Newsprinters Eurocentral has been awarded the coveted Shingo Prize, the highest accolade available worldwide for operational and manufacturing excellence. Adding to the celebrations is the fact that this has never been achieved in the UK before across any industry.

The Shingo Prize is the highest global recognition that an organisation can achieve and is awarded annually to those manufacturers or service providers that can clearly demonstrate a culture where principles of operational excellence are deeply embedded into the thinking and behaviour of all leaders, managers and staff.

This major achievement places News UK, Newsprinters alongside an elite group of world-class organisations that includes Barnes Aerospace, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott (vascular), Rexam (beverage cans), Goodyear, John Deere and many more.

Eurocentral started working towards applying the Shingo Model to the site strategy in recent years and in mid-2012 decided to submit an application to be assessed against the model.

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This submission led to the site being assessed in July this year and subsequently awarded the highest level of recognition. Companies can achieve recognition at three levels – Bronze, Silver and The Prize – and generally on average it takes organisations 12 years of commitment to the model to achieve the Prize level.

Eurocentral’s Continuous Improvement Strategy was developed in 2007 with the implementation of its first workplace organisation and asset champion programme.

This has progressively improved, developed and matured with the introduction of ISO standards in Health & Safety, Environmental and Quality; total productive manufacturing and finally with the introduction of The Shingo Prize Model framework piloted in Eurocentral in 2011.

The Newsprinters CI strategy has delivered business improvements to quality, cost, delivery and staff engagement that has driven the business to new global standards of newspaper manufacturing over the last seven years.

Newsprinters MD Brian McGee said:

The Shingo Prize Model has transformed a good company into a great company, by engaging and aligning all staff to that single purpose to be recognised as the best newspaper manufacturer in the world.

It has been a huge team effort by all staff members at Eurocentral but the two heroes of the hour are Ross McCombe and George Donaldson to whom a special thanks must be given to. Many, many thanks to all involved for their hard work.