Tetra Pak’s packaging material factory in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia, has earned the world’s top award for manufacturing excellence. Presented by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance, the World Class Total Production Maintenance Award recognizes facilities that have achieved outstanding levels of production reliability and efficiency. In the past 40 years, only 20 companies worldwide have received this accolade.

“The World Class Total Production Maintenance (TPM) Award is a great recognition of the ongoing efforts of our highly committed people at our Gornji Milanovac plant,” says Eric Baudier, executive vice president of supply chain operations at Tetra Pak.

“The TPM mindset is well established throughout our organization. We began to apply the World Class Manufacturing practices of TPM in 1999 and have since rolled out this methodology across all factories and every part of our supply chain worldwide. This demonstrates our commitment to continuously raising the bar for ourselves, delivering the best quality and service for our customers,” says Baudier.

TPM was introduced by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) in 1971 and is defined as the ultimate method of pursuing production efficiency. It is intended to encompass the entire company from the shopfloor to the executive boardroom, creating a true company-wide commitment to production excellence, and is designed to avoid any losses by creating a culture of 'zero accidents, zero defects and zero breakdowns'.

The JIPM award system judges the results of a plant’s activities and presents awards at five progressive levels: Excellence, Consistency, Special, Advanced Special and World Class. On average, it takes about 10 years for a plant to go from the first to the highest level. The Serbia-based factory started its cooperation with JIPM in 2001 and received its first Award for TPM Excellence in 2005. The fact that the factory has passed all audit levels is testament to the continuous progress Tetra Pak has made in delivering competitive converting solutions, through driving operational and environmental excellence. Globally, Tetra Pak has received more than 70 JIPM awards over the last 12 years.

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