tesa Plant Offenburg distinguished for modern management

The tesa Plant Offenburg is spearheading the industry when it comes to management and employee advancement. This has recently been confirmed by the FAZ-Institute who distinguished the plant with the TOP Economy Award 2005. The Under-Secretary of State of the Federal Ministry for Commerce and Labour, Mr. Georg Wilhelm Adamowitsch presented the award to plant manager Mr. Thomas Hochgeschurtz on occasion of this year’s TOP entrepreneurs meeting in Berlin.

The jury had been convinced by the innovative working hours scheme, the employee advancement programs and the readiness to enhance these instruments in cooperation with other companies on the basis of an open exchange of ideas and experiences.

tesa Plant Offenburg is continuously looking for new methods to support employees and to improve production as well as operating processes. One example in this connection is monitoring working hours based on trust. This scheme allows the teams to take responsibility for individual areas of production. They organize their working hours independently based on customer demand. To support a culture of trust tesa plant Offenburg moreover places the emphasis on Non-Technical-Training (NTT). Managers discuss and practice aspects of fair dealing with employees. “A stronger sense for responsibility converts our executives into managers of their own and enables them to develop the full potential of their employees”, Hochgeschurtz explains the concept that is also paying off economically: by systematic support of employee satisfaction and improvement of employee management, tesa Plant Offenburg has improved its productivity by 20 % within two years. The number of staff away sick was reduced by 50 % permanently and the accident rate by
80 %.

TOP stands for Transfer of knowledge, Optimization of processes and experiencing Practice. The initiative of the FAZ institute which currently is supported by almost 300 German enterprises and production sites was founded in 1992 by the Federal Ministry of Commerce and Labour. It is the objective of TOP to boost the transfer of knowledge and the exchange of experiences within the economy and to further enhance successful operations in globalized markets. The principal item of the initiative is one day visits with professional presentations and theme oriented plant tours to which
the participating companies are inviting each other.

Since 1993 the TOP Prize is annually being awarded by the FAZ Institute and the Federal Ministry of Commerce and Labour. An essential criterion for the selection of the laureate is the evaluation by the companies aligned with the TOP initiative. Additional criteria are the number of participants in the event and the cooperation of the company with the FAZ institute.

With around 480 employees tesa Plant Offenburg is a 100 percent affiliate and the biggest production site of tesa SE with headquarters based in Hamburg. The plant produces single-sided adhesive tapes and has specialised in a novel solvent free production process. Amongst other products this includes tesafilm, creped paper tapes as well as specialty tapes for winding and fixing of cable harnesses in automobiles.