From Poland to Mix Maintenance Manager by Ron Amrein
The journey of Zymunt Cichosz from Contract Packaging Division line worker to Mixer Maintenance Manager is remarkable and inspiring. Enjoy his story!
Zygmunt Cichosz
Zigmunt Cichosz started his career as a coal miner in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1986 after graduating from high school. In 1987 he joined the Polish military and became a helicopter mechanic after completing Electric Helicopter Instal- lation School. Upon his discharge from the military, he went back to school and specialized in Agriculture and Food Engineering. Zygmunt worked for a dairy in Krasnystaw, Poland while he attended college in Lublin, Poland. His company, OSM Dairy, funded his education as he worked for them as a dairy technician from 1989 to 2003. During his time there he designed and built pasteurizers and homogenizers to process yogurt and kiefer products. In Janu- ary of 1990, Zygmunt married his wife Ela. Together they have 2 boys Dawid, 26 and Radoslaw, 25. In 2003 Zygmunt and his family came to America (Zygmunt and Ela became American citizens in 2014), and Zygmunt was offered a job as Dairy Plant Manager and technician at Ludwig Dairy in Dixon, Illinois. In 2007 Zygmunt heard of an opportunity to work for Crest Foods. So in 2007 Zygmunt made the move and came to work at Crest Foods. He started out in the Packaging Division as a line worker working on the line. After a few months in the packaging side, an opportunity to work in the Ingredient Division came up and Zygmunt moved to that area. Within a year of the move Zygmunt was promoted to a Lead Bagger position. He excelled in this area and became an integral part of the operation. He became the fill-in for Jorge Ramirez in his absence and excelled in all the aspects of that position as well. He also showed a great interest and ability to go beyond the confines of his own job to take on more responsibility doing assembly and set up work. He learned to do calibrations and pro- gramming on the touchscreens to make the products run better, and was asked on several occasions to assist in projects and installation of new equipment. Zigmunt quickly became a go to guy for the other line leads and line workers. With my (Ron Amrein) retirement near, we talked about finding my replacement, and we knew that we had a great candidate already working in our division. In the later part of 2016, Zygmunt was offered and promptly accepted the position of Mixer Maintenance Manager. He has been training since, and will be assum- ing full responsibility later this year, which will include (but is not limited to) all mixer and packaging maintenance in the Ingredient Division at the Main Plant, as well as all maintenance on mixers and mix support equipment at the Mix Facil- ity. Please be sure to congratulate Zygmunt on his new position at Crest! Pictured above are Zygmunt and his wife, Ela, on April 25, 2014, the day they were sworn in as citizens of the United States of America at the Court House in Rockford, Illinois. They were a group of 37 people from 18 countries.
8 Crest Ink April, May & June 2017
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