Back to ‘Fundamentals’ in Port Wentworth

The average worker only stays with an employer for approximately four years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth refinery, though, it’s not unusual to run into employees who have been with the company for 30 or 40 years, and whose parents or grandparents were also employed there years before.

“I was struck by how long employees have been here and how dedicated they are,' says Jim Flynn, who was hired as the new refinery manager in December 2009.

“That’s what first impressed me about Port Wentworth,” says Jim Flynn, who was hired as the new refinery manager in December 2009. “I was struck by how long employees have been here and how dedicated they are. Some of them were even born here, because on-site residences used to be leased to the employees.”

That’s one reason Flynn expected to meet with some resistance from the roughly 50 employees who report to him. “As I brought in fresh ideas, I thought I’d face a ‘We don’t need you to tell us how to make sugar’ attitude. But it’s not like that. People here are very open to new ideas,” he says

Flynn says his goal is to create a new culture that’s a “mix of old and new values.”

One of the first changes he aimed for was increasing the level of safety awareness among employees in the refinery, where raw sugar is washed, filtered and dried.

For example, he asks that all employees wear their personal protective equipment, such as hearing protection, throughout the refinery. “I want to be sure all employees have good hearing in their later years,” he says.

To keep safety top of mind, Flynn holds weekly safety meetings with all refinery employees and encourages workers to write near-miss reports. “A near-miss report is a good tool. If you have several close calls that are the same, you can identify a trend,” he says. “One thing I enjoy is how open the operators are to offer suggestions and make improvements.”

Flynn confers with control room operator Ricky Ussery.

Even as he stresses safety, Flynn is keenly aware of his target of producing six million pounds of sugar a day. To reach that goal, he’s going back to “fundamental” good manufacturing practices. When he first joined the management team, he noticed that equipment operators weren’t capturing key data from day to day. That’s when the simple idea of a log book and reading sheets emerged. It’s a basic concept: If you were manufacturing widgets, you’d want to keep track of how many widgets you made each day, how many were too big or small, how many needed adjustments to make them perfect.

“This gives us a historical, objective record, so we know what happened the day before or the week before, so we can see what changes would improve the process,” he says.

The entire department came together on a day when the refinery was shut down, with operators and engineers holding breakout sessions to identify each of the data to track in order to operate the facility more efficiently. “It was a very helpful exercise,” Flynn says. “And it built a bit of camaraderie too, because employees rarely have the chance to come together as a whole and exchange ideas.”

“I just hope I can make an impact and help everyone be safe and successful.”