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Elkem Business System

The Elkem Business System (EBS) plays an important role in all of Elkem's operations. EBS is first and foremost about improving customer satisfaction. The aim is to secure excellence in EHS, delivery, quality and cost.

Elkem Business System is designed and aligned to support the strategic direction and operational goals of Elkem.

EBS will drive the behaviour in the organisation and foster a culture of operational excellence, continuous improvement and deep learning. To do this we have to motivate all our employees to identify problems and find smart solutions – to develop world class performers that can achieve operational excellence and secure and improve customer satisfaction.

The principles of EBS are anchored in Elkem core values.

EBS is a guideline, and is founded on four basic principles:

1. Make to use
Puts the customer, both internal and external, in focus. The principle states that everyone in the organisation – down to the individual level – is connected as internal customers and suppliers in close relation to each other. The results we produce must always meet our customer’s need. For all customer-supplier relations there is an ideal situation characterised by better safety and morale, as required, zero defects, instant response, one to one and at the lowest cost.

2. Empowered people
Is a conviction that each and every success is attributable to at least 70 % human effort and just 30 % to the system behind it. The people doing the work are the experts. They connect systems and are the driving forces within our value chain. The skills of the employees, their knowledge and experience, add up to a resource that Elkem seeks to liberate. We do so through increased team organisation and the development of a systematic form of working, where employees have an opportunity to contribute and influence problem-solving and continuous improvement.

3. Eliminating waste
Represents our continuous strive for perfection. It concerns people’s participation in simplifying, improving and finding new solutions. In our definition of waste we include the use of resources we incur during the production process for goods and services, and all unnecessary costs. Waste will often be built in to the systems in a traditionally organised value chain and will not always be easy to detect. Regarding waste there are three major sins: i) Overburden, ii) Unevenness and iii) Non-value-added work. The latter is again divided into 8 different categories of waste: over-production, excessive inventory, waiting, unnecessary movement, excessive conveyance, over-processing, correction of mistakes, and underutilises creativity.

4. Processes in control
Is about stability. We need predictable and consistent processes when it comes to manpower, machines, materials, and methods in order to meet our customers’ demands. This principle puts focus to the process. It is about developing a common understanding of the process with all its input and control parameters, make decisions based on data and facts, and removing unwanted variation in our processes.

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