Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Reflecting the high standards achieved through its corporate focus on innovation, Dubai Aluminium ("DUBAL") scooped five awards at the Ideas.America 2013 competition, held in Orlando, Florida, USA early-September this year. Four of the awards went to three innovative suggestions submitted by DUBAL employees, with the fifth award honouring the company's success in employee involvement.
The winning suggestions and their associated awards were:
- "Effective pre-heating and optimize gas consumption in pre-heaters", submitted by P Sundararajan and C Hugos from Casthouse Maintenance, which received two accolades - Idea of the Year (Gold) Award and Overall Idea of the Year Award. This innovation previously won the Best Suggestion Gold Award at the 2012 DUBAL Suggestion Scheme Awards; as well as the prestigious 2013 Best International Idea Award from the Deutsches Institut fuer Betriebswirtschaft[1] ("dib"), Germany.
- "To cover Dock A-2 skeleton from sea side", submitted by G Asghar and N Ahmed from Dock Operations, received the Green Idea of the Year (Silver) Award. This idea also received the Silver Award in the Environmental category of the 2012 DUBAL Suggestion Scheme Awards.
- "Improve start-up dam", submitted by M Fayaz, M Asi and M Hussain from Casthouse Services, received an Honorable Mention Safety Idea of the Year Certificate. This innovative suggestion also took the Silver Award in the Safety & Plant Operational Security category of the 2012 DUBAL Suggestion Scheme Awards.
The fifth award fell into the Ideas.America Statistical Awards category, whereby the performance of a company's employee involvement programme is evaluated in various areas. By definition, these statistics allow companies to compare their programmes' performance against other companies' programmes. This year, DUBAL again won the SEER Performance Excellence Gold Award for 100 per cent employee participation.
No stranger to the winner's podium at the Ideas.America competition, DUBAL has won a total of 27 Ideas.America awards since first entering the contest in 2002. Moreover, DUBAL has won numerous awards at diverse international innovation-based contests including the annual Ideas.America, Ideas.UK, Ideas.Arabia and "dib" competitions.
Expressing his delight at DUBAL's achievements at Ideas.America 2013, Abdulla Kalban (President & Chief Executive Officer) says, "Innovation through employee involvement is the key to continuous improvement. These international accolades would not have been possible without the technical expertise and the commitment of our employees; as well as their creativity, which has enhanced our processes significantly. We are very proud of our employees, and the continued success of the scheme."
Sultan Al Sabri (Vice President: Human Resources & Organisational Effectiveness) adds that the most important aim of the DUBAL Suggestion Scheme is to promote and encourage employees to participate in the process of improvement. "The DUBAL Suggestion Scheme is a great tool as it gives employees on the shop-floor a forum for recommending changes to the way we do things. It is a key vehicle for our employees to express their ideas and a chance to see those ideas are put into action. The scheme is very well received, as evidenced by the number of employees who have contributed thousands of ideas for improvement in all areas of our business."
Indeed, DUBAL employees at non-supervisory level submitted 27,982 ideas to the scheme during 2012, of which 19,269 (i.e. 68.9 per cent) were implemented and awarded. Moreover, the audited savings potential of the ideas implemented in 2012 amounted to AED19.6 million, which raised the total savings achieved by the Suggestion Scheme over the years to more than AED152 million. Also, the overall employee participation rate reached the 100 per cent mark for the seventh consecutive year, which means that at least one suggestion was implemented and awarded per eligible employee during 2012 - statistically speaking, there 7.3 awarded suggestions per eligible employee.
The Ideas.America Association (formerly known as the USA Employee Involvement Association) has been in existence for 70 years and is a non-profit service organization composed of members from all over the world in various sectors such as finance, commerce, industry and government. The association is dedicated to the worth, contributions and benefits of employee ideas and innovation systems, and other employee involvement processes.
With the capacity to produce over one million tonnes of molten aluminium per year, the DUBAL operation at Jebel Ali currently ranks as the world's largest single-site aluminium smelter using pre-bake anode technology. DUBAL also owns 50 per cent of Emirates Aluminium ("EMAL"), where commissioning of the new 444-cell line has begun and the first hot metal was tapped on 15 September 2013.
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For more information on DUBAL, visit www.dubal.ae
[1] German Institute for Business Administration
© Press Release 2013
