Winners
2021 Champions for Quality Awards Winners
The 4th annual Champions for Quality Awards feature public award nominations from manufacturers around the world as well as insight-driven awards from the EASE plant floor audit platform. The awards recognize individuals, specific manufacturing facilities and entire organizations across a range of categories. Congratulations to our 2021 winners for your ongoing and consistent commitment to manufacturing quality.
Public Nominated Awards
The following award winners and honorable mentions were all nominated by the pubic and selected by a panel of Ease employees based on the stories and information provided.
Ambassador
Ambassadors are known for fostering a culture of quality at their manufacturing plants with layered process audits and other quality initiatives.
Winner: Itze Porras – Valeo (Juarez, Mexico)
Influencer
Influencers have dedicated their careers to training leaders and influencing quality on a global scale.
Winner: Dorian Ross, Yanfeng (McCalla, AL)
Honorable Mentions:
Danijela Zupanic, HBPO (Ontario, Canada)
Charity Andrews, SRG Global, LLC (Kentucky, USA)
Leadership
Leadership nominees are strong advocates for quality and operations programs with organization-wide benefits. This year two individuals stood out from the rest for their outstanding leadership and we are delighted to announce to Leadership Award winners.
Winner: Matt Dulebohn – Musashi (Michigan, USA)
Winner: Amanda Gross – Magna (Tennessee, USA)
Honorable Mentions:
Jason Viers, MacLean-Fogg CS (Michigan)
Eric Collins, Freudenberg Filtration Technologies (Kentucky, USA)
Trailblazer
For this category, the nominees had to use EASE plant floor audit software for more than just layered process audits, leveraging the platform for other audit types including safety audits, 5S, and more.
Winner: Stacy Laffoon, Jupiter Bach (Florida, USA)
Honorable Mentions:
Ricardo Pineda, SLPT Global Pump Group (Oklahoma, USA)
Categories Based on EASE Data
The following category winners and honorable mentions were determined using insights data from the EASE plant floor audit platform, recognizing individuals, specific manufacturing facilities and entire organizations for their commitment to quality excellence!
Plant of the Year
The Winner of this award was required to be conducting a minimum of 2,500 plant floor audits per year and creating at least 500 mitigations in the same period. To choose the winner the Ease team looked at a combination of weighted audit insights including the percentage of on-time completed plant floor audits and on-time completed mitigations.
Winner: Eaton Electric Equipment, Changzhou Plant (China)
Honorable Mentions:
Nemak, García Plant 1 (Mexico)
Nemak, García Plant 2 (Mexico)
Magna, Saint Thomas Ontario Plant, Cosma Structures Group (Canada)
Exemplis, Tijuana Plant (Mexico)
Auditor of the Year
A plant floor auditor is not a dedicated position within a manufacturing plant, but a role carried out by employees across the plant – including those that may not be part of quality or operations. The EASE platform includes a gamification feature that awards badges to auditors based on performance. The winner of this category was required to already hold an EASE Guru badge and was chosen based on audit completion rate, the number of audits completed and audit findings with the majority of their audits being focused on quality audits such as layered process audits.
Winner: Alessio Petaccia, Dayco (Chieti Site)
Best Implementation
The Customer Success Team implements EASE at hundreds of plants every year. The winner was chosen based on their engagement throughout the implementation from pilot to final deployment, their advocacy throughout the process, as well as the team’s audit activity and completion rates in the weeks and months following the go-live.
Winner: Unified Brands – Vicksburg/Weidman Plants (USA)
Implementation champions:
Marcus McCoy, Quality Manager Michigan Operations
Kulmoris Joiner, Quality Analyst
Honorable Mentions
Lansing Campus , Dakkota Systems (Evan Urbanski)
Czech Republic, Eissman (Marie Krizkova)
Quality Transformation
The winner of this award is the manufacturer that has demonstrated the most significant improvement in performance within the EASE platform over a 12-month period across all of their facilities. During this period the winner had to meet a number of minimum benchmark data points as well as have the highest percentage increase in on-time audits and mitigations.
Winner: Maclean Fogg
Outstanding Contributions to Quality
This is a new award in 2021 and recognizes an organization that has demonstrated exceptional performance in quality across multiple award categories, multiple plants and through multiple nominated individuals. This year’s winner had 3 plants ranked in the top ten and strong representation is every award category.
Winner: Dana
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