Johnson Controls Employees Help to Reduce Cost, Waste and Increase Safety & Quality
19 August 1999
Johnson Controls Employees Help to Reduce Cost, Waste and Increase Safety, Quality Through Team Rally Event
Supplier recognizes and rewards employees
For sharing best practices worldwide
PLYMOUTH, Mich., Aug. 19 -- Cartoon characters, movie stars
and rock and roll idols have taught lessons, touched lives and entertained
people of all ages. Many famous characters are experiencing new life in
Johnson Controls' Team Rally '99, an innovative employee
involvement program that gets underway this month to share manufacturing best
practices among all company locations worldwide. Participating teams in last
year's Team Rally events helped the company and its automaker customers save
tens of millions of dollars.
The Team Rally event is a competition of employees at Johnson Controls'
wholly-owned and joint-venture locations worldwide. It is sponsored by the
Johnson Controls Leadership Institute, the company's training and development
organization. Teams of 10 people use entertaining skits to present proven
problem-solving practices they have initiated at their facilities.
Competing teams are evaluated by a panel of company judges -- made up of
plant managers and company executives -- regarding use of best practices. The
continuous improvement projects are judged on the following criteria: cost and
waste reduction; safety, productivity and quality improvements; product and
process innovation; and customer satisfaction. Skits range from parodies of
television shows such as "Gilligan's Island" and "Sesame Street" to movies
including "The Sound of Music" and "Star Wars."
"The theme of Team Rally, 'Recognize, Reward, Share,' describes the goal
of the program," said Brian Koop, vice president and senior executive for the
Johnson Controls Leadership Institute. "We want to recognize the continuous
improvement efforts that are being made by our employees, reward the team
members involved and provide a forum to share these ideas with our workforce
around the world."
Teams can advance through three levels of competition -- facility
events, regional semifinals and world finals. The regional semifinals will be
held in a number of North American and South American locations this fall,
including Atlanta; Milwaukee; St. Louis; Toronto; Mexico City; and Buenos
Aires, Argentina. Other regional semifinals are being held this summer in the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic. The
world finals will take place from December 9 to 12 at the Walt Disney World
Resort in Orlando, Florida.
To enter the competition, Team Rally participants from Johnson Controls
and the company's affiliated joint-venture companies post the results of their
continuous improvement efforts on ECHO -- a global database that enables
manufacturing plants to share their best practices -- and submit project
details to the Team Rally planning team.
While Team Rally is entertaining and fun, it's all about business
improvement, said Koop. Participants are judged on use of continuous
improvement tools, efficiency in sharing best practices with other facilities,
presentation, value to Johnson Controls and value to the company's automotive
customers.
"In addition to productivity and quality improvements, Team Rally has been
incredibly successful from an employee morale standpoint," Koop said. "It
shows that we value our employees and their ideas, and it provides an
exceptional opportunity for team members to meet their peers and celebrate
what a tremendously talented and diverse workforce we have."
Last year's Team Rally world champions -- a group from Johnson Controls'
facility in Athens, Tennessee -- performed a musical American diner skit,
titled "The Leader of the Pack," to highlight improvements made on a rear-seat
frame business project. The team generated annual savings of more than $6
million for Johnson Controls and its customers.
"The high energy, enthusiasm and positive impact demonstrated by the team
members shows us the tremendous potential of our employees," said Linda Hogan,
director of performance improvement - Europe. "It recognizes that we have
leaders at all levels of our organization."
The company launched the annual Team Rally event in 1996 to increase
awareness and use of the Johnson Controls Manufacturing System. This is the
company's lean production system which is based on zero tolerance for waste, a
stable production environment and "Just-In-Time" manufacturing. Team Rally
participation has increased from 31 teams in North America in 1996 to 125
teams from around the world in 1999.
The Plymouth, Michigan-based automotive business of Johnson Controls --
which employs more than 57,000 people at 275 facilities worldwide --
achieved US$9.3 billion in sales for the 1998 fiscal year. In model-year 1999,
it will supply interior products for more than 22 million vehicles.
Johnson Controls, Inc. is a global market leader in automotive systems and
facility management and control. In the automotive market, it is a major
supplier of seating and interior systems, and batteries. For non-residential
facilities, Johnson Controls provides building control systems and services,
energy management and integrated facility management. Johnson Controls,
founded in 1885, has headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its sales for 1998
totaled US$12.6 billion.
NOTE TO EDITORS: For access to other Johnson Controls news releases and
additional company information, visit the company's site on the World Wide Web
at http://www.johnsoncontrols.com.
CONTACT: David Roznowski of Johnson Controls, 734-254-5632.
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