Global Insider 02/2010 - Seco-Warwick

More documents

Recommendations

Info

2/2010 IT HAS BEEN 60 YEARS! As is traditional in Elterma, the company picnic took place this year. This time, however, it was much more festive. On June 12, employees celebrated the 60th anniversary of the company. One would want to say '60 years have passed and it seems like it was only a day…' It all began in 1950. Back then nobody expected that the company would outlast that long. Only a handful of local residents believed in the company's growth. As we can see now, the faith can work miracles. Despite the fact that during these 60 years technological possibilities and customers' needs have been changing, ELTERMA has always kept pace with all the changes, adjusting production quality to the demands of the global market. It would not have been possible without the staff and their involvement in the company's development and acquisition of new markets. Thanks to our employees we are now among Europe's leading manufacturers of controlled atmospheres heat treatment equipment. It is hard to believe that some of our employees have worked here for over 40 years! During the official part of the anniversary celebrations, employees who have worked here the longest were honored. Representatives of local authorities, member of the Seco/Warwick S.A Board of Directors - Witold Klinowski, and a former Elterma's director of 1982-1990 Tadeusz Jarmal joined us on this special occasion. In accordance to organizers' promise, there was a lot of fun for the children as well as for the adults, for example, performances of a music and acrobatic group from our local high school. The star of the picnic was the ¯uki band, who played rock music from the 60's and the 70's. Traditionally, our colleagues played a volleyball game. At 8 p.m. another music band showed on the stage. Shortly after sun set, the evening sky was lighted up with a fireworks show. We partied till the break of dawn. We will meet again next year! SWC PROFILE: MEET JOANNE PEARL Every SWC employee knows that if you need an answer to an accounting issue, you can count on Joanne to get the answer. Jo has expanded her role in the accounting department from Accounts Payable to include many other functions. She has assumed the responsibilities 8 Poland SECO/WA • USA • RWICK China • POLSKA India • Russia previously held by two accounting staff members, streamlining processes and performing these functions with both efficiency and trademark good humor. Her boss Art Russo says, "needless to say, this added pressure [of assuming extra responsibility] has not changed the way we know Joanne. She still makes every effort to assist you, and generally with a smile on her face." Co-worker Stacey Bieneo writes about Jo: "Her stellar personality and performance is unique. Her personality shines and she is always laughing. She is very helpful and will assist her department at any given time. She is excellent in the Accounting field." So, we asked Jo…. What do you like the best about working for SWC? The People. Not only the people in my department, but company-wide What do you like the least? Year-end financial audit! What would people be surprised to know about you? This past spring, my husband and I started raising baby chickens! Beth Ryan
2/2010 THEY ARE NOT MEMBERS OF ANY SUPERVISORY BOARDS Nie They are not members of any Supervisory Boards, they do not occupy leading positions in organizational structures. They certainly do not posses such technical knowledge as designers and do not know markets and customers as good as sales people do. Yet, it is their involvement, negotiation skills and will to fight that substantially influence prices of equipment we offer on worlds markets, which is directly related to our competitiveness and financial results of the organization. Purchasing departments - this is who we have in mind here - are teams in our companies composed of just a few people, whose main task is to purchase materials at sufficiently low prices within short periods of time. It might seem like a piece of cake, however, it is a never-ending maze, where new possibilities, new purchasing markets, new conditions, new suppliers as well as new problems, tasks and challenges, etc. appear on every path. We often do not realize that purchasing departments within individual companies of the Seco/Warwick Group manage tens of million zlotys per year. If we added up the value of purchased materials and cooperation services in the whole Seco/Warwick Group in 2009, which for many companies was not the year of optimal sale and revenue, we would up with a huge amount of 56 million USD. This means that last year our purchasing departments managed a portfolio worth 56 million. In view of such enormous amounts of money, great opportunities have appeared for optimizing materials expenditures in purchasing departments. For many years of our activity SECO/WARWICK GROUP PURCHASING DEPARTMENTS SWSA Currently, there are 5 people working in the SECO/WARWICK S.A. purchasing department. employees of these departments have learned how to buy at low prices, how to negotiate successfully and how to properly organize logistic service. For many years our purchasing departments operated separately and independently. The first integration of SW SA and Elterma purchasing departments took place only a year ago. From a time perspective and many years of experience we can say today that the work put into joint activities within purchasing and logistic of Elterma and SW SA have brought significant savings. Based on this experience and the mandate to improve our global procurement efficiency, the Global Purchasing Team was established a few months ago. The team's activity includes all purchasing departments of the Seco/Warwick Group and the members are: Kathleen Goss from Retech Systems LLC Steve Balombini from SWC Anna WoŸniak from SWR Janusz Strzelecki from Elterma Anna Wróblewska fromSW SA S³awomir Wachowski from SW SA Katarzyna Kowalska from SW SA The main GPT tasks include cuting prices of materials in the whole Group, purchase co-ordination, acquisition of new suppliers and making the most of purchasing potential in the whole Seco/Warwick Group. The first meeting of planned GPT meetings series took place in June 2010 and representatives of all purchasing departments Economic crisis from the last year caused employment decrease in our department, but we still have a lot of work. During the last 3 years, we have placed 11700 orders with our suppliers. As it lies in a woman's nature, we spent substantial financial resources, but not without tough negotiations. With the purchase level more than 11 million USD per year, we are saving around 1,7% of all expenditures. Annually, we participate in around 100 business meetings with our most important suppliers, during which we negotiate business conditions and make every effort to secure adequate prices for materials used in the production of our furnaces. We take advantage of technological trainings offered by manufacturers and our designers as it is the best and the cheapest way to acquire more technical were present. The purpose of the meeting, apart from establishing friendly relations, was to set strategy and operation plan for the next few months. Main points include: 1. Savings of 1,5 million USD by the end of 2011 2. Expansion of co-operation on local suppliers markets 3. Identification of Chinese market in terms of new, high quality and cheap materials 4. Serial meetings, conference calls during which experiences and information will be exchanged, assignments will be reported and the operation plan will be updated and extended. Due to varied locations of our companies, cultural differences, dissimilarities resulting from diversity of local suppliers markets, these assignments will not be easy, nevertheless, taking into account the benefits we can achieve, they are worth our joint effort. Katarzyna Kowalska, Organization & HR Director, SWSA knowledge. Our small team is one of the fastest-growing in the company: during the last 4 years 3 babies were born in our families: Miko³aj, Marcel and Micha³ (all of them are boys - the balance must be maintained). This year we plan to put an increased emphasis on the information exchange and cooperation with the other purchasing departments within the SECO/WARWICK group. The potential here is huge. Until now we mainly worked with our closest neighbor - Elterma, but we will extend our contacts with our US based companies and those operating in the Asian markets. We have high hopes, especially in terms of cooperation with our new venture in China - SWR company. Poland • USA • China • India • Russia 9
Page 1 and 2: FOR US AND ABOUT US QUARTERLY • I
Page 3 and 4: 2/2010 At full blast - the Cab Team
Page 5 and 6: FINANSE 2/2010 - We increased our m
Page 7 and 8: 2/2010 SWR - WE ARE MAKING PROGRESS
Page 9: 2/2010 HIGH BACKLOG MAINTAINED THAN

Global Insider 02/2010 - Seco-Warwick

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?