With multiple business acquisitions looming, Myers Container, LLC needed assistance growing the company, improving facilities and processes, developing leadership, and educating employees.

Teaming with Simpler Consulting (link resides outside of ibm.com), an IBM Company, Myers Container implemented a custom Lean transformation plan, rapidly improving its business operating model and allowing for additional business acquisitions.  

With the rise in building and construction activities, an increase in food and beverage demand, and expansion across several other global industries, the need for steel drums is rapidly growing. Industrial goods can be heavy, bulky, sensitive to the external atmosphere and hazardous to the environment, and companies must find safe and sustainable ways of storing and transporting material.

In 2007, the Stavig family took their shared vision of operating an innovative and sustainable company and acquired Myers Container. The Portland, Oregon-based business family became a leading manufacturer and reconditioner of industrial containers in the US. Wanting to sprint ahead of its competition, Myers Container leadership began assessing the company’s strengths and weaknesses before expanding the business further.

“As we were becoming larger, we were becoming more hesitant about our ability to manage future growth,” explains Cody Stavig, Vice President (VP) of Operations. “When competing for acquisitions, our reluctance to make more competitive bids stemmed directly from our inability to reliably improve operations.”

The company was having difficulty managing multiple facilities around the country, fixing its development program for management, improving plant safety and scaling the business. Without an efficient system to properly train staff, Myers Container couldn’t establish a consistent way to operate different factories in various jurisdictions with multiple managers. Pressure began to mount, with Myers Container leadership fearing its competitors were deeper into successfully navigating Continuous Improvement (CI) transformations. 

“We were waking up every morning trying to figure out how to be better and how to outpace our competitors,” adds Myers Container Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kyle Stavig. “We only have so much pricing and supply chain power, but if our operations are running efficiently, we’re going to make a sizable dent in our company’s profitability.”

It was time for the Stavig family to seek outside help. Myers Container had previously enlisted a smaller local consulting company to help expand, but it needed a new firm with an extensive network range that would bring a higher level of professionalism and depth of talent and knowledge to the table.

Myers Container experienced substantial improvement in performance and safety by implementing Lean methodologies. By developing its internal team’s leadership skills and expanding employee responsibilities, the company was able to acquire more businesses and implement Simpler’s process improvement system. “We recently made a huge acquisition that almost doubled the size of the company with the help of Simpler,” explains Kyle. “Now, we’ve got a really good rhythm of what works, and we’ve begun initiating our continuous improvement system there.”

Myers Container has seen drastic changes in staff development after successfully implementing the facilitator model. “Now we’ve got people developed on our bench that are capable of walking into any operation to facilitate the 9-step process and lead us through, and that is all thanks to Simpler and Cody,” Kyle adds.

The Stavigs’ hard work was recognized within their industry as EY announced that Kyle received the Entrepreneur Of The Year (link resides outside IBM) 2019 Award in the Family Business category for the Pacific Northwest region. “The biggest gratification for my brothers and myself is knowing we are developing people, growing the business, sustaining profits and protecting the planet,” says Kyle.

Kyle and Cody don’t see the family business slowing down and will continue to grow and use the services of Simpler. With even more acquisitions in the works, they’re extremely confident in the company’s future.

In 2007, the Stavig brothers and their sister, Katrina Roth, acquired Myers Container (link resides outside IBM) and Container Management Services and placed the headquarters in Portland, Oregon. By 2011, the family added General Steel Drum in North Carolina and in 2018, North Coast Container LLC was added to the platform. In 2019, The Stavig Group (link resides outside IBM) was created as an umbrella organization to house the four companies. With facilities in Oregon and California, the company’s services include manufacturing, reconditioning, recycling and reclaiming hundreds of thousands of steel drums, intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) and millions of pounds of plastic annually.

For nearly 30 years, the Simpler (link resides outside of ibm.com) team has worked with clients to collaborate, coach and enable them to achieve rapid improvement across financial and nonfinancial performance indicators. Simpler’s value lies in its ability to work with clients to develop a business system and implement systematic improvements that facilitate long-term performance and sustainable growth.