Lubrizol’s Acosta leads efforts in standard work initiatives to drive efficiency

At the heart of Lubrizol’s largest manufacturing plant lies a commitment to efficient people management and operational excellence.

Lubrizol Deer Park Site Director Hector Acosta’s key to success is managing people efficiently.

Appointed to the role in December 2022, Acosta oversees a direct staff of 10, amongst myriad departments at the Deer Park, Texas facility, including production, maintenance, quality, engineering, operational excellence, learning and development, process improvement and HSES. The team sets a strategic direction for the site and supports front-line employees who operate the facility around the clock.

"We deliver value to our employees and company by focusing on people, customers and enterprise operations," Acosta said. "As a member of the community and industry, our daily goals are to manufacture products safely, responsibly and efficiently through continuous improvement. Our values translate to reliable, quality products that meet the needs of our customers.

"Since we have a wide range of roles and skills at our facility, the fact that I came up through the ranks and progressed through different levels of managing people has really helped me better understand how to manage and interact with personnel."

Clear communication to engage and inform the site’s 525 full-time employees and hundreds of embedded contractors about the state of the business and strategy enables a culture for dialogue and feedback that is critical to Lubrizol’s success, Acosta said.

Lubrizol was founded in 1928 and is based in Wickliffe, Ohio. The Deer Park plant has been in operation since 1951 and produces specialty chemicals for lubricant additives. The company’s customers include global and regional oil companies and lubricant manufacturers.

"When you go into your local auto supply store and look at the rows of motor oils, automatic transmission fluids, gear oils and greases, our chemistry is in many of those products," Acosta said.

The Lubrizol Corp., a Berkshire Hathaway company, is a specialty chemical leader in which its science delivers sustainable solutions to advance mobility, improve well-being and enhance modern life.

Lubrizol employs more than 8,000 people worldwide at over 100 sites and holds more than 3,500 patents.

In 2023, the company was recognized by Chemical and Engineering News as the Best Chemical Company to Work for, as well as a Top 50 U.S. Chemical Firm. Among many other 2023 recognitions, Lubrizol received the Innovation Research Interchange Excellence Award in Digital and Technical Innovation and the ACC Responsible Care Award.

In recent years, Lubrizol announced new sustainability goals to improve the company’s environmental footprint, focus community investment activities and enhance governance oversight. These goals clarify Lubrizol’s commitment to strengthening the company and bringing more positive impacts to the environment, communities and customers across global locations.

A challenge in Acosta’s role has been evolving and rethinking the way the site operates and adapting to changes in process.

"We’ve had to take a closer look at the processes and roles we have at the plant and get our team involved in a continuous improvement exercise to create standard work roles, helping us clarify expectations and codify the most efficient, safest and leanest way to do our work," he said. "We are undertaking this transformational process now, having just rolled out Lubrizol’s Standard Work process at the plant in March 2024 after months of engagement, planning and preparation."

Another challenge, he said, is managing a mature facility — the Deer Park location has been in operation for over 70 years — and weather events out of his control.

"Like so many of the manufacturing facilities in the greater Houston area, we experienced weather-related challenges over the past several years — such as Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and the February 2021 freeze — that helped us learn so much about our assets and operations," Acosta said. "We took that as a learning opportunity to standardize how we approach these weather events — and safely plan to stop operations and start back up with the most minimal impact to the facility, our customers and the community."

Though the site does not have any near-term plans for expansions, the focus for Deer Park is also on leveraging manufacturing technology to drive consistency in processes, Acosta said. That includes investments in technology and looking at how that can improve safety, compliance, cost, quality and reliability for the site.

The intent is to optimize the facility, drive value for employees and customers, achieve top-tier performance amongst peers and progress Lubrizol to be the standard for what good looks like in manufacturing, Acosta said.

The future of the industry, he said, will involve raising the bar on the management of chemical plants, safety, compliance and sustainability, he said.

"Chemical manufacturing is an enabler for the modern life we all enjoy. Our opportunity is to demonstrate the value we provide and continue to innovate high-value, sustainable solutions while we produce safely and responsibly," Acosta said.

Acosta is a native of El Paso, Texas, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from New Mexico State University in 2002. He started his career with ConocoPhillips and joined Lubrizol in 2003 as a process improvement engineer.

Over the last 20 years, he has held positions as the Bayport, Texas, plant manufacturing superintendent, the manufacturing strategic planner at the headquarters in Wickliffe, Ohio, and subsequently held positions as operating manager, planning manager and superintendent at Deer Park before taking over the role as site director.

Acosta decided to pursue a career in chemical engineering because of his father, who suggested it after seeing Acosta’s aptitude for chemistry in high school.

"Once I saw what I could do professionally, I was all-in with learning and being the best engineer I could be," he said. "I wasn’t the type who planned out my career, but opportunities just kept presenting themselves. Hard work and good performance resulted in doors being opened; I just had to be willing to walk through those doors and take on the next challenge."

Being tenacious has served him well, he said.

"The best advice I have received is to be open to opportunities and never say ‘no’ until you are at that decision point. Throughout your career, what you thought you would never do may end up being the right choice when the opportunity arises."

Acosta sees the site’s Standard Work initiative as the biggest goal for success moving forward, with a desired outcome of creating a competitive advantage for Lubrizol in the chemical industry.

"This will help us transform the way we work and fundamentally make our tools, processes and roles work better for us," he said. "Our goal is to create a standard approach that is efficient, repeatable and that incorporates input from the people who know the work best, starting from our operators and throughout the organization.

"This process will show us what is important to do and — just as importantly — show us what non-value-added work should be stopped."

For more information, visit lubrizol.com.

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