Continual monitoring and optimisation

Integrated management for effective and efficient working organisations

Creating commercial and operational insight

The integrated management system practised by GUTMANN ALUMINIUM DRAHT (GAD) promotes conscientious self-management and creativity among the company's staff. Specialists and different roles work seamlessly together to ensure the continual monitoring and optimisation of processes and products. All those involved have access to KPIs so they are in a position to help reach company goals and adapt to continually changing requirements. At least once a year, the effectiveness of the integrated management system is reviewed in relation to the changes that have taken place in the previous year.
 

Process environment, briefs, roles and responsibilities

GAD is a process-oriented company. Under the aegis of quality management officer Stephan von Galkowski and environmental officer Werner Götz, the GAD team has defined cross-departmental processes that make up the process environment. This environment, together with its associated briefing notes, is recorded in the Quality Management Manual and the company's comprehensive archive. The briefing notes define who is responsible for each part of the process (the 'process owner'). For example, one of the roles might be preparation of works, which itself contains various tasks such as creating work plans and managing the APQP group (advanced product quality planning).
 

Learning from mistakes

Roles are not set in stone. Who is responsible for what is subject to regular discussion. This includes looking at what went wrong when a specific target is missed. This type of error analysis is not about apportioning blame. It is rather about learning from mistakes and establishing potential for improvement, which can serve as the motivation to do things better the next time. The focus is always on suitability for the role. If it transpires that the tasks that need to be performed would be better assigned to another worker or workers, the necessary adjustments are made.
 

Integration, not silos, and self-awareness instead of the burden of expectation

In the interests of a networked culture and a flexible company dynamic, the integrated management system stands for procedural synergy and increased efficiency. Up till now, our four QM systems – IATF / 9001, 14001, 50001 and 22000 – have always been applied individually to each manufacturing area. In practice this has meant checking legal requirements for food safety and then checking them again for environmental management processes. The integrated management system is intended to establish basic inspection processes, such as compliance or risk assessment, in a consistent way across individual divisions. In this way, risk assessment for food safety can be carried out with the same tool as risk assessment for product features. The aim is to create an internal quality management system for each and every process that can be easily understood by everyone in the company. Quality management is therefore no longer seen as an additional burden. And the thinking behind the integrated management system is in line with the legislative intention to ensure that all QM norms, and the revisions to which they are subject, follow the same over-riding structure.