
Plant Tours
Each plant tour offers a unique opportunity to dialog with peers from across industries and functions about best practices, challenges and solutions to moving the manufacturing enterprise forward.
Discover proven solutions to common challenges
Discuss the challenges and discover the solutions that led to meaningful success stories.- Expand your thinking
Open your mind to new processes or practices you can put in place to achieve greater operational excellence and efficiency. - Benchmark your performance:
Benchmark your factory’s performance against other state-of-the-art factories. - Bring back new ideas:
Walk away with new ideas you can bring back to your company and implement faster.

Featured Plant Tour
The Hershey Company Plant Tour
Join the MLC for a plant tour at The Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania, May 1-2 to learn how Hershey is Leveraging Industry & Manufacturing 4.0 Digital and Technological Solutions to Modernize a 100+ Year Old Company.
Upcoming Plant Tours
Tour Summaries
Exploring Sustainability and Resilience at Schneider Electric’s Smart Factory
December 14, 2022About 100 Manufacturing Leadership Council members, associate members, guests, and staff descended on Lexington, Ky., in November for a tour of Schneider Electric’s smart factory – a 65-year-old brownfield facility that showcases artificial intelligence, augmented reality, remote monitoring, and predictive…

Experiencing M4.0 at The Smart Factory @ Wichita Tour
June 22, 2022Manufacturing Leadership Council members toured The Smart Factory @ Wichita to see the latest Manufacturing 4.0 technologies at the showcase factory.

At IPG, A Relentless Focus on Business Value
April 28, 2022For Intertape Polymer Group, a manufacturer of paper- and film-based packaging products, the last six years have been a time of significant growth – and change. Revenue during that period doubled from $750 million to $1.5 billion at the end…

IBM Plant Tour: Driving Innovation Through Relentless Reinvention
May 7, 2021IBM’s digital journey is keenly focused on building a cognitive enterprise that embraces an agile culture of innovation, combined with a client focus that leverages exponential technologies to deliver greater value. IBM executives on the MLC’s recent virtual tour of…

Nexteer’s Tracing System Drives Global Manufacturing Improvements
August 24, 2021Nexteer Automotive is on a mission to make driving a car safer, more fuel-efficient, and future-focused through its production of steering and driveline safety-critical car and truck electronic and hydraulic power products. In addition to electric and hydraulic power steering…

Manufacturing Cyber Security: MxD’s Protection Framework
February 25, 2021As manufacturers accelerate the deployment of digital technologies to modernize and interconnect their facilities and supply chains, they also open up new risks for cyber-attacks, stressed Chandra Brown, CEO of MxD, during a recent virtual plant tour for Manufacturing Leadership…

Teaching Analog Systems Digital Tricks
January 14, 2021Manufacturing Leadership Council members recently took a virtual tour around MxD’s Innovation Center in Chicago to learn how to integrate digital manufacturing technologies using existing legacy equipment in ways that can help increase agility without breaking the bank or getting…

Hunting for Treasure at Intertape Polymer Group Inc.
March 17, 2020“Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” While that old saying might be a maxim for household budgeting, it also could describe Intertape Polymer Group Inc.’s (IPG) approach to developing an award-winning energy management program. Its…

Clif Bar: A ‘Different Kind’ of Manufacturer
November 20, 2019Manufacturing Leadership Council members toured Clif Bar’s three-year old energy bar plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, and learned about the company’s 5 Aspirations business model.

At Plant Tour, Amway Details its High-Performance Workforce Initiative
November 1, 2019In 1979, McDonald’s launched the Happy Meal, ESPN hit the airwaves for the first time, and Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became the first Top 40 rap single. It was also a year when Amway undertook a massive hiring effort for…