Features Editor

Mike Berg, takes great satisfaction, maybe even pride, in the awards that Lockheed Martin Pike County Operations recently received from the Alabama Technology Network and the Business Council of Alabama.

After all, he is the company’s quality assurance manager, and those awards were given to the people under his watch.

Berg said Lockheed Martin takes great pride in its employees and the work that they do.

"We have an outstanding workforce," he said."I don’t think any company anywhere has more dedicated employees. They are hard working and take great pride in what they do. At Lockheed Martin, our employees are personally involved and take their work seriously because we want our war fighters to have the best product possible. They deserve no less."

Berg served in the Air Force before going to work for Martin Marietta in Orlando 21 years ago, so he knows, first hand, how important it is for the nation’s fighting forces to have the highest quality products.

As quality assurance manager, Berg is responsible for meeting customer expectations and the requirements of the contracts before the delivery of the final product.

In producing any product at Lockheed Martin Pike County Operations, safety is "number one" and the company was rewarded for its efforts to make safety its number one priority and for keeping it number one.

Lockheed Martin Pike County received a 2001 Award of Excellence for having been more than 1 million hours without a lost time injury or accident.

"We are involved in a program called MOVESAFE and it has worked well for us," Berg said. "Safety is managed at the team level because the people who are doing the work know the safest way to do their job – the team knows -not the people up in the office."

Berg said one safety measure that is employed at Lockheed Martin is to use machines to handle material when at all possible.

"The more people handle the materials, the great the propensity for something to go wrong," he said. "We want machines to handle the materials, not hands. The less hands touch materials, the less errors and fewer mistakes are made."

Berg gave credit where credit was due to the 250 employees of Lockheed Martin Pike County Operations who come to work each day with a dedication to task and safety on their minds.

Berg has been with Pike County Operations for six years.

He and his family make their home in Troy. His wife Kris works with Sanbuck. The couple has two children, Kyle, 15, and Kalie, 13.

"We love Troy and Pike County," he said. "We don’t miss the hustle and bustle of Orlando at all. This is a great place to live and raise a family. I enjoy being involved with the Scouting program here in Troy and like to go camping with the troop."

Berg likes anything to do with the outdoors and going hunting and fishing with his son and fishing with his daughter.

"My wife’s idea of camping is a motel and while we are in the woods, she goes to the mall," he said, laughing.