Strategic collaboration between leaders of HEXPOL Compounding Americas’ (HCA) continuous improvement and quality teams in recent years has cultivated a culture of data-driven excellence inside the company that consistently and directly benefits customers.
Through nomination and subsequent participation in a rigorous five- to eight-month-long Green Belt program and a preliminary two-day Yellow Belt training, which the company has run for over six years, associates representing virtually every corporate function are empowered to use data insights to act with precision in their pursuit of operational and process efficiencies and product development advancements.
“We’re not just manufacturing products,” says Ramakrishnan Sukumar, HCA’s Director of Continuous Improvement – Operations since 2020. “We’re fostering data-oriented leaders throughout our organization to better equip our teams to partner with customers. Every decision is informed by robust data analysis.”
Sukumar considers HCA’s significant investment in continual improvement and quality—specifically the Green Belt program that has empowered over 80 associates across the company’s factory footprint in the United States and Mexico—as a giant competitive advantage. Nearly 100 associates have completed the company’s Yellow Belt training, which is a requirement to be considered for the Green Belt program.
“Our data expertise and comfort with so many details and variables are invaluable during our problem-solving work with customers,” he says. “Our ability to collaboratively analyze challenges, identify root causes, and implement highly effective solutions is unmatched. We’ve made the investment in our people, and they’ve invested the time needed to up their game.”
The operational excellence realized through 80-plus Green Belt projects locks in customer benefits such as high-quality products delivered on time. As Sukumar puts it: “Customers are supported by a partner who truly understands and utilizes data to achieve superior outcomes.”
Sukumar’s co-leader in the Green Belt program is Tom Roberts, Director of Quality for HCA for 11 years. His customer-focused mission is to develop, implement, audit, and improve business and manufacturing processes.
Roberts sums it up this way: “My responsibility is primarily to drive HCA toward perfection for every customer every day. Perfection equals people plus process minus problems.”
Roberts focuses on quality metrics and customer issues while Sukumar has a broader continuous improvement focus on all the key performance indicators of the organization and implementation of the HEXPOL Production System (HPS), a combination of Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma concepts and tools, which serve as complementary forces in HCA’s drive for operational excellence.
Differentiator: Fully integrated Lean and Six Sigma Methodologies
Sukumar believes the results HCA achieves for customers through its multi-faceted approach to continuous improvement distinguish it from other rubber compounding manufacturers.
“We go far beyond standard practices,” he notes. “Our fully integrated Lean and Six Sigma methodologies ensure a holistic focus on both waste elimination and defect reduction. We support these efforts with a highly structured, step-by-step program that allows associates to progress from White Belt to Green Belt, building a broad base of data-oriented, decision-ready leaders.”
Differentiator: Platinum Certificate Program
Continuous improvement learnings achieved through wave after wave of Green Belt program graduations—the most recent held in Nashville in June 2025—are directly applied and integrated onto HCA’s factory floors through the company’s Platinum Certificate Program, a recognition tool that Sukumar says ensures practical implementation and tangible results through accountability.
“We keep pushing ourselves on this continuous improvement journey because the thinking and problem-solving are just the early steps,” says Sukumar. “We actively customize commonly available Lean and Six Sigma tools to address the unique demands and complexities of custom rubber mixing.”
That self-applied pressure to continually improve with Lean tools fit for purpose ensures maximum relevance and effectiveness, which contrasts with the generic application of Lean principles and tools that smaller competitors might be attempting.
Differentiator: Materials and Product Integrity
Roberts and his team across HCA’s factory footprint in the US and Mexico have stamped out a problem that has plagued the industry: the gap between what a customer orders and what they receive. “When working with HCA,” he notes “customers can be confident that they are going to get the exact product they ordered and that the test data provided accurately represents the product.”
Differentiator: HEXPOL Production System
Roberts believes HCA’s people are foundational to the company’s materials and product integrity. “We have the best quality and technical people in the industry and because of our integrated management system—the HEXPOL Production System—customers can expect to benefit from the same behaviors, processes, and customer focus at every HCA plant,” he explains.
Green Belt Program Overview
- Taught by Sukumar and Roberts over seven days—three remote and four in-person
- Topics: leadership, teamwork, change management, Lean and Six Sigma
- Roberts’ expertise: quality and statistics
- Sukumar’s expertise: leadership, Lean and Six Sigma
Green Belt Project Impacts
- Improved product quality, increased efficiency, reduced costs, and lessened environmental impacts by lowering the scrap rate to below 0.3% (from 0.5%)
- Reduced risk of late-stage failures, increased supply chain reliability, and lowered total cost to customers through a 10% hold-rate reduction
- Enabled more consistent product performance, lowered customer defects, increased customer yields, and tightened compliance with specifications and standards through a 5-20% product-variation reduction (depending on product requirements)
- Sustained production and delivery reliability with 98% on-time delivery since 2021
Green Belt Programming in 2025
- 10 associates from seven US facilities graduated in June 2025 (started in December 2024)
- Six associates from three Mexico facilities initiated their projects in May 2025
- 12 associates from nine US facilities will initiate their projects in December 2025
2025-2026 Priorities
HCA’s constant pursuit of world-class performance for customers continues at full speed this summer. Roberts explains: “We’re working to further reduce variation in our compounds with state-of-the-art rubber processability analysis and the adoption of basic statistical process control.”
Cohesiveness at Scale
Roberts and Sukumar are proud of their contributions to HCA’s growth over the last five-plus years and its shift from a loose affiliation of acquired plants into a cohesive organization running the world-class HEXPOL Production System and delivering dramatically improved quality and operational performance.
“The proof rests within the metrics,” Sukumar notes. “The credit rests with our associates,” adds Roberts. “They see the competitive advantages we create when we strive for perfection.”
