When many people think of lean management, they envision a big company-wide mandate and program that involves many hours of training, measuring and evaluating.
But the cover story of this issue shows how one independent pallet company is trying to win big by making small changes. Over time, these little changes can make a big impact.
This truth reminds me of a recent scripture verse that I read regarding the attempt to rebuild the second Temple. During the time of King Darius I of Persia, the Israelites faced opposition in the process of rebuilding the Temple. The prophet Zechariah encouraged them to continue the work even though the house of worship was a shell of the former building and the work had suffered many setbacks. Instead of being discouraged by the lack of progress, Zechariah encouraged both the political and the military leaders with this statement, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10). Every major move starts somewhere. And if you want to develop a continuous improvement culture, little decisions really matter.
The cover story on Gruber Pallets showcases how the company is releasing workers to make changes that produce at least two seconds worth of production improvement on a daily basis. The concept is explored in the book, “2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Lean Culture” by Paul Akers. You can download a free copy at the author’s website: https://tinyurl.com/r9cm3ysu.
Paul Akers is an entrepreneur who started a woodworking products company and has deployed his lean strategy at his own company. He was mentored by lean experts in Japan. They focused on eliminating waste and developing an employee mindset of continuous improvement.
If you want to take your company to the next level in 2026, maybe the most important thing you can do is really rethink your process and invite collaboration. You would be surprised how much time your current processes are wasting if you stopped to evaluate them. Everyone thinks that they are pretty efficient. But Akers wrote, “If you think you have your life or your business pretty well dialed in, you’re clueless. Toyota still makes millions of improvements worldwide to their processes and they have been thinking Lean for over 50 years. As my good friend and lean buddy Jeff Kaas says, ‘Waste is like gravity; it pulls at you 24/7 and if you don’t have a method to overcome it, you will lose, and it will win!’”
A key to the success of the lean manufacturing initiatives at Gruber Pallet is the focus on involving everyone in the process and giving them authority to make changes that result in daily time savings. The goal is to achieve at least two seconds savings daily by incremental changes to the work standards and value stream.
Luke Gruber, co-owner of Gruber Pallets, joked, “While our religion is faith in Jesus, we have sold our souls to lean manufacturing. We feel like odd ducks in this industry of batch and queue processing. We want minimal touches. We want one-piece flow. We want fast switchovers.”
The Lake Elmo, Minnesota pallet producer and recycler does things a bit differently than many pallet operations. See the article starting on page 14.
Gruber Pallets’ focus is to process material through the plant as efficiently as possible. Luke added, “This means a pallet can go from sorted, torn down, boards cut and then reused to build a remanufactured or combo pallet all in about 180 seconds. We’ve cut out all forklift movement and stacking and unstacking in the recycled process.”
While this process requires the operators to do more, it reduces the number of steps in the process. Repair operators must be good at multiple functions, which increases the cross functionality of the team. The Gruber way isn’t for everyone.
But one thing the company has done is eliminate the bottleneck to improvement. Dale Gruber Jr., co-owner with his brother, acknowledged, “We release our people to make changes. We can’t be the bottleneck of improvement. If everything has to go through us, we will slow down improvement.”
Unfortunately, in many companies, management can be the big impediment to progress. If employees hear no for basic ideas too often, they will stop coming up with bright ideas.
How does the lean process work at Gruber Pallets? It begins with educating employees on the two second principle. Any change that results in at least two second savings daily is capable of being put into practice given certain financial or company impact parameters. Then employees share these ideas via cell phones across the company’s Slack chat network showing before and after images while explaining the change and the savings. Employees use the hash tag #twosecondimprovement to tag these posts. Dale smiled and said, “While I have been at this meeting, my phone has several messages from innovations coming from our workers and managers. That’s a huge culture win. The minimal cost to make these things happen is nothing compared to the culture and efficiency savings.”
Continuous improvement must have momentum and become part of your process. The reality is that smart pallet producers are problem solvers. Dale said, “We’re only as good as the problems we solve. Everyone’s got the same problems from bad incoming pallets to poor quality lumber and labor challenges. It matters how you solve them.”
As you look forward to 2026, focusing on how continuous improvement can become a big part of your culture should be at the top of your agenda item. May the cover story in this issue inspire you to think small and see what can happen.
Editor’s Note: For decades my father has written or co-authored with me the Letter from Ed column in the magazine. As Ed Brindley Jr., PhD, enters full retirement, his letter in last month’s issue will be his last. If you want to send a tribute or thank Ed for his vision and leadership of the Pallet Enterprise and Pallet Profile through the years, please email chailleb@gmail.com with the tagline “Thanks Ed.” Our staff will ensure that Ed gets these messages as he enjoys long-deserved rest and retirement.
