Baking & Snack - December 2019 - 20

OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR

"I love to be in the thick
of things and develop
solutions so I can help
define new processes,
practices and workflows."
Marshall Maddox, The Bakery Cos.

From baker to inventor
in one patent
Google "Marshall Maddox," and one
of the first hits you'll find has "inventor" before his name. That's because in
2010, Mr. Maddox, chief product officer
for The Bakery Cos. and Baking &
Snack 's 2019 Operations Executive of
the Year, was awarded a US patent for
his system that uses data to measure
efficiency in dough extrusion.
"I had a couple of engineers working alongside me on this project," Mr.
Maddox recalled. "We were working on
a state-of-the-art data acquisition system
in one of our plants at Sara Lee [before
it was acquired by Bimbo Bakeries
USA]. We were acquiring data off the
line that had never been aggregated in
that amount of information."
The team discovered some unique
patterns in the readings that sparked
a three-day discussion about how to
interpret such deviations.
"We got great support from Sara
Lee to move forward with understanding what was going on, and we had
some great conclusions. From there,
we ended up filing a patent," he said.
After several tests, Mr. Maddox and
his team reconfigured and redesigned
certain equipment with specific modifications based on the patent.
Today, it's still in use for production
of certain Sara Lee items and has set
the foundation for several data acquisition projects at The Bakery Cos.
Details on the technology Mr.
Maddox developed can be found by
searching Patent No. 8,579,494.

20 Baking & Snack December 2019 / www.bakingandsnack.com

and it was hard for me to break into
that culture."
But he found support from Don
Wyant, who at the time was the head
technical baker for Campbell Taggart.
"Don took me under his wing and
taught me the baking business," he
said. "Once I got Don's blessing, the
other guys respected me. I got my
'street cred.' "
Through each change, Mr. Maddox
jumped on every opportunity that
came his way, which resulted in running multiple facilities. "I spent all my
days and nights in the bakeries, and
that's where I really learned the most.
As a plant manager, you have to wear
a lot of hats, and I enjoyed the interaction with the people. I'd had the corporate experience, and it was good for me
to cut my teeth on the field operations."
To Mr. Maddox, every opportunity
- upward or lateral, inside or outside the wheelhouse - is a chance to
grow. They took him from St. Louis
to Horsham, PA, to Nashville and just
about every stop along the way, including Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis,
Meridian, MS, and a host of others.
"I'm not the kind of person who
could take a front-line supervisor position and do that for 10 years and then
take a manager role for another 10,"
Mr. Maddox said. He's more the type
to play new hands.
"I got involved in many different
things," he pointed out. "For me, technical baking and running the process
- being educated in how to set up the
equipment, what good quality good
output look like - has been my path
for several years."
Joe Waters, COO for The Bakery
Cos., and longtime colleague starting
at the Anheuser-Busch days, noted
that Mr. Maddox's ability to get involved in various aspects of the process has defined him as a true baking
professional.
"He's had a wide variety of responsibilities," Mr. Waters said. "He's been
the vice-president of quality, food safety and commercialization; he has been

instrumental in rolling out new products; he's kept the plants food safe; he
has supported marketing efforts and
product labeling. And he's outstanding in the area of formulas. He's well
exposed and very well known in the
industry."
It's all come out of cross-functional
experience that comes with taking
chances, which he feels, quite frankly,
the industry could use more of. "I've
seen too many people who had an
opportunity to take a move and do
something different, but they turned
it down because they didn't want to
move. My philosophy has always been
to take every move as an opportunity.
We need to see the value in diversity
of experience."
Through that diversity, he has also
learned about the value of relationships, and that ultimately led him to
Nashville and The Bakery Cos.

Take leaps of faith
In 2014, Mr. Maddox was no stranger
to Cordia Harrington, The Bakery
Cos. CEO, and the culture of her company resonated with him. "One of the
things Cordia has done incredibly well
is seizing the moment and taking the
opportunities when they come at her,"
he said. "That's something that drew
me to this organization and what I love
about it now that I'm here. I get to be
creative and take opportunities."
In the past, Mr. Maddox worked
with a specialized approach, such as
during his time in Sara Lee operations
under the BBU umbrella. "At Bimbo,
I focused on commercializing a new
product or searching out new technology to launch a product into the market. Here, I get involved in anything
from customer management to pricing to engineering to strategy. I have a
lot of hats here, and that makes this a
unique experience," he explained.
"When I started in the industry
more than 20 years ago, it was a 'push'
marketing approach," he said. "A company would develop a product, put it
on the shelf and hope it sold. If it did,

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Baking & Snack - December 2019

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