NAME Award encourages operational excellence

By Richard L. Dunn -- Plant Engineering, 4/1/1998

Chances are your organization could use some much-deserved recognition. You could probably also use some meaningful benchmarking data and other feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. And it wouldn't hurt if your management had a better understanding of how your organization helps build a competitive advantage for your plant.

These are among the challenges often mentioned by plant engineers. And they're the challenges that the NAME Awards program is designed to address.

Now in their eighth year, the NAME Awards (for North American Maintenance Excellence) further the following objectives:

- Increase awareness of maintenance as a competitive edge in cost, quality, service, and equipment performance

- Identify industry leaders and highlight "best" practices in maintenance management

- Share successful maintenance strategies

- Understand the need for managing change

- Enable operations excellence.

Plants that have entered the NAME competition over the years have found their participation to be beneficial in a number of ways. Most notably, the program:

- Facilitates an internal audit of strengths and opportunities for improvement

- Increases awareness of their maintenance process and reflects favorably on their commitment to utilize maintenance as a competitive advantage

- Helps establish priorities and competitive performance goals

- Provides valuable benchmarking comparisons to support continuous improvement

- Builds a sense of site teamwork and emphasizes the value of interfunctional support, coordination, and cooperation.

Notice that I haven't said anything about winning the award. To be sure, there are substantial benefits to winning. But even the nonwinners find value in the process of entering. Prestige is great, but learning and improving are even better. That's what the awards are all about, and that's why Plant Engineering is proud to be a NAME Awards sponsor along with four other organizations.

I'd love to send you more information about the NAME Awards and how to enter. Just e-mail me at rdunn@pe.cahners.com or call me at 847-390-2691, and I'll send you an explanatory brochure. But don't delay; the entry deadline is June 1.

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