Georgia-Pacific Employees’ Contributions Create Value, Earns Industry Recognition
TOLEDO, Ore., September 2, 2025 /3BL/ - Employees that are closest to the work are usually the first to identify areas of improvement. The reliability team at Georgia-Pacific’s Toledo containerboard mill, tasked with ensuring the machines operate optimally, planned and executed a project that brought value to the facility. The initiative, which required them to seek knowledge on new concepts and systems, collaborate, and adopt new efficiencies, earned the team industry recognition for excellence and best practices.
The reliability team at Georgia-Pacific's Toledo facility was recently recognized by Noria, an organization that helps companies enable reliability through better lubrication processes, with the 2025 Lube Room Challenge award.
In a manufacturing plant a lubricant room stores, handles, and dispenses oils, lubricants and other fluids used for machinery maintenance. A clean, safe space that allows easy access to these materials is crucial to ensuring equipment performance, a necessity for manufacturing operations like ours that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Toledo’s reliability team is responsible for maintaining this room.
“Toledo’s lubricant storage room wasn’t in the best condition; it was cramped, cluttered, and inefficient,” said Billy Abbott, reliability supervisor. “I wanted to take on improving this space, and I was given the opportunity to do so.”
The reliability team developed and executed an improvement plan for the lubricant room using Principle Based ManagementTM (PBM), our business philosophy that helps our organization and its employees create value. PBM encourages a bottom-up approach, allowing employees the opportunity to use their skills and knowledge to improve procedures and processes in their roles. The Toledo employees learned best practices on lubricant room layouts, material consolidation while avoiding cross contamination, and equipment to help with organization, efficiency, cleanliness, while earning industry certifications from the International Council for Machinery Lubrication. The team also traveled to other Georgia-Pacific facilities for ideas and to learn how they organize lubrication rooms.
“I’ve been with Georgia-Pacific for 31 years, and there are a lot of new ideas, innovations, systems and processes for lubrication rooms that weren’t there when I started,” explains Phillip Moran, preventive maintenance technician. “Earning the certifications and learning how other facilities organize their spaces helped shape our plans. Lubricant rooms are integral to our operations. The materials we store in the rooms ensure that our machines run optimally, preventing downtime and safety issues.”
Toledo’s lubrication room is now efficient, clean, and safe. The reliability team’s hard work has not gone unnoticed. They were recently recognized by Noria, an organization that helps companies enable reliability through better lubrication processes, at the Reliable Plant Conference & Exhibition with the 2025 Lube Room Challenge award.
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