Accuride, Goodyear and Littelfuse are among the recipients of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence’s AME 2016 Excellence Award.
The AME Excellence Award primarily recognizes North American manufacturing plants that have demonstrated excellence in manufacturing and business. The award acknowledges continuous improvement, best practices, creativity and innovation, AME says.
The 2016 AME Excellence Award recipients are:
Accuride de Mexico – Monterrey, Mexico
Accuride de Mexico’s wheel-production facility has focused on a robust use of policy deployment and aggressive continuous improvement initiatives. The facility has pull systems and an excellent continuous improvement process that utilizes value stream mapping and green belt projects to improve processes and products.
In winning the award, Accuride Wheels President Scott D. Hazlett says, “Accuride de Mexico is the fourth Accuride facility to receive the AME Excellence Award in the past three years. Henderson Operations was Accuride’s first AME Excellence Award recipient in 2014. The company was then recognized again in 2015 with AME Excellence Awards at our Erie and Rockford Gunite facilities and we were the only company to receive the honor last year.
“Moreover, Accuride is the only North American manufacturer to have four plants recognized as AME Award recipients. This is a testament to the talent and perseverance of our teams in their successful pursuit of operational excellence and our collective belief that a continuous improvement journey has no end.”
Goodyear Innovation Center – Akron, Ohio
Goodyear Innovation Center has done an outstanding job of developing sound, complete and useful standards for nearly all areas AME examined. The steps of design, technology development, skill development, strategic sourcing, product and platform development, and other areas were all found to be well thought out and robust.
Littelfuse – Wuxi, China
Littelfuse has a comprehensive safety program that includes monthly safety reviews. Safety is included on supplier scorecards, and every associate is expected to turn in one safety suggestion each month. The facility uses value stream mapping to identify improvement opportunities, which feeds into the policy deployment process.
MillerCoors Trenton Brewery – Trenton, Ohio
MillerCoors Trenton Brewery has done an excellent job creating an engaged workforce that is continually driving measurable improvements throughout the organization. The strong partnership between MillerCoors and the local union has enabled empowered teams to collaboratively produce world-class business results.
O.C. Tanner – Salt Lake City, Utah
O.C. Tanner has a culture that respects people and goes out of its way to recognize and celebrate team members’ contributions to the organization. Its leaders embrace their responsibility to regularly coach, develop and encourage team members.
“It is an honor for AME to recognize the 2016 Excellence Award recipients,” says AME President and CEO George Saiz. “The AME Excellence Award validates the hard work of so many who are engaged, committed and invested in sustained continuous improvement. We applaud these outstanding organizations and their employees for their contributions and participation in the journey towards enterprise excellence.”
AME says the Excellence Award has a rigorous selection process that begins when a company submits an extensive achievement report based on the AME Excellence Award evaluation criteria. Achievement reports are evaluated by the AME award assessment team. For companies that score high enough in this achievement report review, an intensive site visit is completed, during which a volunteer team of manufacturing practitioners validates the submitted achievement report. Recipients of the Excellence Award are selected based on the combined results of the achievement report review and site visit feedback, AME says.
Recipients will also be honored at the AME 2016 International Conference from Oct. 24-28, 2016, in Dallas.
