The Association for Manufacturing Excellence has honored Accuride Erie Operations and Accuride Rockford Operations with 2015 AME Excellence Awards. An AME representative will visit the Erie PA facility to present the award on September 18 and the Rockford IL facility on September 22.
Both plants will also be honored during the AME 2015 International Conference, taking place October 19-23 in Cincinnati OH.
“Receiving three AME Excellence Awards in two years for our operations is a distinct honor for Accuride that demonstrates our ability to install and operate lean systems at multiple sites across our enterprise,” said Rick Dauch, Accuride president and chief executive officer. “Our plants receiving awards this year have their origins in the 1800s and are represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW). This demonstrates union-represented facilities’ ability to embrace lean and make themselves competitive in North America through a combination of strong and disciplined management, capable union leadership, a dedicated workforce, effective suppliers and multi-year investments in industry-leading process capability and product technology.”
The AME Excellence Award recognizes North American manufacturing plants that have demonstrated excellence in manufacturing and business. The rigorous selection process begins when a company submits an extensive achievement report based on the AME Excellence Award evaluation criteria.
For companies that score high enough during the achievement report review, an intensive site visit is completed, during which a volunteer team of manufacturing practitioners validates the submitted achievement report. Only a handful of applicants merit a site visit and approximately one third of the visits result in a site being recognized as an award recipient.
Accuride Henderson Operations in Kentucky received the AME Excellence Award in 2014.
During their evaluation, the AME assessment team highlighted Accuride Erie Operations’ continuous improvement philosophy, observing management driving a culture of metrics-based performance to satisfy customer needs. The assessors also praised the facility’s standout strengths of detailed level planning of plan-for-every-part (PFEP), well-organized product development data and their strong focus on material flow improvements utilizing value stream mapping, visual kanban pull processes and more.
During the Accuride Rockford Operations site visit, the AME assessment team highlighted the plant’s standout strengths, which included the application of visual scheduling boards resulting in the launch of fourth-generation production pull boards and the use of value stream mapping in the factory and for office processes. The assessment team praised the Rockford facility’s corporate and factory hoshin kanri, and the execution program tied to the associate incentive/bonus program. The assessment team also commended the Rockford facility’s partnership with a perishable tooling supplier and effort to use 100 percent of tool life.