FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chicago, Illinois - May 17, 2010
ASTD Recognizes TMG, Inc. and Ball Corporation - Metal Beverage Packaging Division Williamsburg, with Excellence in Practice Award for Performance Improvement
The ASTD Board of Directors honored TMG, Inc. and Ball Corporation - Metal Beverage Packing Division at an awards ceremony Monday, May 17, 2010, in Chicago during ASTD's International Conference & Exposition. As Award winners, TMG, Inc. and Ball Corporation were also invited to discuss their practices at the Awards Fair during the conference. The winning practice was also featured in a booklet distributed at the conference and posted on the ASTD website. This year, 131 companies completed the stringent application process, with only 21 practices receiving the prestigious ASTD Award.
Ball Metal Container Operations of Williamsburg, Virginia began their partnership with TMG, Inc. in May of 2007. The Management Team in Williamsburg recognized the need for a comprehensive intervention to prepare for the upcoming wave of retirements and resulting leader churn projected within the next five years. This approaching turnover coupled with an opportunity for improved performance from current Supervisors and Chief Maintainers generated the need for a well developed plan to train current leaders, identify and develop future leaders, transfer knowledge to newer employees and cultivate a highly engaged workforce. The underlying hypothesis that has guided this initiative is that an aligned team with well trained leaders will result in an engaged workforce generating improved business performance.
After a detailed analysis, the Ball Corporation senior leadership team made a long-term commitment to design, build, pilot, and implement a system to attack these trends. Within 12-months, the plant developed a synchronized and integrated Leader Performance Improvement System consisting of: Individual Development Plans for plant leaders based upon High Performance Behaviors; implementation of a Chief Maintainer Training Program; completed five rounds of structured Leader Coaching; deployed a Leader to Led Promise aligning the organization and explaining roles and responsibilities from the new employee to the plant manager, completely reorganized the workforce to break up dysfunctional teams and "shock" the non-performing culture; developed a Team Scorecard to communicate daily performance goals; conducted annual plant-wide Value Stream Analysis to prioritize process improvement projects to remove barriers to daily job performance; and developed a substitute leader qualification system to reduce daily disruption caused by leader churn. Through careful, measured program management, these trends reversed and plant performance continues to improve. Since June, 2008 the plant has realized a return on the investment of over $4,100,000 by increasing production by 84,000,000 units over the previous 12 months, while decreasing spoilage by over 24.5% and improving customer complaints by 50.4% from the previous year.
Contact:
Joseph C. Barto, III
President and Founder
TMG, Inc.
757-218-8444
jbarto@tmgva.com
www.tmgva.com