Committed to Your Success
Sweepers - Dorinda Zalauskas, Eric LaTulippe, Bonnie Hamelin, Mike Letendre, Chris Toomey, Chris Kowalczyk
When the pandemic started, the immediate focus became, “How do we keep our employees safe, while ensuring that we can keep making products for our customers?” As an essential business supplying the medical, personal care, food, beverage, and transportation markets, employee health had to be a major focus. Without our employees, nothing goes out the door. Of particular concern were our production and lab employees – more than half of FLEXcon’s employee population - whose jobs require them to be on site to complete their work.
Armed with recommendations from the CDC and all the tools in our lean methodology toolbox, the Sweepers were born. Comprised of a cross-functional group with specialists in lean methodology, this team was tasked with creating standardized cleaning and disinfecting protocols throughout all FLEXcon locations with the goal of minimizing contraction of the virus. This would help ensure that all of our team members would go home safe and well to better serve our customers and the community. Not that cleaning wasn’t already happening, but their challenge was to standardize and raise the bar, as well as ensure that every single employee understood and could follow the process.
“This was a collaborative effort like no other,” says Bonnie Hamelin, beta manager. “We had many groups marching toward the same goal – to achieve a standard that everyone could have confidence in.” That confidence made employees feel safe coming to work every day. And we’ve had very few instances of COVID-19 among our employees, which has translated into meeting our customers’ needs without disruption as they also navigate the pandemic.
“I feel safe coming to work,” says Dorinda Zalauskas, manufacturing projects administrator, “and I feel that many of my co-workers do as well. I also see great teamwork and communication every day resulting in further improvements. It’s a win-win, for our employees and our customers.”