Elkem Business System
We in Elkem are concerned at all times with improving our results. We measure our services and deliveries in terms of safety, environmental protection, time and quality. To ensure continuous improvement, we must collaborate well and everyone must know how their work is to be done at all stages in the value chain.
We believe that a mode of organisation and management which provides the motivation for continuous improvement will create exciting and challenging jobs for us all! In order to ensure that we share an understanding of how this is to be achieved, we have developed a set of fundamental principles and methods which we call the Elkem Business System (EBS). This has been inspired by the best companies in the world and also draws on our own experience from a century of industrial development.
All our employees own one or more jobs and work processes which add up to a complete value chain.
A value chain is a sequence of work operations which collectively convert raw materials to a finished product.
Our value chains are measured for health, safety and the environment (HSE), quality, cost and quick delivery or response.
Last modified: 2007-02-12
We work in competent teams
Decisions are taken as close as possible to where the job is done. Our creativity and knowledge are applied to creating improvements by developing durable new solutions, in part through standardisation and automation.
We produce as required
By this, we mean that everything we produce will be governed by customer requirements. This principle focuses attention on the relationship between customer and supplier for all our activities. Who is the customer and what requirements do they have? Who is the supplier and how do they organise their operations to meet the customer’s requirements? How are signals from the customer transmitted to the supplier, and what value is created for us? By identifying actual value creation, we can locate all activities which do not contribute to it and which must accordingly be regarded as waste.
We prevent waste
Productivity improvements in the value chain are achieved by eliminating waste. This means not only overproduction, unnecessary stocks or unnecessary transport and movement, but also unnecessary waiting, corrections and rectification of faults as part of the actual production process.
We strive for stability in all our processes
By PROCESS, we mean a combination of people, machines, materials and methods to produce a specific product, provide a specific service or achieve a specific target. All our processes must be stable and predictable in order to avoid unnecessary consequences for employees, customers, owners or the environment. We must accordingly identify the most critical processes, understand and know how we can stabilise them, and maintain good order in the input factors required to achieve this.