Adam Kane, Senior Sales Executive at Business River, presents the Operational Excellence in Manufacturing Award to Conor Baxter, Operational Excellence Manager at Mannok, and Paul Melanophy, Business Change Manager at Mannok

Mannok Wins Operational Excellence in Manufacturing Award

Mannok has won the Operational Excellence in Manufacturing category at this year’s Operational Excellence Awards.

An awards programme, held annually in Dublin, it recognises and reward individuals, teams and organisations who have made a commitment to achieving operational excellence and business transformation.

Operational Excellence (OpEx) is an approach to business management that emphasizes continuous improvement across all aspects of the business and within all business processes by creating a culture where management and employees are invested in business outcomes and empowered to implement change.

Mannok has been working towards operational efficiency since January 2022, following the launch of the Mannok Leading Excellence Programme, its operational excellence strategy.

It was the rollout of this strategy, a transferable framework based on four core pillars of Lean, Sustainability, Skills and Development and Continuous Improvement, and employee receptiveness to the programme, which helped the company achieve this OpEx award.

Some of the notable achievements to date from the work of the Mannok OpEx team include:

· Through the Skills Development Programme over 1000 key processes have been reviewed, standardised and developed into video training, within its Packaging, Roof Tiles, PIR Insulation and Bagged Cement facilities, to create standardised, safer ways of working.

· Over 320 staff at all levels of the business have completed Lean training. The training ranges from in-house foundation level to QQI accredited Level 9 awards.

· An automated card swiping process for drivers at the company’s weighbridge has reduced weigh in time by75%.

· Through the implementation of preventative maintenance and problem-solving training to employees, the amount of downtime across Mannok’s facilities has significantly reduced and over the last 12 months the plant availability has increased by 16%. All unplanned stoppages are now tagged and investigated, with actions assigned to help mitigate the chances of the issue arising again.

Commenting on Mannok’s OpEx Team’s work Operations Director, Kevin Lunney, said,

“I would like to congratulate the Operational Excellence Team on this prestigious award and the wider Mannok team, who have all been very receptive to adopting the operational excellence core principles of teamwork, problem-solving, innovation and leadership.

It was a very proud moment for the company to be recognised along with some of the most successful businesses across the country. It was also a very proud moment, when Conor Baxter, our Operational Excellence Manager, was crowned Operations Manager of the Year. On behalf of the whole company, I’d like to commend Conor and thank him for all his work.”