About David Ciesinski
David Ciesinski, president and CEO of Lancaster Colony (parent company of T. Marzetti), spoke at Carnegie Mellon University's W.L. Mellon Speaker Series on January 17, 2025. He discussed his leadership approach, including rebuilding the company's leadership team since joining in 2016 and implementing a "better food company growth plan" that he said nearly doubled the business and delivered top quartile financial results. Ciesinski described a ransomware attack on July 20, 2019, that shut down the company's systems for about six months, requiring the scrapping of over a thousand computers and a move to a cloud-based environment, which he said later helped the company respond to COVID-19. He also outlined the company's innovation process, including developing a Nashville hot sauce for KFC that he said tripled demand forecasts.
In a 2022 video, Ciesinski and Director of Safety Karl Sommer discussed the company's safety record, noting reductions in injury rates over five to six years and a goal of achieving a total recordable incident rate under 1.0, which they described as "world class." Ciesinski highlighted the Chatham Village facility's pursuit of OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) Star designation, the highest level of safety recognition, and said the company planned to apply lessons from that program to other locations. He emphasized that safety improvements included automating packaging and palletizing activities.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from David Ciesinski's recent appearances.
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Transcript (10 segments)
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David Ciesinski0:06
CEO of Lancaster Colony, T. Marzetti, and it's my distinct pleasure to be joined today with my friend and our colleague Carl Summers, who's the director of our safety programs. Carl, welcome.
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Carl Summers0:17
Great to be with you, Dave. Good to talk safety.
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David Ciesinski0:19
So tell me about the role of peers and teammates in this. What role do we have in coaching one another to ensure our behaviors are safe?
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Carl Summers0:28
Well, we train intensively, and once you take it to the floor, we're going to go out and gauge how well they've received that information, how well they apply it. And in the areas where they're doing well, we'll reinforce that behavior. In areas where they need some help, we'll coach for the corrective action.
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David Ciesinski0:44
So as I think about the six or so years that I've been here, we have a number of accomplishments that we can be proud of. But one of the accomplishments I'm most proud of is the progress that we've made with our total incident rate, our TIR, our recordable rates. They've dropped substantially in the last five, six years. We're approaching world class, which we would consider getting under 1.0, which has been our goal for some time. Each year we've seen reductions in our injury experience, which has translated into better performance with our recordable rate. So the metrics are there, confirm the successes we've had. We've taken a very aggressive ergonomics approach lately, automating some of our sharing activities on floor, packaging and palletizing. That's helped dramatically.
Now you've sort of gone and you're taking us to a new level, which is an OSHA program. And I'd love for you to share with the group here what that program is and how it's been implemented.
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Carl Summers1:43
Yeah, very proud of this. Our Chatham Village facility is pursuing OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program, the VPP, specifically the Star program, which is the highest level of safety networks that can be recognized. There's only about 1500, a little more than 1500 companies that won this award nationwide throughout the year. So very proud of our Chatham team. We hope to take lessons learned from that, apply them to other locations, and continue to drive down injury experience at other locations via the VPP program.
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David Ciesinski2:13
Well, you've certainly translated it into a noble task, and we're the beneficiaries for it. So on behalf of all of our teammates, I want to sincerely thank you for everything you do.
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Carl Summers2:23
Thank you, Dave. I appreciate it.
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David Ciesinski2:24
Absolutely, great opportunity. Thank you. Enjoy.
