Nominated by: Ashleigh Gulling - Desgin
Jacob quickly jumped into a high-pressure task of improving Nifco's communication to all employees in every plant through videography. Keeping focus on his general workload and using his personal equipment, Jacob constructed multiple versions to make the message clear and accurate with Nifco branding. Jacob was able to keep the marketing workload in-house and produce an on-brand product quickly with his existing knowledge about the company, saving Nifco time and money by not hiring a 3rd party.
Mission: Nifco generates ideas and cultivates technology to turn your expectations into excitement - Jacob 100% nailed this on the head. The leadership team had an idea, and Jacob knocked it out of the park!
Vision: Driving change with growing inventiveness - Jacob's natural, raw talent has created an opportunity to start a culture change to improve Nifco Leadership while growing branding and creativity.
Value: Be Productive and breakthrough, Communicate and Collaborate, Challenge and Innovate - Jacob again is right on target with the Nifco vision. There were many barriers, and Jacob was determined and broke through them by sharpening his skills and learning new ones. During this project, Jacob communicated with the new marketing team, multiple departments (the Lab, CWH, SLB, Administration, and IT), and Floor Associates. This is a new challenge that all of Nifco had never done before, and made a Nifco message for all of NAM and NJP.
Nominated by: Neal Straton - Quality
Development and implementation of NMQ Database
Nick has exemplified the core mission of Nifco’s corporate philosophy by taking his idea of a central tracking system and cultivating it into reality via the NMQ Database. In collaborating with fellow engineers to develop the best possible system, Nick continues to encourage others to adopt a forward-thinking mindset with regard to daily tracking and the efficiency of completing daily tasks.
The system that Nick has developed utilizes shortcuts to frequently used folders on the Shelbyville drive to increase the efficiency of folder navigation. In addition, the database is linked to several internal and customer document templates to streamline document creation. By increasing the efficiency and accuracy of tooling development, Nick’s database will significantly impact both PE and NMQE teams’ ability to develop tools quickly while still providing exceptional customer service.
Nick’s database is currently being used by the entire NMQ team in Shelbyville to track daily workload as well as assist in tracking monthly KPIs. Future plans involve yokoten across multiple departments to increase folder navigation efficiency plant-wide.
Nominated by: Nathan Hazelwood - Quality
Implementation and integration of PowerBi with internal failure/sort data.
Logan has continued to improve our data analysis ability by allowing the data to be available easily and quickly. The PowerBi dashboards have become tools that every department can utilize to prioritize problems and track countermeasure effectiveness.
Nominated by: Tracy Horn - Purchasing
Andre has successfully and continually led the raw material commodity through the most incredible supply chain issues over the past two years. He has been instrumental in assisting the facilities when they are having supply issues. Over the past two years, he has worked diligently to ensure the facilities continue to run without impact to our customer. When SLB brought a shortage to Andre’s attention, he worked diligently with the current supplier in order to get the needed additive. When the supplier was unable to secure the material, Andre stepped up again. He searched the internet and was able to find the additive company. He then reached out to the additive company. At that particular time, the additive was not in stock but was available in the UK. The UK was on holiday and unable to respond to any inquiries. When Andre found out about the holiday and time that would be lost shipping air after the holiday, he willingly booked a flight out of Columbus, leaving his family on Easter Sunday, flew to the UK and was at the suppliers location to pick up material as soon as they opened. Andre was able to hand carry 100 lbs. of the anti-stat material. He routed his return flight through Louisville so that SLB could have the material in house shortly after he landed. He could have let the material ship by air and impacted VWs production lines. However, by jumping in to action, Andre saved Nifco from shutting down VW
Since the start of the raw material crisis, Andre has had to think outside of the box to ensure our lines would continue to run. He has become a great leader within this organization. He never backs away from a challenging situation. He continues to analyze and action the issues that could potentially cause adverse effects on the NAM organization.
Nominated by: Wesley Ryan - Quality
5S Vision of Perfection
Shirley has transformed the rules of 5S in Nifco and is the department to model off of. Her department has reached a steady score of higher than 95% for the past several years and last month hit a 98% score. She has made the 5S philosophy a standard and a mindset in her department. In the past several months she has extended this mindset to SLB by helping them organize their non-conformance area. This 5S philosophy has given her department the flexibility and structure to perform with an extremely lean work force.
Nominated by: Megan Jean - Project
TTC/EPNS Performance Improvement
In April 2022, Alissa was tasked as Champion of improvement on TTC Order on-time delivery. At the time, our scorecard was at 24% for on-time deliveries in 2022. With her efforts, our April score rose to 85% and our May score was 93%, raising our YTD on-time score to 58%. Her excellent communication both with the Nifco team as well as the customer directly correlates with the overall improvement of our reported supplier performance.TTC/EPNS Performance Improvement
Nominated by: Raghu Sridhar - Design
Innovation in design. Agility in customer service. Leadership in coordinating project with cross functional team.
Gautam Ravikumar (Design) went above and beyond to get customer contacts at Honda in a market segment (powertrain) that Nifco did not have a strong foothold in. He then came up with an innovative design solution that would drastically reduce customer cost. Due to his proactive proposal and for being agile and innovative in his design solution, Honda sent multiple RFQs to Nifco and kicked us off on multiple prototypes that could result in $1 million revenue. Due to his efforts, Nifco was able to expand its market share in this new segment with Honda.
Nominated by: Rob Fischer Production & Gina Kretz (IT)
Exceptional Adoption of Smart Factory tools in Unit 1
Jennifer was the key U1 associate working directly with Joe Cooper during the implementation of MES for Materials over the last quarter. She spent many hours working with both Smart Factory and the U1 team to trial and implement the various features and capabilities of MES material controls as well as training all associates in this major change to the way Nifco does business internally. Her efforts (along with Smart Factory) will help improve our material control, press efficiency (OEE), and ultimately improve our profitability and growth. Jennifer's input and ideas were instrumental in a successful, and smooth roll-out of the new process. In addition, Jennifer's positive attitude in the midst of significant changes and in unit 1 exemplify the Nifco Values of Productivity / breakthrough (MES), Communication and Collaboration (assisting in u1 production coordination), and Challenge and Innovation (MES). Joe took input from the production team to make the Material Application for MES user-friendly, and at the same time closed some gaps to make the process more fool-proof. The application will help keep a more accurate accounting of our material usage, and also better visibility (Visual workplace) for the material portion of the molding process.
Nominated by: Hiroshi Ogawa - NNP
Robot & conveyor optimization for cosmetic area
They learned for another plant experience and use this knowledge to improve genba work.
