How Pella’s Intelligent Operations Model Turns Continuous Improvement into Action
Intelligent Operations is Pella’s cross-functional model that brings together Engineering & Procurement and Information Technology teams to identify challenges on the plant floor, design practical solutions and scale them across the company. These integrated team "pods" focus on development, data insights and expansion, enabling ideas to move from observation to implementation without silos.
One example is “Voice,” Pella’s voice-directed work system used across manufacturing facilities.
In a recent conversation with IndustryWeek, Laura Phillips, Vice President of Engineering & Procurement, and Travis Turnbull, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, discussed how Voice replaces written instructions with headset-guided workflows that confirm accuracy in real time.
Customer-first problem solving
The idea emerged through plant-floor observation and continuous improvement practices, where teams identified inefficiencies in paper-based processes and asked how technology could remove friction while improving reliability for customers.
“How do we help our employees be more efficient and reduce the cognitive load and the decisions that they have to make? Because if they make a wrong decision, that impacts our customer. It was a great use case to help our team members not only identify what to pick, but where to pick it,” Turnbull says.
With highly customized products and complex part variation, even small picking errors can impact quality and delivery.
Measurable impact on the floor
Operators receive verbal prompts, confirm parts aloud and move to the next step, reducing errors in complex processes. After piloting the system, new operators reached proficiency in days rather than months, and long-term picking errors dropped by 90 percent.
Phillips noted that even subtle differences between parts can create risk. The technology removes that margin for error while reinforcing training and traceability.
“The Pella team, broadly, at all levels, is really invested in getting better and continuous improvement, and so there isn’t a fear of, ‘You’re going to catch me doing something wrong.’ It’s ‘We want the insight so that we can go solve problems,” says Phillips.
Built for scale
Intelligent Operations relies on cross-functional IT and operations pods dedicated to scaling proven solutions across plants. The team avoids custom, one-off builds in favor of standardization so innovations expand efficiently and consistently.
“We have a data and insights pod. We have a pod for scaling known solutions and pushing them out further through the manufacturing system. And then we have a pod that’s dedicated to creating new things, new solutions,” says Phillips.
Voice now operates in half of Pella’s U.S. manufacturing plants — one example of how Pella’s culture of continuous improvement turns frontline insight into enterprise-wide impact.
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