DUBAL bags five awards in Ideas.UK 2011 competition

The innovative ideas submitted by employees of Dubai Aluminium (“DUBAL”) have once again proved their international worth by bagging prestigious awards at the Ideas.UK 2011 Idea of the Year Competition, held recently in Cardiff, United Kingdom. In total, 35 suggestions were short-listed in the competition; and eight DUBAL suggestions made it to the final round: no mean feat given the high level competition offered by companies such as Siemens Energy, British Telecom, Diageo, PSIOM, DEWA, and Dubai Customs. 

The awards included top category honours for three DUBAL suggestions, namely: Environmental Award – `Template for graphite preheat’, submitted by K V Jose and P S Thiyagarajan, which involved using a purpose-made aluminium/wooden template with slots for spreading graphite in a specified pattern under the anode so as to achieve optimum preheat quality with reduction in skimmed material after bath-up.

Health & Safety Award – `Safety mechanical stopper for loading/unloading station’, submitted by A Regenio and Gino Antony, where a mechanical stopper has been introduced to prevent any anode trolley movement when it is in loading/unloading station.  The mechanism is very simple but could save the life of the operator and prevent damages to equipment.

International Award – `Modified transfer rolls at Ingot Casting Machine’, submitted by D Kumar, N Prabhakar, C M Hugos and P Kadirvelu,  which entailed in-house modification of the roller table used to transfer hot ingots from shearing to the cooling booth. This suggestion resulted in an audited savings of AED 211,000 annually.

Two other accolades were also awarded to DUBAL:

For the second consecutive year, DUBAL won the Best Promotional Poster Trophy in the Poster Competition.

DUBAL Suggestion Scheme received the Ideas.UK 2011 Benchmarking Survey Award, which recognizes the company with the most outstanding scheme performance as per the Ideas.UK International Survey.