Modern’s 2012 Productivity Achievement Award winners

Each year, Modern’s Productivity Achievement Awards honor companies that have been featured as system reports on Modern’s cover in the previous year. These companies have made outstanding strides in improving operations through materials handling and related information systems.

The categories of Manufacturing and Warehousing/Distribution recognize companies for their ability to provide outstanding customer service, quickly respond to changing business conditions, deliver orders that meet customer requirements, and improve operations. The Innovation category honors a company that successfully employed a solution that defies convention.

This year’s panel of Productivity Achievement Awards judges includes: Bryan Jensen, vice president with supply chain consultancy St. Onge; John Ling, executive vice president of global operations and supply chain management for Crate and Barrel; and George Prest, chief executive officer for the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA). 

The winners are:
Manufacturing
Otis Technology
“Otis Technology pursued the path less traveled in a small manufacturing concern, drove a fiscal and competitive advantage from it, and more importantly, redirected the labor savings into further process improvement energy.”

Warehousing/Distribution
Oriental Trading Company
“Oriental Trading achieved extraordinary improvements in its operation through thoughtful and substantive materials handling equipment investment in high volume, cycle-time-sensitive environments. Its volume, almost exclusively all in broken case volume, warrants particular notice.”

Innovation
Coca-Cola Refreshments U.S.A.
“Coke brought very high levels of innovation to its applications that provided value across a massive supply chain and inside the four walls of more than 100 locations, with the potential for movement to applications outside those walls. That elevated and enhanced the impact of their innovation dramatically.”