Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3 - 127

conagra brands inc. food & beverage

'Deep on Inclusion'
During Conagra's 2019 Investor
Day presentation, Biegger outlined
the four pillars of the company's
supply chain: its people, organization, communities and commitments. O'Rourke explains Biegger
was the champion of these pillars
and brought his leadership together
to determine this vision. Each
member of his team held "sensing
sessions" with up to 10 employees
for two hours to get input and insight into the concept of the pillars,
determining whether the message
resonated and if not, why.
"We went deep on inclusion, and
as you can imagine, we got a whole
lot of feedback," O'Rourke says.
"Some of it were things we had
never thought of, and some of it was
very reaffirming. We knew we were
on the right track, so we took the

Photo: Christine Shefferd

not that we won't go use a new
supplier when we have to because
the world's changing and there's
things that haven't been invented
yet," O'Rourke says. "But we do
want to use the current suppliers
and our dialogue with them that
we create through the supplier
excellence program to give them
as much notice as we can. It's one
of the reasons we show them all
of the innovation at the Supplier
Excellence Summit so they know
where we're going, what's on
trend for us and where we're going to look for pockets of growth.
"It's information to help them,
but we also have transparency in
the feedback we get from the suppliers," he continues. "Is anyone
else going to that level of detail
with their suppliers to share that
much information?"

Chief Supply Chain Officer David
Biegger says Conagra is working
at the plant level to create a
culture of ownership and more
fulfilling workplace experience.

feedback and made the appropriate
changes. We went back to some of
the peer leaders and spent an entire
day deploying it in Chicago and another day deploying it in Omaha. In
the morning, we had motivational
speakers and guest speakers to talk
about those priorities. Then in the
afternoon, we did a service project
to go out and get into the community. It was really about helping our
employees sit back and see the art
of the possible by giving them control and input into the environment
they want to work in. We asked for
volunteers for the priorities, and
all of our initiatives are being led by
employees. There is a lot of energy
and they take it very seriously. It's
very exciting - I've never seen this
level of inclusion."
Getting multifunctional teams
involved in finding new solutions
to improve the business is just the
way Conagra works, O'Rourke

stresses. The company understands issues can be solved faster
when the right people - internally
and externally with suppliers - are
talking and addressing various
initiatives. Not only does this help
Conagra remain nimble in the
support of its customers, but it
also helps to eliminate losses and
inefficiencies. The issues could
be how it orders from suppliers,
how it brings in materials or how it
right-sizes a pallet, but having the
team involved is important.
"One of our values is
broad-mindedness, which means
that good ideas can come from a lot
of different places," O'Rourke says.
"We try to be agile - that is another
value of ours - and we have a refuseto-lose mentality. We get on with
getting on, and we don't waste a
lot of time. Once an idea has been
right-sized and aligned, we have a
go-get-it-done mentality."
VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3 Supply Chain World

127

Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3