Energizer leader to keynote lean maintenance conference

Steve Hockridge, the global lean enterprise director for Energizer Battery Company, will provide one of the keynote addresses at “Lean Manufacturing 2006: Lean Tools for Maintenance & Reliability,” a national conference on lean maintenance best practices. The event, created by Noria Corporation's Reliable Plant magazine, will be held at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on September 18-20.

Other case study speakers at this conference include:

• Greg Walker, technical support manager, Autoliv North America (“Maintenance's Critical Role in the Autoliv Production System”)
• Tim Davison, Asset CARE planner, Coors Brewing Company (“Lean Beer: Better Planning is Coors' Silver Bullet”)
• Aaron Blawn, facilities supervisor, Intel (“Intel's High-Tech Blend of Lean, Safety and Reliability”)
• Terry Keown, principal consultant, Life Cycle Engineering  (“Lean Maintenance as the Driver for Lean Manufacturing”)
• Scott Haulotte, organizational development and Continuous Improvement manager, Karl Schmidt Unisia (“How Karl Schmidt Unisia Used Lean to Build an Effective Maintenance System”)
• Pamela Young, TPM coordinator, Presto Products – a division of Alcoa (“Presto! Lean Maintenance Benefits Are in the Bag”)
• Todd Dennis, plant manager, Batesville Casket Company (“Empowerment and Kaizen: A Way of Life at Batesville”)
• Rex Gallaher, former director of the U.S. Postal Service’s national Maintenance Technical Support Center (“Mentoring, A Catalyst for Optimizing the Lean Culture”)
• Rod Wardle, manager of electronics group, Young Electric Sign Company (“Lean at YESCO: A Sign of the Times”)

In his September 19 keynote address, entitled “Lean Reliability Keeps Energizer Going and Going,” Hockridge will explain how Energizer has achieved incredible results in a short amount of time through focused activities that push the envelope on people, process and production performance. Hockridge will demonstrate how Energizer, the world's largest battery manufacturer, seeks to improve by bringing together lean and reliability. Company leaders have very lofty lean-related goals, and understand that they cannot improve labor productivity, achieve lead-time reductions, reduce inventory or increase product flow to the customer without reliable equipment. By using a host of lean tools to improve equipment reliability to the point where "it's always ready when you need it," Energizer has emerged as a true lean leader.

Hockridge has worked with Energizer for more than 18 years, starting on the operations side of the business as a quality engineer. He has filled roles of increasing levels of responsibility – from quality management to plant management, and, for the past three years, his current role as the leader of the organization's lean transformation efforts. Besides his work in the United States, he has had the opportunity with Energizer to manage a startup facility operation in China for three years.

To learn more about Energizer’s marriage of lean manufacturing and reliability improvement concepts, please read the Reliable Plant cover story titled “Energizer goes with the flow”: