Ethicon Inc.
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico
Employees: 1,164; union
Total Square Footage: 102,516
Primary Product/Market: Medical devices (sutures)
Start-Up Date: 1999
Achievements: 98.5% line-item fill rate since 2007; 30% productivity improvement since 2008; 3.5 suggestions per employee suggestions implemented since 2008
Winter temperatures ranging from 0 to 10 degrees are par for the course in, say, North Dakota. But a February 2011 cold spell this extreme was so unusual for northern Mexico it caused power outages throughout the region and shut down manufacturing plants -- including the Ethicon Inc. medical device facility in Ciudad Juarez.
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Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, needed help from some dedicated workers who were willing to sacrifice part of their Super Bowl Sunday so the plant could restart the next day. The producer of surgical sutures and wound-closure devices assembled 150 hourly and salaried employees who washed 80,000 square feet of this clean-room facility top to bottom and completed startup procedures -- all within four hours, says plant manager John Schneider.
The same high level of employee participation was a key part of Ethicon's ability to reach 100% productivity on its Secure Strap line just one week after launching the device in December 2010. It's also a reason the plant expects to continue adding new products and increase revenue by approximately 21% to $772 million over the next three years. While the Secure Strap introduction represents a significant milestone for the plant, Ethicon's history is rooted in absorbable and nonabsorbable sutures.
