President of Costa Rica honors USU award winner
A company in Costa Rica was so proud that it earned an award from Utah State University it invited the president of Costa Rica to an event celebrating the accomplishment. And he came.
Not only did President ?scar Arias Sánchez come to the event in early May 2008, where the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence was presented to Baxter International, but he brought one of the country’s two vice presidents, Laura Chinchilla, with him.
Bob Miller is the executive director of the Shingo Prize which is part of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. He said Sánchez wanted to personally congratulate the company for earning the award. Baxter International established a plant in Costa Rica 20 years ago, the same year the Shingo Prize was founded. It is the first facility outside of North America to earn the Shingo Prize, which has been dubbed the “Nobel Prize of Manufacturing,” Miller said.
Sánchez received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his role in working with Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to find peaceful solutions to conflicts in Central America at the time.
Miller said the company invited him down to an event celebrating the company’s achievement and he agreed to go.
“They were so excited about what they had done and the fact that we were coming down to meet with them, that they started inviting all of their local, regional and government officials and then they started inviting their national legislators,” he said. “The next thing I knew they had invited the president and vice president of Costa Rica, who both came.”
Miller said about 100 people were there, many of them civic leaders and other dignitaries.
“This was a huge deal,” he said. “You just wouldn’t believe how well this thing was organized.”
Sánchez was elected and served a four-year term 20 years ago and was reelected in 2006 after a change in the constitution allowed him to run for a second term.
Sánchez praised Baxter International for winning the award from the Huntsman School of Business.
“This company has recently received the highest international recognition for excellence in its operations,” he said. “It is an award that has been won with enthusiasm and dedication, but overall, with great capacity of innovation and teamwork. In Baxter there are neither ranks nor hierarchies for the ideas. No worker is a simple witness. All are main actors.”
The Shingo Prize is an organization that promotes a philosophy called “lean” that helps companies become more competitive by emphasizing the importance of respecting the individual, eliminating waste, improving quality and controlling costs.
Shigeo Shingo, an industrial engineer in Japan, originally articulated the philosophy that has been key to Toyota’s success. In 1988, he came to USU and was recognized with an honorary doctorate in business. The Shingo Prize organization was created not long after that visit.
Companies and organizations apply each year to receive a Shingo Prize but only a handful of qualify for the prestigious honor, Miller said. Baxter International also received the HR Medallion, an award the Shingo Prize gives out to only one company a year.