5 Continuous Improvement Lessons from Manufacturing Veteran Steve Smart
On Monday, June 1st, Steve Smart reported for his first day as an MS Companies Quality Liaison, supporting a Tier 1 automotive supplier onsite at an OEM customer account. A week earlier, he attended his 63rd Indianapolis 500.
That number is not a typo. Steve has been at Indianapolis Motor Speedway every Memorial Day weekend since he was seven years old. He has worked on sprint cars in Arizona, wrenched on a Lola Can-Am at Mid-Ohio, and in 1980 talked his way onto Gary Bettenhausen’s team to help wheel Gary from a 32nd-place start to a third-place finish at the 500. In between, he spent more than a decade at a Ford injection molding plant outside Clinton, Michigan, then went on to help build an Arizona injection molding business from three machines to more than forty.
Across more than three decades in automotive manufacturing, Steve has supported injection molding operations, paint systems, new production launches, and continuous improvement initiatives across multiple facilities and industries — from large OEM-tier programs to specialty production lines. That breadth of experience is exactly what a Quality Liaison role demands.
Steve’s career is, in a real sense, a decades-long case study in continuous improvement in manufacturing. Ahead of his start date, Steve shared stories from his automotive career, his early memories of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the lessons that continue to guide the way he approaches quality, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
Lesson 1: Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing Starts With "I Can Help"
Steve’s connection to the Indianapolis 500 started at age seven, when his father drove him down from Marion, Ohio. He still remembers stopping for gas along the way — back when an attendant pumped it for you and asked where you were headed. When his father said the Speedway, the answer made the trip feel like something special before they ever arrived.
That weekend in May became a lifelong tradition. Over the years, Steve has watched the race as a fan, a student of racing history, and, when the opportunity came, someone willing to roll up his sleeves and help.
In 1980, getting involved with an Indy 500 team did not require a credential, a connection, or a corporate sponsor. It required walking up to the fence and offering to help. That is exactly how Steve found himself on Gary Bettenhausen’s crew, contributing to a run that took the car from 32nd on the grid to a third-place finish.
“I’ve been used to just walking up and saying, ‘I can do whatever you want me to do.’ I worked on old Can-Am cars that were puking oil out of the engines. I’ll do that. I don’t care.”
That same posture is how Steve learned to rebuild sprint car engines in a Tucson garage, and how he started his career in plastic injection molding. It is also, not coincidentally, how continuous improvement actually shows up on a plant floor. The problems do not get solved by the person who waits to be asked. They get solved by the operator, the technician, or the liaison who sees something off and says, “let me try this.”
“There’s always somebody out there trying to do whatever you’re doing better than you are,” Steve said. “Continuous improvement. Somebody’s trying.”
Lesson 2: The First Solution Is Almost Never the Final One
When Steve was at Ford, the plant was pioneering Reaction Injection Molding — a then-experimental process that surrounded automotive glass with a chemical-mixed rubbery gasket. Nobody knew exactly how to do it. The mixtures had to be tuned by hand. The mold would shatter the glass. The painted parts blistered because no one realized the material had to off-gas before coating.
For nearly a year, the team hand-painted parts in a side room using a spray gun a manager brought from his own garage at home. The line eventually worked. But it worked because the team kept iterating long after the first attempts failed.
“Just experiment and experiment and experiment to get this mixture correct,” Steve recalled. “It’s like, hallelujah! We’ve only made one piece.”
This is the unglamorous reality of continuous improvement in manufacturing. It is rarely a clean before-and-after. It is dozens of small adjustments, parts trees racked in a corner waiting for gas to dissipate, and the willingness to keep going when the first version fails. The companies that win are the ones that stay in the room.
Lesson 3: The Best Improvements Come From the People Closest to the Work
Ask Steve why he came out of semi-retirement to take a Quality Liaison role, and his answer is not about quality systems or KPIs. It is about the people running the machines.
“I don’t feel that the people that are running the machines, that are boxing the parts, that are away from their families on nights and weekends, get the respect and have their management invested in what they’re doing to have their backs,” he said. “If you can represent those folks on that line — the moms and dads and the grandparents — what they are doing, because they’re the ones I’ve seen. They stand at these machines all day.”
This is the part of the Quality Liaison role that does not show up on a process map. Steve will be the voice of the OEM customer back to the supplier, and the voice of the supplier’s people back to the OEM. But more than that, he will be the person on the floor who can look at a part, identify what is wrong, and bring a fix back to the operator in a way that makes the operator feel like a partner in the solution rather than the source of the problem.
That distinction matters in ways that compound over a shift, a quarter, and a model year. An operator who feels respected flags problems early. An operator who feels respected suggests fixes an engineer would never see from a desk. An operator who feels respected stays. In an industry built on tight tolerances and tighter labor markets, that kind of culture is not a soft skill — it is a quality strategy.
“If we take that knowledge back to the people in the plant and say, ‘listen, if you try this,’ we solve a problem — and that person is going to think more of themselves in that plant. They’re going to say, ‘My work is getting some respect out there. I’m part of this.'”
Steve sees the Quality Liaison role as that translation layer. Someone who carries technical expertise onto the floor without losing the human read on what the people doing the work actually need. The defect rate matters. So does whether the operator who caught the defect feels seen for catching it.
That, ultimately, is the engine of continuous improvement in manufacturing. Not the audit. Not the dashboard. The respected operator who feels safe flagging the issue before it becomes a defect.
Lesson 4: Complacency Is the Only Thing That Stops It
Steve does not phrase improvement in the language of lean or Six Sigma. He phrases it the way the Speedway taught him to.
“We didn’t go 200 miles an hour by not trying. We didn’t go from front-engine cars to rear-engine cars without trying. You’ve got to try something.”
The same principle holds in the plant. Every gain in throughput, every reduction in defect rate, every safer process started as something somebody tried because the previous version was not good enough. As Steve’s wife puts it:
“Your best looks different every day. And if it didn’t, you’d be a machine.”
Lesson 5: Leading from the Front
Near the end of the conversation, Steve summed up his philosophy in a single line.
“If you’re not leading from the front, then you’re not leading.”
A Quality Liaison cannot do this role from behind a desk. The job requires presence, observation, and the willingness to be in the work with the people doing it.
That is the mindset Steve brings to MS Companies. His Indianapolis 500 memories and decades on the plant floor are remarkable, but the larger story is what they represent: preparation, effort, teamwork, and a refusal to treat “good enough” as the final answer.
For manufacturers, suppliers, and OEM partners, continuous improvement in manufacturing is the difference between catching a problem and chasing one. And for Steve Smart, it is not a slogan. It is decades of showing up, learning the process, and helping others get better.
“When you’re representing a plant of people that are doing their best every day, then they have to know I’m giving them my best,” Steve said.
About Steve Smart
- Quality Liaison, MS Companies
- 30+ years of automotive manufacturing experience
- Background in plastic injection molding, paint systems, and production launches
- Expertise in continuous improvement, customer quality, and OEM–supplier coordination
- Lifelong Indianapolis 500 enthusiast and 63-time attendee