The Tomago Aluminium’s annual awards show that held at the Newcastle Exhibition Centre in Australia recognised the efforts of individuals and teams employed by the company to enhance the smelter’s operations.
While presenting awards to individuals and teams by Stacey Sleeman, CFO of Tomago Aluminium, said: “The Company encourages its employees to continually strive for improvement and to look for new, different and better ways of doing things.”
A plan designed to decrease equipment failures at Tomago Aluminium, Australia’s biggest aluminium smelter while maximising reliability and reducing routine maintenance costs by more than $485,000 annually, rewarded its innovator the top individual prize in this year’s awards while a plan to recycle used anode pins took out the team prize.
Leigh Osmond, Liquid Metal Operations project leader not only developed his maintenance and cost-reduction plan but also supported its roll-out, working with several Tomago’s stakeholders and various departments at the smelter.
Osmond said: “It wasn’t so much one project as it was multiple projects covering cost and waste reduction, minimising machinery downtime, bringing work in-house and identifying purchasing efficiencies and opportunities.”
Tomago Aluminium’s CFO presented Leigh Osmond as an Individual winner at the Innovation and Excellence Awards with a unique trophy and a financial rewards package worth $15,000 for his efforts.
the Awards for this year also included an overall team prize and that award went to Business Improvement Specialist Jeremy Ireland and Procurement Superintendent John Fraser who together saw the value of Tomago’s waste - namely the used anode pins - and developed a method for recycling them, reclaiming several years’ worth of pins from recycler Molycop Newcastle and delivering some $1.4 million in revenue to the business for 2020 and ongoing annual benefits of around $100,000.
Jeremy Ireland said: “Developing the idea meant looking ‘outside the box and adopting reuse and recycle philosophy. It was also ‘little bit personal’.”
“For John and me, winning the award was a big thing but it also felt good to help put some money back into the business during the COVID months, when things were a bit tight,” Jeremy said.
Jeremy and John were each presented with a trophy and a financial rewards package to the value of $10,000.
Stacey said: “The Company continuously encourages employees to constantly look at different ways of doing their jobs.”
“Our people are the experts in their fields and are the best at identifying ways in which we can achieve greater efficiencies in our workplace,” Ms Sleeman added.
“Leigh’s idea was a simple yet effective one that has saved the business a great deal of money already and is set to save a great deal more and that is money that can be re-invested in the business.”
“Similarly, Jeremy Ireland and John Fraser are not only saving us money but also preserving valuable resources by developing a method for recycling anode pins.”
Matt Howell, CEO, Tomago Aluminium, said: “The cancellation of last year’s Innovation and Excellence Awards because of COVID-19 restrictions had been particularly disappointing.”
“We made up for it this year though by adding last year’s nominations to this year’s list, giving us an extremely high calibre of nominees which was, without doubt, one of the best we’ve ever seen,” Mr Howell said.
“It was great to see the barriers pulled down after a particularly challenging year, giving everyone the freedom to be innovative and it was fantastic for us to have the opportunity to recognise and reward our employees for their achievements,” he added.
Responses
