Prestigious Shingo Prize Recognizes Martin Lake, Comanche Peak for Operational Excellence
Luminant’s Martin Lake Complex and Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant have both been recognized by the prestigious Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in recognition for their world-class improvement tools, systems and principles.
Martin Lake received the Silver Medallion and Comanche Peak the Bronze Medallion, the second- and third-highest awards, respectively, in their first attempts at the Shingo Prize. The Shingo Prize has been called “the Nobel prize of manufacturing” and recognizes business excellence in North America.
“It is extremely unusual for first submissions to receive recognition medallions, so it is a great validation of the progress and direction of our Operating System,” said Paul Dowden, vice president of Luminant’s Operating System. “The Shingo examiners’ insights give us great ideas to shape our path forward. The key to operating efficiency is keeping plant personnel throughout the plant and mine complex focused on continually looking for ways to do our work better.”
Luminant’s Operating System defines the way businesses or plants are operated and creates a common language for evaluating performance.
Martin Lake, a lignite-fueled plant and mine complex in East Texas’ Rusk County, was recognized for its relentless effort to reduce waste, continuously improve power generation output, and achieve excellence in safety records and programs, as well as its significant productivity increases, greatly improved teamwork, equipment reliability improvements, downward-trending costs and the generation and implementation of hundreds of employee ideas.
Comanche Peak, Luminant’s nuclear facility near Glen Rose, was recognized for its world record-setting steam generator replacement, industry recognized reductions in operating costs, increased revenue generation, unwavering focus on employees and community safety, long standing improvement efforts, team based-problem solving abilities, environmental accomplishments and partnering with customers and suppliers.
“The Martin Lake Complex and Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant have proven themselves as leaders in lean manufacturing and business processes,” said Robert D. Miller, executive director of The Shingo Prize. “Their Silver and Bronze Medallions highlight how lean delivers global competitiveness and will control a company’s destiny to be cost competitive.”
Through its participation in the Shingo process, Luminant is able to benchmark against the practices and results seen in the highest-performing companies across many diverse industries in North America.
The Shingo Prize honors the late Dr. Shigeo Shingo, who is considered one of the world’s leading experts in improving manufacturing processes and who helped create, train and write about many aspects of the renowned Toyota Production System and related production systems. The Shingo Prize’s philosophy is that world-class performance for quality, cost and delivery can be achieved through lean principles and techniques in core manufacturing and business processes.
Luminant’s application process included submitting a detailed and comprehensive 100-page document highlighting each site’s achievements and a site visit from a team of examiners from Texas companies who are trained in the Shingo award process.
The Shingo Prize is administered by the Office of Business Relations in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, designated as a Carnegie Foundation Research I University.
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About Luminant
Luminant, a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings Corp. (EFH), is a competitive power generation business, including mining, wholesale marketing and trading, construction and development operations. Luminant has over 18,300 MW of generation in Texas, including 2,300 MW of nuclear and 5,800 MW of coal-fueled generation capacity. Luminant is also the largest purchaser of wind-generated electricity in Texas and fifth largest in the United States. EFH is a Dallas-based energy holding company that has a portfolio of competitive and regulated energy subsidiaries, primarily in Texas. Visit https://www.luminant.com/ or http://www.energyfutureholdings.com/ for more information.
About The Shingo Prize
The Shingo Prize was established in 1988 to promote an awareness of lean concepts and to recognize companies that achieve world-class status. The Shingo Research Prize recognizes and promotes outstanding research and writing regarding new knowledge and understanding of operational excellence consistent with the philosophy of the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. The Shingo Prize is a non-profit organization administered by the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Visit its website at http://www.shingoprize.org/ to view current and past research recognition.