Avery Dennison's Mexican Plant Named Top Place to Work

Avery Dennison's Tijuana, Mexico manufacturing plant has been named one of the 10 best plants in North America by IndustryWeek in the magazine's annual competition.

Each year, a panel of the magazine's editors and outside experts recognize North American facilities that are on the leading edge of efforts to increase competitiveness, enhance customer satisfaction and create stimulating and rewarding work environments. This year, Avery Dennison's plant, which manufactures Avery brand office products, stood out from other entries with consistently high quality, rigorous maintenance and safety results, and especially its use of Enterprise Lean Sigma (ELS) to create efficiencies, improve productivity and increase customer satisfaction.

"Tijuana is a model of a continuously learning organization," said Greg Temple, Avery Dennison vice president, global operations and Enterprise Lean Sigma. "They have overcome significant business challenges over the years through a relentless focus on waste and process discipline, and IndustryWeek's recognition is very gratifying."

Among its accomplishments, the Office Products plant has operated with 98 percent "first-pass" yield of products; achieved nearly $6 million in documented improvement projects in 2009; and gained a total of 310,000 square feet over the last five years through ELS initiatives.

The review panel also noted that one of the plant's outstanding characteristics is the depth of employee engagement. IndustryWeek noted the high number of employee suggestions and cited the example of production worker Azucena Robles, who proposed using a compressed air gun at a strategic point on the assembly line for Avery Glue Stics to keep the line moving while label applicators are refilled.

"Everyone in the Tijuana plant, from the plant leadership team to the operators on the shop floor, is using creative problem-solving skills," said Tim Bond, group vice president, Avery Dennison Office Products. "One of their products is continuous improvement."

IndustryWeek will honor the Tijuana team during a ceremony this April in Atlanta, Ga., and will feature the facility in its January issue, which is available online now. The competition is in its 21st year and previous recent winners include Raytheon, Philips and Lockheed Martin.