COE Welcomes ...

COE welcomes Capital One, Giant Eagle, Nestle USA as members

(4-9-2012)

Building on an exciting path to growth in recent years, the Center for Operational Excellence in the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University is pleased to welcome as members Capital One Financial Corp., Giant Eagle and Nestle USA.

Capital One is a $16 billion financial services company based in McLean, Va., with credit card, lending and consumer banking divisions. Founded in 1988, Capital One has risen to the ranks of the top 10 banking deposit-holders and credit card issuers in the U.S.

Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle is a $9 billion-a-year grocery chain that ranks as one of the largest privately owned and family operated companies in the nation. With more than 200 supermarket locations, Giant Eagle serves about 4.6 million customers a year.

Nestlé USA is a Glendale, Calif.-based subsidiary of Swiss food and nutrition giant Nestlé SA. The division has more than 25,000 employees and more than $10 billion in annual sales. Its manufacturing and marketing operations include the Lean Cuisine and Nestlé Tollhouse brands along with a wide range of snacks, beverages, pizzas and baking products.

The addition of these companies continues a trend of diversity in membership at COE, which was founded on the application of lean principles in the manufacturing sector but has expanded to include the transactional and health-care spaces.

“The broadening diversity of our membership base represents not only the composition of COE but of lean’s adoption in the corporate world,” said COE Co-Director Peter Ward. “Companies such as Capital One, Giant Eagle and Nesté are key to developing cutting-edge solutions to real problems in a wide variety of organizations. These organizations are operational excellence leaders in their industries and COE welcomes them to our expanding conversation.”

Founded 20 years ago with just four members, COE now has 35 member companies whose leaders and associates meet regularly to share best practices and pursue new operational excellence strategies.  Recent additions include Worthington Industries and Huntington National Bank, both of Columbus.

“COE is thrilled to add companies of this caliber to our membership base, which continues to grow at a vibrant pace,” Executive Director Peg Pennington said. “We know they will bring a wealth of experience in process improvement from which all our companies can benefit.”