People driving change sees CTC achieveing IWS Phase 1 Certification

Ceylon Tobacco Company PLC,which introduced IWS (Integrated Work Systems) in 2015, successfully obtained IWS Phase 1 certification in May this year, and one of the underlying factors that became the focus was ensuring ownership and buy in at all levels – people driving and being the change.

Speaking on this momentous achievement, Alexander Ugarte, CTC’s Operations Director said, “We could not have achieved this without the passion and dedication of our people. Our talented employees have always been our biggest strength, and this is the culmination of all their hard work. This great achievement was only possible thanks to the persistent work and during this journey we were able to continue moving forward, looking for solutions and working as one team towards success.

IWS is a comprehensive business transformation model that leads to end to end business transformation in a phased-out manner.  When embedded, it enables a business to attain breakthrough results through 100% people ownership and involvement. Through capability building under the principle “Learn -Do-Teach” to give more empowerment and ownership to our people which results in a step change in how operations are carried out.

“The IWS framework became an invaluable tool for us to enhance our skills. It not only strengthened our theoretical knowledge, but also built our ability to convert what we learnt into practice. This helped us to operate the machinery more efficiently. Being given ownership to drive this from the front boosted our confidence and brought us close to our targets”, added SamithaChandrasekara, Equipment Owner.

CTC’s IWS Manager Udara Viduranga noted – “Our journey was not an easy one, especially in the past year with the challenges brought on by COVID. However, the team was Bold and Fast in how they approached these challenges, working to find the right solutions.We started our IWS Journey in 2015 and one of the underlying factors we focused on was ensuring ownership and buy in at all levels – our people driving the change. I believe this is the fundamental reason behind our success.”

Nedal Salem, Chief Executive Officer of CTC speaking on the certification noted “The agility, and resilience ofeach person in our operations function is to be commended as we achieve this important milestone. I am extremely happy of this outcome and very proud of how they worked together, never taking their eyes off the end goal. They have truly embodied our ethos and shown that their winning spirit, will always triumph over adversity. I take this opportunity to extend my heartfelt thanks to every single member of our operations team.”

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