MANAGEMENT : EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AT THE FRONT LINE
Proximity management and employee development spur performance at Danone’s
Longchamps plant in Argentina.
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1. Proximity management and employee development spur performance at Danone’s Longchamps plant in Argentina.
2. Employee safety and performance at Danone’s Longchamps plant, outside Buenos Aires in Argentina, are among the best in the group.
3. 900 employees work at Danone’s Longchamps fresh dairy products plant in Argentina, one of the 160 plants of the group. Danone counts 80,976 employees.
4. The plant’s success is grounded in participatory management and the empowerment and initiative of its 900 employees.
5. Three key programs established help managers: the Wise program for workplace safety; our Danone Manufacturing Way (DaMaWay) program to optimize production processes; and DanOwners, which empowers machine operators by making each of them responsible.
6. At Danone, the key to safety is Wise, a rigorous program that we began deploying in 2004 and is now in effect in all our business units.
7. From 2006 to 2008, the frequency of work-related accidents requiring sick leave declined from 7.6 per million hours worked to 5.2—a 32% decline. The most striking reduction came in the Waters division, where the figure dropped 77%, from 13.4 to 4.7.
8. With Wise deployed simultaneously, several hundred small improvements were gradually made to the production line. Safety is now second nature for all employees, all the time. Once an operator has identified a problem and proposed a solution, it must be taken seriously.
9. Just three years ago, Longchamps had one accident requiring sick leave every month, and around 100 safety incidents a year in all. But in 2009 the giant plant had no accidents and only 16 incidents in all.
10. At Longchamps, each worker is now the dueño or owner, of his or her position.
11. The DaMaWay program began in late 2006 with a pilot project involving 20 people and one machine. At the end of 2007 it was expanded to include all 200 employees in the cheese and dessert sector, and in 2008 it was rolled out plant-wide.
12. Longchamps owes its success primarily to proximity management built on small cells averaging about 20 employees each. Each team has a team leader.
13. In 2009, the system generated over 8,000 ideas, resulting in improvements to processes and equipment. Such small changes make the difference between “good” and “excellent”.
14. Longchamps wants to be a great place to grow. Over the past three years, investment in training has risen 50%.
15. Over the past three years, investment in training has risen 50%, with managers receiving more instruction and operator training time increasing sharply, from four hours a year to 24.
16. In 2009 Danone launched the Danone Leadership College Initially, it aims to bolster the leadership skills of 15,000 team leaders and their readiness to accept responsibilities, enabling them to help all their team members progress in the same spirit.
17. In 2009 the Danone People Survey for 2009—the first covering employees at all levels, showed engagement reaching a high 85%.
18. In 2009 the Danone Peolple Survey questionnaire was translated into 34 languages distributed to 68,000 people in 66 countries. Results show employee engagement reaching a high 85% % compared with a 78% average for the consumer goods sector.
19. Other significant result of the Danone Peolple survey: 85% considered Danone a good place to work, compared with the average of 74% for consumer goods businesses.
20. Results for 2009 also show significant improvement in opinions on all criteria from 2007, and a narrower gap between findings for managers on the one hand, and supervisors and workers on the other.
21. Mi fabrica es linda (my plant is beautiful)—Longchamps employees have made the slogan their own.
22. Every morning 1,200,000 liters of fresh milk arrive at the Longchamps plant, which makes an essential contribution to the local community’s social and economic well-being.
23. Argentina, with its population of 40.9 million*, is a leading contributor to growth at Danone.
24. Markets in Argentina—where Danone has done business since 1995—are growing steadily. We are now number one nationwide for fresh dairy products and waters, and number two for baby nutrition and medical nutrition.
25. Longchamp is very active to promote safety practises to schools (the plant was divided into eight sectors, and each adopted a local schools) or healthy education to youngsters through the Danone Foundation’s Nutrition program for example.