Brian Lakari’s interest in manufacturing started with Sesame Street vignettes showing how things are built.
“I always wanted to build things,” Lakari tells co-hosts Kate Bruns and Ann Franz on this week’s episode of the NEW Manufacturing Insights podcast, a joint production of Insight and the NEW Manufacturing Alliance. “I knew that right from the beginning.”
Today, as chief operating officer of Alwin Manufacturing in Green Bay, Lakari has racked up more than three decades of experience in the manufacturing industry. For his sit-down with the podcast, he shares a number of stories and pieces of advice from throughout his career — including how his leadership style has evolved, what he thinks about artificial intelligence and the evolution of automation since he built his first robot in 1995, and what he considers his absolute best leadership insight.
He also shares more with listeners about Alwin Manufacturing, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2028 and has long been innovating products such as bathroom towel dispensers. Today the company’s brands include Palmer Fixture; Deluxe Plastics; Hapco Elmer, which manufactures products for the hotel industry; and Lacrosse Brush, which makes color-coded brushes for the food service industry.
“They’ve always tried to stay at the forefront of what their customers wanted or needed,” Lakari says of his current employer, where — laugh if you want, Lakari says — a “mega roll” in the bathroom is among the innovations upon which it has thrived for nearly a century.
For more with Lakari, download this week’s episode of NEW Manufacturing Insights anywhere you get your audio podcasts, including Apple and Spotify and subscribe to support the show, which is sponsored all year long by Stoke RGA. (Learn more at stokerga.com.)
