The Robert E Fox Award

2009 Awards

This year the prestigious Robert E Fox Award for Continuous Process Improvement excellence was presented to the US Marine Corps’ Maintenance Center in Georgia and Azul-K, a Columbian soap manufacturer. Both companies achieved their success by combining the techniques of Theory of Constraints (TOC), Lean and Six Sigma.
Dr. Steven R. Covey, PhD was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The US Marine Corps’ Maintenance Center Albany, Georgia, (MCA)

The Center received the 2009 Fox Award for not-for-profit organizations. MCA transformed an area of their base that was actually a cost center, and with no additional resources, dramatically improved it so that it became a money making branch of the organization by contracting work for other branches of the government.

Azul-K

The soap manufacturing company from Bogota, Columbia, was presented the Fox Award for outstanding applications of CPI methods in a for-profit company. Through the implementation and sustainment of continuous improvement techniques, and with minimal investment, Azul-K attained unprecedented growth of over 400% during a 10-year period, and is now a major player in its industry.

Dr. Steven R. Covey, PhD

A special Robert E Fox Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dr Covey for contributions to the human side of process improvement strategies. The Fox Awards selection committee felt it fitting to honour Dr. Covey for his extensive contribution to improving individual lives and organisations throughout the world. The crowd was honoured by an outstanding acceptance speech by Dr. Covey describing an essential component to lasting improvement efforts, Culture Change within an organisation.

The Robert E. Fox Awards were presented in May at the annual Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) Symposium held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. The award’s namesake, Robert E. Fox, was on hand to present the honours as well as deliver the keynote address at the symposium. Many Process Improvement experts presented new innovations during the two-day event, which attracted an international audience of more than 250 executives and professionals.

Scott F. Jensen, executive director of the CPI Symposiums, described Robert E. Fox as one of the grandfathers of operations improvement. “Fox’s involvement with continuous improvement efforts dates back to his early work with Dr. Taiichi Ohno at Toyota Motors (LEAN), and Dr. Edwards Deming of the Total Quality Management revolution (Six Sigma). In 1980, he was among the first to tell us what was happening in Japan and the need for our companies to improve if they were going to survive. He not only warned us of the competitive threat, but also by working with Dr. Eli Goldratt, helped develop the Theory of Constraints as a viable response”.

2008 Awards

Two very different U.S organisations were honoured with the Robert E Fox Award for excellence in Organisational Management. Both organisations used a combination of Theory of Constraints (TOC), Lean and Six Sigma to transform their performance:

Dr. Gary Wadhwa and the Adirondack Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Center (AOMS) were presented with the Award in recognition of Dr. Wadhwa’s remarkable improvement results in the Adirondack medical clinic. Through the implementation of continuous process improvement techniques normally associated with manufacturing plants, Dr. Wadhwa and his team were able to dramatically improve the effectiveness of their surgery centre by increasing the number of patient visits by 60% in a 5 year period, while simultaneously increasing healthcare quality and patient satisfaction, with the same amount of physicians and resources. AOMS was also able to increase the amount of money collected from patients by 78% over the same time period.

These incredible improvements were the result of implementing a collaboration of organizational improvement philosophies comprised of the Theory of Constraints, LEAN, and Six Sigma, normally used in business, into the medical world. AOMS was able to properly identify and effectively exploit three of the most common struggles in the U.S Health Care industry: collections, patient recruitment and proper use of the doctors’ time.

Delta Airlines Technical Operations Team

Delta Airlines Technical Operations Team received the Award in recognition of their remarkable improvement in their performance. Delta’s application of the Theory of Constraints, Six Sigma and LEAN improvement techniques took an area of their company that was actually a cost centre, and with no additional resources, dramatically improved it to the point that it became a money making branch of the company by contracting work for other airlines.

The implementation of these improvement techniques became $312M in revenue in 2006 and revenues are projected to reach $514M in 2008. All from an area of the Airline industry that had traditionally been considered a drain on company profits and one that management would not typically consider as an option to increase already struggling revenues.

Numerous Process Improvement experts presented at the 2008 CPI Symposium, which attracted an international audience of more than 200 executives and professionals interested in organisational improvements. The Fox Award is renowned as the “Oscar of organisational improvement awards,” according to James Holt, professor of engineering management at Washington State University and a CPI expert. Holt, a member of the Fox Awards selection committee, said the awards were given to organisations that not only delivered clear bottom-line results, but showed strong prospects for continued improvement through innovative thinking.

For more information regarding the conference, please visit the CPI Symposium website.

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