Americhem and Junior Achievement

Americhem’s partnership with Junior Achievement started with retiree Rick Mathew, who served as our COO in the early 2000s. As a long-term member of Junior Achievement, Rick brought the program to Americhem and I took a personal interest.

I believe that giving back to the community is important. A colleague and I chose to work with high school students. This decision was important to us because these students are getting ready to graduate and enter the world as adults, and we thought that they would really benefit from a real-world business education.

Six years ago we held our first session at Stow High School. We joined a teacher who taught an impressive business management course. Every year for seven weeks, my colleague and I teach courses to this business management class. We start with business ethics and move onto entrepreneurship, which is really fun to do with the students.

When teaching entrepreneurship, we ask the student to create a business. During each step of the business development process, we teach business terminology and best practices. The end result is having the students pitch their “businesses” to potential investors. It is amazing to see their creative spirit. The pupils take the program seriously and are quite impressive. I can remember one year a student arrived dressed as a pig to promote his business where every kind of food was wrapped in bacon.

The classes we work with are amazing. We open ourselves up to be their mentors and there are students that have continued to stay connected after graduation. We had one student who came to Americhem after she graduated high school to intern with us for four years while she was attending college.

In 2011, a colleague here at Americhem and I were nominated by our teacher/partner from Stow High School and won the Northeast Ohio Junior Achievement Volunteer of the Year award and we are now part of the Junior Achievement’s Hall of Fame. That was a really great moment because even though we voluntarily worked with these students and observed their progress, the acknowledgement that we were making a difference in their lives was quite an honor.

I look forward to teaching the classes every year and I believe that Americhem and Junior Achievement make great partners to give students the tools to excel as they continue their education and move into the business world.
 

For more information about Junior Achievement and how you or your business can be part of this great program visit their website.

Christa Batton
Human Resources Manager - North America, Americhem Inc.

Colors with Meaning

At Americhem, color is our business. We work with color every day and we know what makes a good color. With our high color standards, we take a lot of care when choosing the colors to represent our company. We used a tool known as the Dewey Color System®, which is considered the world’s first statistically valid color test that utilizes extensive opinion testing to scientifically verify the common links between color and emotion. With this system, we were able to accurately choose company colors to convey our company values.

Navy Blue
Navy Blue expresses a sense of authority, stability, and efficiency. Over the past 73 years, Americhem has been established as an industry authority. We work hard to educate through our Americhem U  series of courses, to host presentations at industry trade shows, and to be an available resource for our customers.

Navy signifies a company that is stable and efficient and is depended on by its customers. Trust and acceptance from our customers are important. We consistently follow our company principles, holding ourselves to maintaining the highest of ethical and moral standards with our customers.

Sage Green
Sage Green indicates nature and wholesomeness. It represents Americhem’s dedication to being eco-friendly and preserving the natural environment. We recently attained ISO 14001 certification for our Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio plant. This distinction recognizes Americhem for environmental management solution dyeing process  that saves water and energy while eliminating waste material.
systems. We are also the leader of the eco-friendly solution dyeing process that saves water and energy while eliminating waste material.

Green generates a calming, relaxed mood and shows that a company is genuine, forthright, and sincere. Our ability to surpass the competition is dependent upon the collective drive and intellect of cohesive teams. We work in partnership with our customers to create the best available solutions.

Burnt Orange
Burnt Orange is the color chosen to accent our two main colors. While not part of our logo, burnt orange still plays an important part in our company image. It represents Americhem’s specialty in uncovering solutions to problems. Americhem is dedicated to being your problem solver. Some of Americhem’s best selling products came into being as a result of our responsiveness to a specific customer problem.  From idea to reality, we collaborate with our customers to overcome product design challenges and to meet exacting color and end use property specifications.

Orange embodies our innovative spirit and responsiveness to customer needs. Our research and development team are constantly working on polymeric research that leads to groundbreaking technologies  for our customers. We strive to improve our own efficiency and effectiveness to provide the best value and innovations to our customers.

Aubrey Barto

Marketing Assistant, Americhem Inc.

ISO 14001 Teaches Americhem Employees Environmental Awareness

Our company’s plant in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, recently became certified to ISO 14001, which is a family of standards related to environmental management. It helps companies minimize any negative impact on the environment, comply with laws, regulations and other environmental requirements and continually improve in these areas.

As part of the team that worked on achieving this accreditation, I was amazed at the amount of awareness that this process promoted throughout our plant and our employees. By becoming aware of ways to reduce waste in one area, our people were motivated to look for opportunities to conserve in other departments, plant processes and even at home.

It’s amazing how working toward this certification empowered our employees to become conservationists. Once plant personnel were aware that I was part of the team working toward ISO 14001, they brought a wealth of ideas to my attention. I was asked if we recycled cans, ink cartridges and lots of other items that were beyond our initial thinking.

I think that speaks volumes about the certification’s relevance to everyone. Conserving what we have is not only good for the environment, it’s good for business. We learned that there are many waste streams that we can be paid for instead of paying someone else to dispose of them. Cardboard and polymer waste are two great examples. Through our initial “dumpster dive”, where we literally looked at all the things we throw away in a week’s time, we uncovered many waste streams that we were able to reduce, conserve or sell.

Now, I notice people conserving not because it’s a requirement, but because they care about it and it’s the right thing to do. During the process, our registrar interviewed more than 30 employees, and they discovered a lot of engagement and pride that the process helped promote. They were amazed by all the different ways that employees answered a question like, “How does your job impact the environment?”

The team that helped work our way through the requirements did an excellent job. It was a lot of hard work over months and months. But a lot of credit also goes to our employees who helped make the project their own. Many of them will carry this newfound awareness home and expand on our sacred company principle, “Be a proactive steward of the environment.” The impact is clear to our people, our community and the world at large.

You can view our certification and get more details  on all of our ISO accreditations on our website.

Darwin Brown

Quality Manager, Americhem Inc.

The Four Unique Stakeholders of Americhem Inc.

At Americhem, we still hold true to some of the original principles that were instilled in us by our company’s founders. Over the years, these main beliefs have helped guide us in difficult times and in prosperity alike. Its part of what we believe as a company; that we have certain obligations to four groups of stakeholders that help keep us in business. Without the support of any one of these groups, we can’t survive or grow. So, straight from our official Americhem Principles, let’s take a look at all four groups.

· Customers – We believe that our relationship with our customers should be a partnership, because when our customers are growing, Americhem grows too. We treat customers with respect and strive to solve their toughest challenges, whether or not those challenges are related to our products and services. We do our very best to provide our customers a superior product and a good overall value.

· Employees – We want Americhem to be a place for the brightest and most talented employees, and a place where they can enjoy long-term employment. In fact, 39 of our employees have been with Americhem for 30 years or more, with our top tenured employee serving 45 years. That’s over seven percent of our workforce that has 30 years of service or more. We respect the dignity of all of our employees and promote two-way communication, emphasize safety and expect and reward excellence.

· Suppliers – We also view our relationship with our suppliers as a partnership. Much like what our customers expect from us, we expect quality, service and value from our suppliers. We value our supplier relationships, because they often provide Americhem with innovation, technical support and competitive advantage.

· Community – As a corporation, we practice good citizenship by maintaining friendly relations with our communities, environmental stewardship, and helpful giving and community service. We also encourage our employees to contribute and participate in community service. It’s all about giving back to those who have helped make us successful.

Paying attention to these four vital groups has proven to be a successful formula for us over the years. As Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India said, “Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.” That’s why we remind ourselves frequently of their importance at Americhem.

Giving Thanks

At this time of year and always, Americhem has a tremendous amount of things to be thankful for. We know that you do, too. It’s been said that the only obstacle to being thankful is simply not observing with attention. We grow used to our blessings and we start taking them for granted, without realizing that they truly are blessings.

Well, in 2014, it has been an easy for me to notice the things that make me happy to be part of the Americhem family. In no particular order, they are:

-  I’m thankful for our company founders, Richard H. Juve, Harvey Cooper and Sylvester Caldwell, all of whom had vision for what a great company could become.

-  I’m thankful for the more than 500 Americhem employees and their families. It is a wonderful team to be a part of.

-  I’m thankful for our customers who continue to rely on us for high-quality products and services. I’m thankful for those who view our relationship as a partnership, since this is how we view our customers.

-  I’m thankful for our suppliers, another group with whom we form partnerships. I’m thankful for those who provide consistent quality and service that in turn makes our own products better.

-  I’m thankful for the communities that we do business in. They are eight wonderful communities around the world. I’m thankful for our employees in each of these locations that participate in community service organizations and that contribute to worthwhile charities to help make their communities even better.

-  I’m thankful for the favorable business climate Americhem has experienced in 2014. While no years are without their challenges, Americhem has thrived and made a profit, as it has every year since we've been in business in 1941.

-  I’m thankful that we’re a global organization and that we can learn from our employees around the world. I’m thankful for the different cultural traditions that, while different from my own, are nonetheless fascinating to observe and learn about.

-  I’m thankful to work for a company that has such a rich history. I’m glad that this history has been passed down from generations of employees and that the company is still rooted in its founding principles all these years later. I’m also thankful for the generations of employees who have, with their strong work ethic, set an example for us to follow.

-  And finally, I’m thankful for our company’s holiday policy, which allows those of us in the U.S. to enjoy a day off from work to be mindful of our blessings and to celebrate them with our families.

See, it’s easy if you try – try to observe with attention and be thankful. I wish all of our employees, communities, suppliers, customers and everyone else a very Happy Thanksgiving 2014.

Scott Blanchard
Senior Corporate Marketing Specialist, Americhem Inc.