Ash Grove Cement Co.’s Durkee, Ore., Plant Wins Top Safety Award
Ash Grove Cement Co. produces quality Portland and masonry cements, and the company relies on a culture of safety throughout its daily operations. Accordingly, its most prestigious award is the L.T. Sunderland Safety Excellence Award. For 2015, Ash Grove’s Durkee, Ore., plant won the top honor in the annual company-wide competition.
The L.T. Sunderland Safety Excellence Award was established in 2006 and evaluates the company’s eight cement manufacturing plants and two grinding facilities on an extensive matrix of data related to health and safety processes and results. The Ash Grove Safety Leadership Steering Committee scores each of the metrics and selects the top-performing plants as finalists and the highest scoring plant as the award winner.
Each of the company’s manufacturing plants, grinding facilities and port terminals actively participate in the company’s health and safety management system, which includes injury prevention, compliance management, audits and training to ensure a safe work environment for employees.
For 2015, the finalist for the L.T. Sunderland Safety Excellence Award was the Rivergate lime plant in Portland, Oregon.
In addition to the L.T. Sunderland Safety Excellence Award, the company’s plants in Durkee, Oregon; Leamington, Utah; Midlothian, Texas; as well as the Rivergate lime plant in Portland, Oregon, were recognized with one of the Ash Grove Safety Leadership gold awards. Louisville, Nebraska, and Montana City, Montana, plants each received silver.
This year marks the second time the Durkee plant has won the award and the fourth time it has been a gold level finalist. The cement manufacturing plant employs 107 people and began operations in 1979. The plant expanded in 1998 and is certified as ISO 14001 compliant.
Ash Grove’s Montana City, Mont., Plant Wins Top Energy Award
For 2015, the Montana City, Mont., plant won top honors in the annual Ash Grove Energy Management (AGem) Outstanding Plant of the Year competition.
Since 2008, eight Ash Grove cement manufacturing plants and two grinding facilities have competed to earn the award. Each facility is evaluated on an extensive matrix of data that is focused on energy use, efficiency and cost. The AGem process involves the entire plant workforce as well as overhead and support groups. Most suggestions to reduce energy usage and costs come from plant employees. More than four years ago the process had exceeded the goal of saving $20 million in energy costs across all plants and terminals, and it continues to drive additional savings.
Each plant has its own AGem champion who coordinates the AGem activities, which include monthly meetings, idea promotion, idea solicitation and project evaluation. The AGem process partners the company with local vendors, national suppliers, utilities, energy suppliers and contractors as well as local and state governments to identify, implement, finance or develop worthy ideas. New projects since 2012 have included installation of LED lighting, variable frequency drive motors, high efficiency motors and more efficient processing equipment.
Lippert scores each plant every month based on 12 metrics. Those scores are tabulated and the plant with the highest score is recommended to Ash Grove senior staff as the leading plant to receive the award. For 2015, Ash Grove senior staff selected Montana City as the outstanding AGem plant of the year.
The Montana City cement manufacturing plant employs 79 and began operations in 1964. The plant has earned numerous safety awards including the Ash Grove President’s Gold Safety award.
Ash Grove’s Leamington, Utah, Plant Wins New Award for Quality Control
In 2015, the company introduced the Ash Grove Excellence in Quality Control award, with the Leamington, Utah, plant receiving the inaugural honor.
“The Quality Award was established to recognize the plant that best implements quality control practices to ensure our customers a consistent, dependable, high quality product that makes Ash Grove Cement Co. the supplier of choice,” said Mike Hrizuk, Ash Grove senior vice president – manufacturing.
The company is using the Plant Technical Information Systems software to aggregate and display the data company-wide enabling plants to compete against one another for the best score.
The Leamington plant was purchased by Ash Grove Cement Co. in 1989 and currently employs 88. The plant has received numerous awards for safety and efficiency including winning the gold level of the Ash Grove Safety Leadership Award for the past 10 years.
Source: Ash Grove Cement Company, www.ashgrove.com