Operational, Financial Excellence in Building Materials Manufacturing

Armstrong World Industries set a goal, nearly a decade ago, to be an outlier, the kind of company that maintains 5% profit growth for five or more years. Those efforts have paid off with the ceiling-tile and architectural components making landing No. 2 in IndustryWeek’s annual IW U.S. 50 Best Manufacturers list.

Vic Grizzle, CEO of Armstrong, sat down with IndustryWeek’s Robert Schoenberger to discuss the management philosophy behind that performance. Some key elements:

• Investing in the business: Armstrong dedicates more of its cashflow to operational improvements than many of its peers, part of an annual push to increase productivity by about 3% every year
• Championing stability: Customers and employees know what to expect from a company that has stable management and rarely changes big-picture strategies
• Adaptability: While it champions stability, Armstrong also looks for adjacent opportunities, experiments with new technologies and constantly updates its processes