Client Spotlight: Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc.
By Adam Cole, Senior Account Manager, Schaumburg, IL
There's more than corn in downstate Illinois!
The town of Normal, Illinois, is home to Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. MMNA was formed in 1985 as Diamond Star Motors, a 50⁄50 joint venture between Mitsubishi Motors Corporation and Chrysler Corporation. In 2001, it was consolidated into Mitsubishi Motors North America, which is Mitsubishi's only passenger car assembly plant in North America. MMNA's manufacturing division, located on the west side of Normal, is where some of the world's finest vehicles are made.
Since 1988, MMNA employees have assembled more than 11 different vehicle models in one of the most technologically advanced automotive manufacturing facilities in the world. And the 1,350 production associates who build these fine automobiles are not alone; to assist them, about 1,000 robots show up for work every day at the 2.4-million-square-foot facility. You could put 50 football fields in that space and still have room for hotdog vendors! The vehicles produced in this Midwestern plant are exported to 32 countries, from Canada and Mexico to as far as Kuwait, Russia, Japan, and Chile.
Moreover, MMNA is not just a manufacturing plant in a Midwestern town. It has worked to become an important and environmentally responsible part of the Normal, Illinois, community. Employees and their families volunteer throughout the area in organizations, schools, and churches. MMNA has also pioneered environmental initiatives that help keep Normal the great place it is today. By reducing landfill waste, recycling tons of materials, and lowering chemical emissions, MMNA has shown its commitment to protecting the environment and the health and safety of its community and its employees.
Achieving the highest level of quality through effective teamwork is part of MMNA's mission statement. In late 2002, MMNA's risk management staff began teaming up with RSG to develop a self-administration system for their workers' compensation program that would provide high-quality reports and effective claims administration.
MMNA and RSG developed a custom administration system that is truly both a quality application and a team effort. First, custom entry and edit screens were developed to manage WC claim information, as well as additional screens to track injury and medical information and return-to-work data. Implemented within the application are validation checks that insure the data quality and adherence to accounting principles. For example, the system ensures that return-to-work dates are not dates prior to the date of injury, and that the date a claim is reported is after the accident date. There are also accounting controls in place that ensure payments are not made to closed files and that there are adequate reserves to cover each payment.
In order to administer the claims and process payments, RSG needs to exchange HR, vendor, and medical repricing data on a regular basis with MMNA. Each week, RSG receives data files from MMNA that update the list of valid employees and vendors. As claims and payments are entered, they are matched to the employee and vendor files to ensure payments are made to valid employees and approved vendors. Medical repricing data is loaded directly from MMNA's medical repricing vendor and posted to the files.
Once entered, the payments are reviewed by supervisory staff and approved for processing or held for further review. Then, each evening, the administration system collects all of the approved payments and sends them via secure FTP to MMNA's accounts payable department, where the checks and bank transactions are generated.
All of these moving parts require frequent interaction and communication between RSG staff and MMNA risk management personnel. Our frequent e-mails and phone calls help us navigate through tricky data situations and ensure data quality and timely reporting. MMNA's risk management personnel are knowledgeable, experienced professionals whose dedication to quality and spirit of teamwork has been a highlight of RSG's partnership with MMNA.
Additionally, MMNA is taking advantage of Sigma EncoreSM Reports and Oracle® Discoverer to generate reports for regulatory agencies and ad hoc requests from other internal departments, as well as to track trends in injuries, 1099 processing, and daily reports used to audit the check processing from the day before.
Mitsubishi Motors North America continues to build some of the finest vehicles for a global market. To do that in this challenging economic time and competitive world market requires quality results and teamwork. RSG looks forward to working with the risk management staff at MMNA as we move forward and tackle the new risk management challenges of the 21st century ... and maybe test-drive the new Eclipse Spyder GT Convertible, too.
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