Abbott Receives Three Top Awards

Abbott's diagnostics manufacturing facility in Longford, Ireland, which develops and manufactures tests for use in hospitals and laboratories around the world, recently received three top awards recognizing the site's initiatives to achieve operational excellence.

Abbott has been awarded the top Shingo Prize^®, an international award for operational excellence, by the Shingo Institute at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Abbott’s diagnostics manufacturing facility in Longford, Ireland, received the award, recognizing the site's initiatives to develop and maintain continuous improvement to achieve operational excellence.

The prize is awarded to organizations that demonstrate a culture where principles of operational excellence are deeply embedded into the thinking and behavior of all leaders, managers and employees. The prize is recognized as a premier award for operational excellence and the standard is, by design, one of the most rigorous in the world. The Abbott vascular manufacturing site in Clonmel, Ireland, also received the top Shingo Prize in 2014.

"Our overall mission at Abbott is to advance human health in everything we do, enabling people to not just live longer, but better. In diagnostics, we do this by helping doctors diagnose and monitor a wide range of health conditions with greater speed, accuracy and efficiency," said Brian Blaser, executive vice president, Diagnostics Products, Abbott. "I want to congratulate the team at our manufacturing facility in Longford as receiving the top Shingo Prize is a testament of their deep commitment to serving the people who benefit from our products."

The Abbott Longford facility also received two other top national awards in Ireland related to operational excellence. One was the Medtech Company of the Year award for an innovative approach to product and service development. The other was the National Business Excellence Award for outstanding contributions for growing and transforming an organization while openly sharing that knowledge and best practices with member organizations of the Irish Centre Network.

"Abbott is delighted to have received these three prestigious awards on behalf of all our employees. Through a relentless focus on world-class performance, our organization has been able to deliver truly outstanding and sustainable results for our customers and the patients that we serve," said Ciaran Corcoran, Longford site director, Diagnostics, Abbott. "We are proud to be honored in such a way."