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Martin Brunkert

Partners Quality

DGQ praises Lean Management at punker GmbH

Posted on 27. September 2018

During a visit in Eckernfoerde the Schleswig-Holstein Regional Group of the German Association for Quality (DGQ) convinces itself of the high quality standards at punker.

Several times a year, the Schleswig-Holstein Regional Group of the German Association for Quality (DGQ) meets at various locations to discuss the latest developments in the field of quality management and related topics. Participants are primarily quality managers from Schleswig-Holstein companies.

On the initiative of the regional district management, such a meeting took place at punker at the end of August 2018. It gave us the opportunity to introduce ourselves and our activities in lean management and excellence. After the presentation and the tour of the plant, the participants were impressed by the changes we have implemented in recent years. In addition to the boards on which we carry out the daily detailed planning, the topic of order and cleanliness (5S) was of particular interest. Especially the prefabrication was praised as exemplary by the visitors.

“The punker GmbH is also an economically successful example of a quality leader, with which the conformity ‘drops off’, because the processes are controlled.
Kai-Uwe Behrends | DGQ Office

Such feedback is important for us in order to recognize where we stand in comparison to other companies. The application for this year’s MX-Award and the meeting of the “Network of Excellence” of Rational AG, which was recently held at our company in Eckernfoerde, served the same purpose.

During the event, Dr. Klaus Thoms handed over the management of the regional district to his successor Bernd Fries after 18 years in office.

Read DGQ’s visit report here (German article)

Quality

WikiWiki

Posted on 20. April 2017

A few days ago, the annual user conference of the orgavision GmbH took place in Berlin for the fourth time. At special invitation, I had the chance to give a guest lecture on our experiences in the field of knowledge management at this event with more than 120 participants. We have been using orgavision’s software for some months now to establish our organization manual and to make it accessible for all employees. The software is a so-called Wiki. The term, which most of us probably know from the internet platform Wikipedia, is derived from the Hawaiian and means fast or, as in the above-used doubling, very fast. As already reported in a previous blog post, we had decided to implement a knowledge management software as part of a master thesis on corporate knowledge management.

Once again, the lively interest in the subject of knowledge management became apparent at this user conference. A lot of well attended lectures discussed companies’ challenges to prevent the loss of knowledge due to long-time employees retiring or how the flood of information we are faced with on a daily basis leaves less and less time for the documentation of the information that is really noteworthy. At the same time it becomes apparent that the factor knowledge gains more and more importance  in globally competing market. Not least because of this does the latest version of the ISO 9001 devote an entire chapter to the subject of “Organizational  Knowledge” and requires a conscious knowledge management:

The organization needs to determine the knowledge needed to operate its processes and make its products and services conform to requirements. This knowledge must be maintained and made available as needed. The organization must consider its current knowledge when making changes, and determine how it will gain additional or updated knowledge if necessary for the changing needs.

In the light of the above, our pia (punker.info.app) shall not only save existing knowledge and make it quickly findable. It is also supposed to contribute to systematically cultivating and expanding the in-house knowledge through up-to-date news, discussion boards and cross-references to noteworthy information. Only then will we continue to be an innovative partner to our clients in the future.

Further information on this topic:



www.orgavision.com

quality digest: Knowledge Management in ISO 9001:2015

Quality Together

Knowledge Management – A Team Effort

Posted on 2. June 2016

Why is the resource “knowledge” still posing problems for today’s organizations when for milleniums, humans have been successfully practicing knowledge management?  Data, information and knowledge have been preserved in mankind through many generations – even in times when paper was not yet available, when tales where still passed on at the fireplace or simply from parents to their children or from master to apprentice. The quality of these methods surely is debatable. Similar to playing “Chinese Whispers”, story telling or cave art surely caused a lot of information to fall by the wayside. But after all, we always find a way to preserve knowledge and to make it accessible and practicable for the next generation.

So where is the problem?

A common problem is the lack of awareness of the knowledge that is or should be existent within the organization, or what would have to be done to generate it. Existing knowledge is stored in different storage locations in an uncoordinated and unclear manner, making it close to impossible to retrieve. Storage processes and the generation of knowledge are unreproducable and responsibilities only moderately assigned. Against the trends towards “leaner” organizations and modern eletronic possibilities, we are, to this day, still wasting about 25 percent of our labor time on the procurement and conservation of information. An yet, when we leave the organization, we take the lion’s share of know how with us, and it is lost to the rest of the organization.

What can be done about it?

At punker, the path is clear: Documents and information that up until today were hidden deep down in conventional binders, folders and directories will from now on be integrated into a clearly structured, easily understandable knowledge and information management system that is interdivisional and accessible to all staff. Away from old structures towards an interactive source of information in the creation of which all employees are more than welcome to actively participate. The goal is to reduce the time it takes to find required information so that we have more time for utilizing and multiplying this knowledge. All punker production facilities and sales offices worldwide will be tied together with multiple language options. This way, processes can be optimized in real time via direct feedback without delay and the progress of internal projects can be documented “online”, facilitating internal communication tremendously.

During the next few weeks, we will be laying the groundwork for such an “enterprise wiki” at punker. After that, it is up to all of us to feed the system with the information required to face future challenges that accompany demographical change and globalization.

We will keep you posted on this knowledge- and value-adding project on this blog.

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