
commercialization as senior director. "My job was to
oversee project management," he said. "If there was a new
product, if we were changing packaging on anything - if
it had to do with innovation or renovation or the projects
associated with that - my team and I would shepherd
those projects to get them through the system on time."
After a few years, through the guidance of Otis
Thaxton, vice-president of operations at the time
and one of Mr. Holland's most memorable mentors,
ConAgra named Mr. Holland senior director of manufacturing, the position he has held through the 2016 sale
to TreeHouse Foods and still holds today.
Some might say that the short period of ConAgra
ownership was simply the bridge that guided Ralcorp
to TreeHouse ... or perhaps it was just a blip on Mr.
Holland's zig-zagged career path. "Like I said, my career has been about being in the wrong place at the right
time. It all just kind of falls in line."
In two decades, three iterations of ownership and 18
acquisitions, Mr. Holland has seen it all. He became the
guy you send into an acquired plant, and that made him
invaluable when being acquired.
"Acquisitions can be like playing five-card stud and
not having two cards the same color," Mr. Holland explained. "It was my job to baseline the operations."

Bakery skills meet people skills
Over the years, Mr. Holland has become a beacon of
leadership for TreeHouse's baked goods division - all
17 plants and 5,500 employees - as the company moves
forward on its TreeHouse 2020 continuous improvement initiative.
"TreeHouse 2020 is a methodical approach for all our
plants," Mr. Holland said, noting that Princeton is one of
the furthest along in the initiative, to which he credits
the continuous improvement efforts from the facility's
operations team.
But truth be told, if you need to streamline a plant
- even turn one that's losing more than $1 million a
month into making that much, such as in the company's
Azusa, CA, facility - Rich Holland is your guy. "I approach problems by thinking outside the box," he said.
"Most people do that, but I'm very analytical and methodical in tackling problems."
For example, he said, producing 2,000 cases on a line
doesn't mean much without documented factors such as
labor, ingredient usage or theoretical max output. "You
establish your baseline first, then make adjustments one
variable at a time," he suggested. "As long as you know
where you started, and you have a reliable way to measure, you can always go back."
In his mind, Mr. Holland's bakery skills come second

24 Baking & Snack December 2017 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Rich Holland says his bakery skills come second to his people skills.
to his people skills. He hesitates to call himself a baker;
he'd tell you he's more the "people" person. "I'll let you in
on a secret," he told attendees during his training and retention breakout session at the Technical Conference for
the American Bakers Association (ABA), for which he
is an education committee member. "I don't really know
about baking; I just know about people."
But those who work for him call that a half-truth. "We
all know he has the technical capability; baking runs
through his blood," said Terry Melton, TreeHouse director of operations, cookies and crackers. "But the best
thing - what ties it all together - is his people skills.
He brings people together to work toward a common
goal. He's a mentor."
During the breakout session, Mr. Holland defined
the three most important assets on a bakery plant floor:
people, people and people (a comment that garnered a
sermon-style "Amen" from the back of the room). "We
buy the best equipment we possibly can, but until we fix
the fundamentals - how we treat, train and retain our
employees - nothing will get better."
Mr. Holland believes at the heart of training is teaching employees the best way to operate. He has a mantra:
"There's only one best way."
There are various ways to accomplish a task, but in
Mr. Holland's world of continuous improvement, there's
no room for variety. A worker who takes just 30 seconds
longer to load a truck might think, "This is my way, what's
the big deal?" But do the math: Sixty pallets on a truck

http://www.bakingandsnack.com

Baking & Snack - December 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Baking & Snack - December 2017