Mercury Marine Receives Brunswick Safety Award

 

Mercury Marine's Juarez, Mexico, plant recently received the Brunswick Corporation Chairman's Safety Award for excellence in safety and employee engagement. The presentation held on Friday June 4 in Juarez, featured Brunswick Corporation CEO Dustin McCoy, Brunswick Corporation COO Mark Schwabero, Mercury Marine V.P. of Global Operations Chris Drees and other executives at the company.

In conjunction with this award, Brunswick will donate $10,000 on behalf of Juarez employees to a charitable organization of their choice. The workers chose to make the donation to Centro Humano de Liderazgo, A.C. - Soles de Anapra.

Mercury Marine’s continual focus on safety across all facets of the business led to spirited competition between Mercury’s worldwide facilities in the selection of the 2014 S.A.F.E Award winner at the sixth-annual Mercury Marine Health, Safety and Environmental Summit on Nov. 13, 2014. In the end, an innovative Employee Suggestion System devised at Mercury Marine’s Plant 22 in Juarez, Mexico, won the 2014 S.A.F.E. Award, for giving voice to employee concerns regarding safety, quality and productivity in the facility.

According to Vicente Rodriguez, Mercury Juarez general manager, the management team then started asking, “What needs to be done differently in order to promote engagement and participation, and most of all, for everybody to understand our highest priority – for every employee to go back home feeling healthy and safe every day.”

By 2012, the Juarez plant installed multiple suggestion stations on the production floor and deployed a communication campaign, so all employees could learn the suggestion process. The response was overwhelming: Plant 22 received more than 1,700 suggestions in 2014. The ESS also was digitized in 2014 with the installment of 12 touchscreen stations, allowing for further engagement.

“These systems have enhanced our culture, in terms of teamwork, our employees’ pride in their own improvements and empowerment,” Rodriguez said.

In 2014, the Juarez plant achieved more than one million hours without a lost-time incident, earning the plant the aforementioned 2014 Chairman’s Safety Award.

“Our Juarez plant sets a standard of safety, employee engagement and a winning culture,” said Chris Drees, Mercury Marine vice president of global operations. “Their continued dedication to best safety practices is used as a blue print for the entire organization.  Our Juarez plant is attracting some high quality employees who continue to work well within the culture that we have built there.”