I joined Bochemie in the summer of 2021 as Quality Manager in the ACCU business. I used my experience from my previous work as a production manager and subsequently as a quality manager in the pharmaceutical industry. Quality is about perfect knowledge of working procedures, knowledge of critical areas of points of the production concerned and, above all, about setting up controls so that these critical points are able to catch a potential problem while it is still possible to repair, rework or simply stop the progress of an intermediate product to the next production step. This is because with each production step, the intermediate product becomes more expensive, the most expensive being the recall of a poor quality product from the customer. The main thing that I have always strived for, and now in a different position I am still promoting, is that quality is not just a department overseeing the quality of a product, but it is the way we all work in the company. Because quality is in our hands.
Pretty soon I moved on to lead ACCU production. Hand in hand with the established quality standards, we in the ACCU team have continued to train and improve performance, especially on the assembly lines, and to stabilize performance on the filling lines with a maximum effort to reduce scrap rate. The most important thing, however, has been to expand the skills of ACCU staff with the aim of gradually building a team of people who can handle more than one job and at the same time are as comfortable as possible with the job position. It's nice to see that basically everyone at ACCU can work on multiple operations, which is a big relief, especially for the foremen. A previously unsolvable problem of a particular worker missing can now be solved by moving a colleague from another site.
At the end of 2023, I expanded my role to include production management at our subsidiary GAZ where I now have the following main tasks: Transferring the production of the internal battery section (stack) from GAZ to Bochemie. Completion of the cell welding machine project so that in one production step the cell is welded and tested for tightness and can proceed immediately to the formation. And also to completely eliminate manual welding of cells.
I have to say that in terms of my experience so far, my current job is the most interesting I have ever done. It is a work across all departments in the company, it is necessary to look for solutions, often even non-standard solutions.
It is also very important to me that we ‘Bochemie people’ work in a company where it is possible to talk, discuss and consult about work (and sometimes non-work) matters with virtually anyone. I appreciate that very much and I support such a company culture. I know from my own experience that it is not common in every company.