Innovation At Sommerton
BHP Direction - November 1997 - BHPInnovation at Somerton
This article was featured in BHP Direction. Something remarkable is being created at BHP Structural and Pipeline Products at Somerton in Victoria, Australia. And it's not just innovative new products and processes.
Somerton uses innovative and secret techniques to produce galvanised structural and building products The new products, marketed under the name DuraGal®, are set to change the world structural building products market. The products have been developed in response to customer demand, following the success of DuraGaP rectangular hollow sections, which have been manufactured at Newcastle for the past five years. DuraGal®, a galvanising technique which applies a special zinc coating to the steel product during production, rather than hot dipping later. The finished product needs no blasting or painting, is lighter, stronger and corrosion resistant.
Steve Crossingham is a manager at Somerton in Victoria, Austrailia. At Somerton there is an equally innovative approach to people. The work force is team based. Every operational worker has the same title and is paid the same salary. In each team one person is responsible for managing a particular area (focus point) of the team's production: safety and environment, wealth creation (costs), quality, total productive maintenance, competence development (training) and value delivery (production). For each of these focus points there is an overall manager. According to Steve Crossingham, the Manager of the facility, the aim of the structure is self- managing teams. "Leadership is a shared responsibility Eventually everyone in the team learns every job. There's multi-skilling and there's a lot more harmony in the team because of the shared leadership," he said.
The results speak for themselves. A commissioning goal was set to achieve 50 per cent target yield in the first six months they achieved 75 per cent in the first week.
