Huntsman Polyurethanes is aiming to win the European Quality Award, presented annually by the European Foundation for Quality Management. Huntsman has benefited greatly from DNV’s International Quality Rating System in its work of improving quality.
Prime benefit of using DNVs International Quality Rating System, IQRS, lies in the rapid feedback, says John A. Darby, Business Excellence Manager in Huntsman Polyurethanes (formerly ICI Polyurethanes) Region for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
While it takes three months to prepare the documentation for the quality award and a further six months to receive feedback - the IQRS gives us the answers at the end of a weeks assessment work. We achieved Level 5 in the IQRS and an EFQM score of 525 - so IQRS was accurately calibrated.
DNV has broken the criteria for the European Quality Award down into some nine hundred specific questions instead of 35 broad issues. Most questions call for a clear-cut yes or no or, for example: how many? or how often? Specific questions that give specific answers.
This year we expect to achieve the same benefit from using IQRS as we did last year from applying for the European Quality Award. The IQRS enables us to track our progress year by year, and were also told of clear areas where we must improve in order to win the fight for the European Quality Award, emphasises Darby.
Automotive industry the most demanding
Huntsman Polyurethanes, of which ICI still owns 30 per cent, is a part of the Huntsman Corporation - the largest privately held chemical company in the world. The company works closely with a number of partners. The Global Polyurethanes market has shown significantly higher than GDP growth for the past 20 years, and the company cooperates closely with its customers in creating this market demand.
In 1999 Huntsman came 15th among the large companies which applied for the European Quality Award. Thirteen of the applicants reached the finals, which were dominated by electronics, telecommunications and automotive firms. Of our customers, those in the automotive industry are the most demanding, Darby believes. This industry changes quickly and demands a full insight into both technology and economics. So its also satisfactory to see that it is our automotive team which achieves the highest score in our IQRS assessments. These people are used to being tested and to working on continuous improvement. We achieve a lower score in other areas where we know we can improve. Everyone can get better, and we are putting our efforts into those areas where there is most to be gained. That way, we will also have other companies in the Huntsman group to compare ourselves with. We can learn from them and they can learn from us. We can share best practices. Many units dont know at present whether what they do is best practice. We want to avoid every site in the organisation reinventing the wheel, and wasting valuable resources.
Seek independent audit
John Darby stresses the importance of the DNVs IQRS as a good self-assessment tool with independent auditors trained by DNV. Internal surveys are a poor way of measuring employee satisfaction. We can see from our own surveys that the degree of satisfaction varies from country to country. Internally, this may give cause for concern, but the way in which we now measure and use external benchmarking specialists means that we can compare our results with those of similar companies elsewhere. These often show that the results are in line with the trend in that country and not something that is particular to Huntsman.
New products are under development continuously - in fact about 60 per cent of Huntsman Polyurethanes hundreds of products are less than two years old. All the new products are given a new name and we have a very disciplined introduction system. We particularly want our technical people to be close to the customer. We often know our customers production processes as well as they do themselves. Our German factory in Deggendorf is situated near the BMW car manufacturing plants, were close to the Clarks shoe company in Somerset in England, and to Whirlpool in Italy. We also benchmark Huntsman against our competitors including Dow, BASF and Bayer.
Recycling is another area to which Huntsman Polyurethanes is making a contribution. Waste from sawmills is used to produce boards, and provide better utilisation of the forests. Old newspapers and old car tyres are recycled. New technology is also being developed to allow recycling of the polyurethane foam itself. All these are important for a company seeking to demonstrate its quality credentials, says John Darby.