NEWS
Allergan Costa Rica Wins Global Operational Excellence Award
• This is the second time that the Costa Rican operation obtains this award.
• The plant excelled over the rest of the company’s global facilities.
San José, Costa Rica. March 9th, 2020. Allergan Costa Rica won the award for operational excellence among all the company’s global manufacturing plants for a second time during 2019. The "Plant of the Year" award promotes continuous improvement of each of the establishments in different business areas.
The Costa Rican plant is in the Global Park free zone, in Heredia. Currently, it employs 460 people that manufacture breast implants that cater to clients in five regions around the world: United States, Middle East Europe, Asia, Canada, and Latin America.
The award reflects Costa Rica’s human talent capabilities for knowledge-intensive processes in manufacturing and service operations. According to the 2019 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, Costa Rica’s human talent is rated as the best in Latin America.
In Costa Rica, companies in the life sciences sector, like Allergan, recorded a 63% increase in efficiency and productivity as reflected in the average output per employee, which has gone from US$76,000 in 1999 to reach US$124,000 in 2018 according to CINDE.
Allergan Costa Rica won this award for the first time in 2016. The winner is chosen through a quarterly evaluation process, which weighs the performance of its fourteen plants in five categories: operational excellence, generation of strategies that generate a positive impact on employees, social responsibility, customer focus, and best practices exchange with other manufacturing plants. The evaluation criteria include quantitative and qualitative indicators that define the winner.
Nelson Rodríguez Muñoz, Global Vice President of Medical Devices and General Manager of Allergan Costa Rica said: “This award validates the efforts of Costa Rican companies to meet the highest standards of customers globally, promoting mechanisms for innovation and product improvement developed in the country. All this effort has been possible thanks to our talented team which through its effort, commitment, and boldness, has made it possible to achieve it. This recognizes all Allergan employees’ work and is a stimulus to continue improving.”
Jorge Sequeira, CINDE´s Managing Director, applauded the recognition: “Allergan Costa Rica is among the country’s three main medical devices exporting companies and is one of the most important sources of breast implants manufacturing for the entire company, exporting them from Costa Rica to the rest of the world. In 2019, medical prostheses were one of Costa Rica’s three main medical device export products with a total value of US$685 million. The award recognizes Costa Rican human talent as the top asset for these companies’ operations.”
Allergan Costa Rica has been focused on generating strategies in various projects that directly impact the 5 evaluated categories. For example, 2019 had a high impact in terms of energy savings where the plant reduced energy consumption by 21% compared to 2015 exceeding its initial was 20%. A solar power plant of 1,750 panels is already operating, equivalent to 10.5% of the consumption or annual demand of 88 Costa Rica households. With these types of actions, the plant reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 90%. In addition, this was the first Allergan manufacturing site in the Americas to declare "Zero Waste to Landfill."
