United Arab Emirates: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced that it achieved cost savings of AED 70 million in 2018 through employee suggestions and continuous improvement projects, the highest ever in a year since the programme began in 1981.

Abdulla Kalban, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of EGA, said: “At EGA we believe that everyone has a role to play in continuous improvement. Employees who are closest to a certain work process are often best placed to spot opportunities to improve it. Our programmes are built to enable all our people to share and action their ideas. When a company of our size has every employee striving to be an innovator, these numbers on cost savings are not surprising.”

Nearly AED 50 million worth of savings were generated through a record 38,037 proposals submitted as a part of EGA’s Suggestion Scheme, under which individual employees recommend improvements in their area of operation. In addition, 201 improvement projects, resulting in the remaining savings were registered through “Tamayaz”; a cross-functional, team based program, initiated in 2016 for supervisory & non-supervisory employees as a mean of problem solving and process improvement across EGA.

EGA shares a proportion of the cost savings from employee suggestions and Tamayaz projects with the teams implementing the suggestion or project. Since 1999, EGA has received nearly 500,000 suggestions for operational and technical improvements, out of which 254,551 have been implemented to generate savings of AED 345 million. Their achievements are also recognised within the company every month and at annual events. In 2018, six Tamayaz projects were awarded in the 10^th Global Continual Improvement & Innovation Awards in different categories

In addition to programmes to engage its entire workforce in continuous improvement, EGA has a dedicated technology development team which focuses on innovation to improve its core process technology.

EGA has developed its own technology for more than 25 years and has used UAE-developed technology in every smelter expansion since the 1990s. The company has also retrofitted all its older production lines.