Mechanic turns inadequacy into billion-dollar initiative

Attached to Nam Viet Joint Stock Company, a business specializing in processing pangasius for export, from December 2001, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Ngon grew up from a mechanical worker, gradually taking on the role of Head of the Mechanical Team thanks to practical experience and a spirit of eagerness to learn. During his work, he not only focused on repairing and maintaining machinery but also observed inadequate stages, finding causes of inadequacies and waste to study improvement plans.

Three typical initiatives implemented in 2022, 2024 and 2025 have brought a total benefit value of about 1.136 billion VND per year.

In 2022, he participated in the manufacture of an automatic fish fat recovery machine, helping the amount of fat recovered to increase by 1,424kg, equivalent to 31.7%, and at the same time reducing 2 direct workers performing this work. The profit value is determined to be about 98.28 million VND/year at each factory. In 2024, the fish blood recovery system researched by him helps recover about 87.5% of fish blood, equivalent to 1,050kg/day, bringing a profit value of about 468 million VND/year at the Atlantic Factory. The solution also opens up a direction to utilize protein-rich by-products as raw materials for aquaculture feed production, contributing to reducing waste in processing.

By 2025, improving rolling machines at the Packaging Factory will help reduce production unit prices by 15.6 VND/m2, cut 2 direct workers and create a profit value of about 570 million VND/year. Not only saving costs, the initiatives also contribute to reducing heavy manual work, improving the efficiency of raw material use and improving production productivity.

In his position as Head of the Mechanical Team, Mr. Ngon and his colleagues take on the work of maintaining, repairing, manufacturing and installing equipment to serve 4 seafood cold storage plants with about 5,000 workers, along with other plants in the group. The work requires stable equipment operation, limiting machine stopping time and ensuring continuous production lines.

Born into a farming family, trained in mechanical engineering, he identified school knowledge as the initial foundation. To meet work requirements, he proactively self-studied through books, newspapers, technical documents, exchanged experiences with colleagues and drew conclusions from the reality of equipment operation.

According to him, to have an initiative, workers must clearly understand the work they are doing, recognize unreasonable points and persistently find ways to overcome them. Therefore, he regularly guides young workers, encourages workers and laborers who directly operate to reflect inadequacies to find solutions together.

His contributions are recognized by businesses, authorities and trade union organizations through many forms of commendation, including 3 times receiving the Creative Labor Certificate from the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor in 2023, 2024 and 2026. In 2024, he represented workers in An Giang province to attend the "National Labor Productivity Improvement" Forum in Hanoi.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Ngon is proposed to be commended as a typical worker nationwide in 2026.

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