By By Mary-Allison Lancaster, Managing editor
Citation Corporation announced recently the plant in Brewton just completed four million safe work hours and more than four years without a lost time accident.
Opened since the 1970s, the company currently employs around 390 men and women. There are 17 plants located throughout the United States. Altogether, the plants employ close to 2,400 people.
The date of our last lost time injury was Aug. 17, 2000.
As a part of the daily process, employees take scrap steel and melt it down in furnaces which melt somewhere around 2,750 degrees. Liquid molten hot metal continually flows throughout the plant. The molten hot liquid is poured into a mold line and formed into a cast designed for specific jobs. The casts are then sent to the finishing department.
According to Davis, burns are the most serious accidents to occur, as well as eye injuries resulting from debris floating around the plant.
Davis is assisted by two employees: Joan Warrick is the health services administrator and Denise Lyons is the safety and training technician. The three of them make up the safety department.
To ensure proper safety throughout the plant, monthly inspections and safety training topics are discussed with all employees. The team also has job hazard assessments where employees are asked to identify hazards and find ways to safety eliminate them.
The plant's last loss time incident was in August 2000. While the achievement is more of an internal recognition, each plant is required by OSHA to keep what is called an OSHA 300 log.
According to Davis, employees usually average around 20,000 hours a week-that includes a combination of hourly and salary employees. The safety department uses safety incentives set every 250,000 hours of safe work hours.
The most recent incentive was a watch and a meal. Incentives in the past have included luggage, shirts, ice chests, lawn chairs and more.
Citation Corporation is a Ductile Iron Foundry with a green sand molding process. The plant was first built in 1975 by Allied Products Corporation of Chicago and was called Alabama Ductile Iron Company (ADICO). It was purchased by Citation Corporation of Birmingham in 1987 and was called Alabama Ductile Casting Company. In 2003 Citation Corporation changed its name to Citation Innovative Metal Components and is now called Citation Corporation, Brewton Division.
Citation is a Union Plant. The production employees have the choice of entering the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics &Allied Workers International Union, Local No. 98.