The improvement ideas of Liberty Ostrava´s employees have saved the company CZK 9 million last year
Ostrava February 7, 2020 – Like the previous years, employees of the Ostrava steelworks came up with improvement ideas also last year. These improvements will e.g. save time, improve efficiency of production, or provide more safety at work. In total, they submitted 294 improvement proposals. 246 of these were approved for implementation and all of them have already been successfully implemented. The implemented improvement ideas have generated savings of CZK 9 million. The authors of the improvement ideas have received remuneration of a total value of CZK 1 million.
"Last year, employees presented 294 ideas to improve the production process, reduce costs or environmental impact. Most of them have been accepted for implementation, which shows the good quality of these ideas. We have been keeping a detailed track of improvement ideas for 17 years and until now employees have come up with more than 3200 improvement ideas," says Sarka Pazdiorova, who is responsible for improvement ideas in Liberty Ostrava.
Last year´s ideas for improvements that are already being used in practice include, for example, the reduction of the cost for repairs of pumping devices, maintaining working temperature in tandem furnaces, introduction of the 5S method in the adjustment shops of the rolling mill, and separation of unwanted material at the rotary tippler.
Last year, employees were also successful with small improvements. The main objective of these small improvements is to reduce administrative burden, speed up the approval processes or simply lower the labour intensity of particular activities. They proposed 203 small improvements last year and were rewarded for each of the implementable ideas, too.
Among the last year´s best innovators are Karel Lupa of rolling Mills, who is at the same time the best innovator of the company, Kamil Durcak of the maintenance plant and Miroslav Tupa of the steel shop.
Liberty Ostrava is an integrated steel business with an annual production of c. 2 million tonnes of steel, which is mainly used in construction, machinery and oil & gas industries. The company is a domestic leader in the manufacture of road barriers and tubes. In addition to the Czech market, it supplies its products to more than 40 countries around the world. Together with its subsidiaries in Ostrava, the company has 6,150 employees. As a result of the above-standard greening, the company manufactures its products with a minimum possible environmental footprint. It is part of Liberty Steel, a global steel and mining business. Liberty Steel is part of the GFG Alliance, a global group of energy, mining, metals, engineering, logistics, and financial services businesses, headquartered in London, with a presence in around 30 countries worldwide. The Alliance has a global workforce of around 30,000 people and a turnover exceeding US$20 billion.
