Alto Ingredients: Improving compliance and communication across multiple sites
About Alto Ingredients, Inc.
Founded in 2003, Alto Ingredients, Inc., is a leading producer of specialty alcohols and essential ingredients, which its customers incorporate into a range of vital finished goods. Formerly known as Pacific Ethanol, Inc., the company is focused on products for four key markets: health, home and beauty, food and beverage, and renewable fuels.
Challenge
Alto Ingredients, Inc., began using BLR’s EHS Hero in 2012. Before implementing EHS Hero®, Alto Ingredients had disjointed programs, views on compliance, and communication methods, which resulted in compliance deficiencies.
Solution
BLR’s EHS management suite of over 20 interoperable, integrated tools allows companies to build a configurable solution that can be scaled to meet their needs. EHS Hero was initially implemented at Alto Ingredients’ four locations to help develop consistent processes and communication among the plants. The primary focus for implementation was the process safety management (PSM) tool to help comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) PSM standards and address compliance deficiencies among the four plants.
In 2015, Alto Ingredients acquired three other locations and essentially doubled in size overnight. EHS Hero was implemented at the new facilities as part of the integration plan to ensure consistent communication across all sites. In 2016, the Planner/Scheduler tool was added to Alto Ingredients’ dashboard to help ensure all compliance deadlines were met. The Document Center also made it so that regulatory documentation could be easily accessed by employees at all locations, which is particularly useful during inspections or audits. EHS Hero helped to standardize processes at each location and create cohesive compliance and safety programs.
“In order to use the program successfully, be sure to have buy-in from management and your employees. When you have that, you’ll find training and usage in general will go smoother, which will help you experience more positive results.”
—Afton Baker, Corporate Process Safety Compliance Manager
Results
Subsequent compliance program audit results improved at the facilities between 25% and 50% after the implementation of EHS Hero. This improvement can be attributed to EHS Hero users’ ability to easily create and locate documents needed during an audit.
With EHS Hero, Alto Ingredients is able to better track action items, including who is responsible for them, completion status, and whether they were completed on time. Tracking these corrective and preventive actions makes it easy to provide proof to auditors of what’s being done to handle EHS programs and address any outstanding noncompliance issues. In addition, EHS Hero’s document storage capabilities increase efficiency and speed up the audit process, as users can easily search for a document and give it to the auditors rather than looking through three-ring binders or Excel® spreadsheets. It also helps Alto Ingredients feel more prepared in the event of an unexpected audit.
Moving forward
Alto Ingredients now has 10 plants in 6 different locations, and BLR’s EHS management solution is used at each one. As its organization has grown, EHS Hero has grown with it, and it’s had a seamless experience transitioning to using all the tools in the management suite. Using EHS Hero has increased transparency and consistency across all its sites and streamlined its audit processes to help address its compliance deficiencies, avoid penalties, and keep employees safe.
Access a downloadable version of the Alto Ingredients, Inc., story here.
