What good is all that technology...
Modern traffic systems and logistic processes appear to many as something natural almost trivial. In truth, these areas of our daily lifes in their complexity and volatility are often underestimated.
Even the use of a transport drone, as rare as its use may be, would hardly function without human action. With Schmechel high-class management has an especially high value, just because of the product groups of our customers. So it becomes a challenge to ensure a consistent quality throughout the processing of an order. Human communication is the key parameter of the operating sequence.
People First
Therefore, the human being is at the heart of our actions, whether customer, colleague or whoever is involved in an order. Beginning with order acceptance it is a matter of recognising the important details of a customer requirement, apart from the static data.
It depends not only on the mere detection of an order, even and especially when it arrives via EDI. With sensitive goods a placing of order must be analysed between the lines to be able to achieve an optimum in the winding up. This challenge begins with the selection of the correct vehicle for the individual demand, progresses with the planning of traffic routes up to the organisation of necessary permissions and approvals.
In spite of automation of data flows – in parallel the driver must know on the route at every point of time, which processes and activities he has to produce in a customer-oriented and/or product-oriented way. At this point a diligent high-class management and process management provides standardised, even for different complexities, so the error rates reduced for the single employee to the desired zero.
In the future, the success of an enterprise is determined by ownership of the scarce resource of qualified staff. Therefore, Schmechel invests today increasingly in training from beginners to professional “old hands”.
A standardised training program that is regularly repeated helps avoiding mistakes by the employees, at the same time it allows to provide a fault detection at an early stage to identify discrepancies. Constant checking and assistance at the right time and the right place are necessary, especially when there are no standardised requirements, this is supported by integrated processes with telematics.
Employee Involvement
Despite sophisticated mechanisms the quality remains dependent on the direct interpersonal communication, even and especially when a job requires more attention. Suitable and adequate training concepts in a changing world of work and demographics are the challenge for quality management at Schmechel.
The involvement of all employees in the knowledge of operational processes and the provision of a proper learning culture when errors occur is part of the daily work of quality assurance.
In recent years, it has been proven that companies, in a size at which colleagues know each other personally know and also the management is involved in processes, produce better results than an anonymous global structure in which the individual is often only a small cog in the works, and not an equally important part of the performance. Schmechel addresses this challenge by training of junior staff in the technical and commercial sector.